Let’s face it, most surveys are boring, and many aren’t created with the respondent in mind.

Many companies want to learn something quickly, and they don’t often spend the time to create an engaging, thought-provoking survey.

This means higher drop-off rates for the surveyor, and this isn’t a good statistic for the endgame.

To help you make surveys that are attention grabbing, and attention holding, let’s look at five tips for creating an engaging survey.

#1: Be Relevant

What’s relevant to you might not be relevant to your survey audience, so you want to make sure you know exactly who you’re sending your survey to.

For example, if you are crafting a survey about swimming pools, and you want to know why people would or wouldn’t put a pool in their backyard, you don’t want to send the survey to apartment dwellers.

Your relevant audience is homeowners.

Another way to stay relevant in a more upbeat, hip way is to research trending hashtags that have some relation to your business. Then use that information to craft a survey title and/or questions that hook your audience and makes them want to complete your survey.

#2: Be Timely

Your customer purchased from you two months ago, and you wait to send a survey about their checkout experience.

Most busy people aren’t going to remember your checkout process (unless there was something memorable – good or bad) two months afterwards.

Stay in the moment and be timely with your surveys for the best engagement.

#3: Be Visual

The digital, social media age means that visuals matter.

You can bet your respondents are going to drop off if your survey is visually unattractive.

Things to think about include your background color scheme, font colors and font choice and any embedded images. 

#4: Be Mobile Friendly

Mobile usage is significantly higher than desktop usage, and Americans spend nearly 90 hours per month on their smartphones.

This is why the most engaging surveys are mobile-friendly. Make it simple, fast and easy for your respondents to complete your survey from the comfort of their phones.

Make sure your survey functions just as well on the mobile phone as it does the desktop computer.

Your mobile surveys can help increase engagement and response rate.

#5: Be Thoughtful

When creating your engaging surveys, make them convenient to complete. This means emailing them, posting them and/or embedding them on your Facebook pages, adding them to Twitter and including them on your website.

Making the survey convenient for your respondents shows you are thoughtful and concerned about the usability.

#6: Be Shareable

Once you’ve got your creative, unique and engaging survey, you want to make sure its shareable. (tweet this)

Include social sharing links at the end of the survey so your respondents can share the survey and their results.

Allowing people to share their results on social media means you’ll get even more responses.

#7: Be First

Another tip for creating an engaging survey is to use the first person in your questions. This immediately draws the respondents in and subconsciously keeps them going.

Using the first person creates a psychological response, and makes the survey easier for people to complete because they can immediately imagine themselves in the question. 

#9: Be Logical

Our final tip is to use conditional logic.

To really engage the respondent, tailor subsequent questions from answers to earlier ones.

You can skip questions, add questions based on answers and even route your users to different URLs based on their answers to survey questions. 

Final Thoughts

Whether you’re sending surveys to multiple audiences that might include your customers, target audience, employees or industry leaders, your goal is to get valuable data.

This means you need to create an engaging survey that keeps respondents looking towards the next question.

Try some of our tips today and see if it increases your survey engagement response rate. Test your questions and fine tune as necessary.

Surveys help you make the best decisions for your business. Are you ready to get started with your free Survey Town trial? Start with your free account today, and you can upgrade at any time.

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