We can receive dozens of surveys daily. Even some of us can make it on our own to collect data about specific projects or products. Nevertheless, have you ever considered what are online surveys’ goals or potential benefits? And most importantly, how to get people to take an online survey. Thus, if you want to make people take an online survey and increase your response rate, continue reading this article. It will provide you with general information about online surveys and their types, outline their advantages, and suggest nine proven ways to get people to take one. 

What is an Online Survey? 

One of the easiest and most often used methods of data collection is online surveys. It is a uniquely designed questionnaire to gather information and opinions from the target audience. Online surveys are usually distributed through different platforms, including email, mobile apps, social media platforms, and numerous websites. Surveys are accessible through various internet-enabled devices, including smartphones and computers. Furthermore, there are many tools which can facilitate the survey-making process and help you save time, such as  survey maker plugin . 

Advantages of Online Surveys

Some of the advantages of online surveys include. 

Time-Savingness: One of the central advantages of online surveys is that they are time-saving. In comparison to other research techniques, surveys are quick and simple to carry out. They require less effort and immediate responses from participants.

Quickness to analyze: The online survey findings can be examined at any time. You can view the respondents’ real-time responses, collect them, create graphs, or simply categorize and analyze them.  

 Convenience to Use: Online surveys are convenient to use by the participants as they enable them to answer the survey in their free time. Furthermore, surveys give flexibility to the respondents since they can decide how long to think about this or that question, fill it in at their own pace, or even continue it later if the survey maker allows them to save their progress. 

Cost-efficiency: Online surveys reduce the additional research cost. Since they require minimum resources, they are cheaper than any other research method. You can find many free online survey tools such as WordPress Survey Plugin that enable you to make a fast survey without additional effort. Furthermore, you reduce any other expenses on spending money on paper postages or other advertisements. 

Flexibility: Online surveys allow you to change the order of the questions, give participants multiple answer options, and provide options for long or short-answered questions. Thus, the survey process is becoming more straightforward and engaging for the users providing additional responses. 

Types of Online Surveys 

Online surveys come in a variety of types, each with their own goals and objectives. You can find the four most significant forms of online surveys illustrated below. 

Customer Satisfaction Surveys

One of the most popular types of online surveys, Customer Satisfaction Surveys, are primarily used by different organizations and businesses to get customer feedback. This survey measures how satisfied customers are with the company’s products and services. The primary purpose of the survey is to help organizations get insights about their product or services and adapt them, taking into account the opinions and feedback of the respondents. By collecting this data, the organization usually increases customer loyalty and credibility. 

Employee Feedback Surveys 

Employee Feedback Surveys are also surveys usually made by the organization to collect employee feedback. They usually include topics such as—employee satisfaction, motivation, work environment, job duties, workload, and so on. The surveys aim to identify how the employees feel about the job and the organization. Getting honest feedback from the employees about the job environment can help the businesses to identify their areas of improvement., work with the management issues, and improve communication and the organization’s atmosphere.

Marketing research Surveys 

A Marketing Research Survey is another type of survey organizations use to gather information about their audience, consumer preferences, buying habits, and product reviews. With this type of survey, companies collect information about the target audience by knowing their needs and some personal information to contact them. This aims to help the business to make its marketing strategies and product development more effective. 

Event Feedback Surveys 

Organizers of various events, including conferences, festivals, concerts, etc., use Event Feedback Surveys. The primary purpose of the survey is to understand the attendee’s experiences. After collecting the feedback from the visitors, the organizers can collect general data about the event reviews and understand what improvements to make during the following events in order to increase the attendee satisfaction rate. 

How do you get people to take your survey? 

After familiarizing ourselves with online surveys, their types, and advantages, our next step is to identify how we can get people to take our survey. Below, you will find the seven best methods to make people take an online survey. 

• Motivate Them

Motivation is a significant driving source, and it can make participants interested in the survey. One interesting method to motivate your respondents to take an online survey is offering them something in return for their responses. Everyone loves when they receive a “reward” after doing an action. For instance, you can offer them a free subscription to your plugin after they pass your survey. It is beneficial for both sides. Participants get compensation for spending their time on your survey; you, in turn, increase the response rate.

• Explain Your Objective

How many times have you taken a survey without knowing its purpose? To take an online survey, even the shortest one, requires time and effort. Thus, telling the people why they are spending their time taking your survey is reasonable. For example, while conducting an event feedback survey, telling your customers that the survey’s primary purpose is to understand their experience connected with the event and improve attendee satisfaction will increase the response rate. It makes your respondents feel credible towards your survey and be aware of why they are spending their time on it. 

• Choose the Right Medium 

Generally, you need to grab the respondents’ attention in the first 5 to 10 seconds. To do this, you need to provide an interesting welcome message and state the importance of the survey and its objective. When you choose a suitable medium in your online survey, the respondent will more likely get engaged and willingly continue to read and fill out your survey.

• Create an Appealing Welcome Screen 

Apart from choosing the right welcome message, you need to have an appealing, welcoming screen. The welcoming screen is considered the opening line of your online survey. It can make your respondents easily engaged with taking your survey. The three key factors of making an engaging welcome screen are.

• Use compelling visuals – use strong and engaging imagery for your welcome screen connected with your survey material. 
• Ask the right question – ask a question that will guarantee that the answer will be Yes and which will generate interest among participants of your survey.
• Tell them how long it will be – knowing how much time they are going to spend filling out the survey gives clarity to the respondents.  

Here is an example of a welcome screen I made for a survey about game subscriptions.

• Specify the Timing

Making clarity for the participants includes telling them the timing of the survey. People don’t prefer to answer long surveys; thus, if they know that they can pass your survey in a couple of minutes, they will continue passing it. The ideal duration of the survey is less than seven minutes. Thus, keeping the timing will help you be concise and increase your response rate. 

• Avoid Including Many Questions In Your Online Survey

Keeping the question numbers reasonable in your survey is one of the key factors that will make people take an online survey. Sometimes, while answering the questions in the survey it can give an impression that it will never end. However, when people take a survey, they want it to be quick and precise, but it is pretty disappointing when they end up having questions for 4,5,6 pages. Therefore, it is reasonable to appreciate your respondents’ time and don’t include many questions in your online survey. 

• Stick up with close-ended questions. 

However, some of the questions in the survey must require open-ended questions; sticking up with close-ended questions is more reasonable. First of all, they require less effort from the respondents. When filling out open-ended questions, they need to think about what to write and sometimes can skip the question (or stop filling out the survey if the question is required). In contrast, in terms of close-ended questions, they can already choose one of the provided answers.

 Most open-ended questions can be adapted into close-ended ones; thus, it is suggested to do it whenever you find it reasonable. For instance, instead of writing How are you feeling about the business method? You can just ask Did you like the business method? And provide answers “Yes” or “No”. 

• Use Simple Language 

Making your survey in complicated language and using complex words that are not essential will make your readers frustrated. If they need help understanding the question’s meaning or it seems very difficult, they will either provide a random answer or click out of your survey and leave you without a response. Therefore, using simple language increases your response rate and ensures that your respondents will feel confident about answering the questions. 

• Choose Right Participants 

Choosing your online survey participants wisely is another essential component of making people take your survey. The first thing you are required to do before sending your survey is identify your target audience. Identifying the target audience means including people who are actually interested in your survey topic. This will increase the chances that the particular person will take your survey. As well as you will avoid spending time sending your survey to the people who will not take it. 

For instance, if you have a survey about marketing, sending it to students from medical universities would be an incorrect identification of the audience. 

Wrapping up

In conclusion, online surveys are one of the most effective data collection methods. Throughout the article, we learned what online surveys are, their advantages, and what types exist. The article focused on how to get people to take an online survey, engage them in participation, and increase the response rate. 

As we use online surveys for various purposes and projects, it is essential to know ways to make people take an online survey while keeping it short and precise, using simple language, and identifying the target audience.