To get the most relevant data from your survey, you want to ask the right questions. Let’s look at what clarifies a leading question and how to avoid them.
Survey Tips
7 Tips for Creating Meaningful Questions
Survey Tips
You’ve got questions, and you need answers. This may be questions about your products, customer service, or new offerings.
You want to pose these questions to your customers, but you aren’t quite sure how to do it. In comes the survey.
While many think you can just throw a few questions together, it’s important that you create questions that will provide you with valuable data. Ask the wrong questions, and you won’t see the right answers.
In this article, we look at seven tips for creating meaningful questions, so you get good feedback.
#1: Make a Plan
The best surveys start with a plan. Before you sit down to create your questions, you first want a plan, so you have actionable results.
The first thing to ask yourself is what you want to learn. Here are some things to get you thinking:
- What is the purpose of your survey?
- What will you do with the results?
- What to do you need to know to take action?
#2: Have a Focus
When you make a plan, you’re better able to spot your focus. The most successful surveys have no more than one or two focus points. (tweet this)
In other words, you don’t want to ask too many varied questions. Why? Your survey won’t be as meaningful, and you’ll have more survey dropouts.
What’s more, if you have too many topics, you’ll have too much data to take action on.
#3: Make Your Survey Simple
Don’t confuse your respondents. The most meaningful surveys are short and to the point.
When it comes to wording, make the words short and easy to understand. You don’t want respondents getting out their dictionaries.
Use words that mean only one thing. Don’t leave room for any interpretation. Avoid slang.
Include only one thought per sentence. Don’t be biased and avoid all negative contractions.
#4: Make Your Survey Short
Longer surveys have a lot of drop out. So, keep your survey to one-five questions for the best, most meaningful results.
#5: Have an Order to Your Questions
When survey makers place questions out of order, it’s confusing for your respondents.
Keep survey questions in order and in context. For example, you can start with broad questions about your topic and then move on to more specific ones. Make sure your questions build on one another to increase your relevant data.
This is the funnel approach, and it makes it easier for your customers to work through your survey.
#6: Analyze Your Questions
Do be sure to analyze your questions.
For example, if you are asking a yes or no question, does it really work? These are easy questions for people, but are they really meaningful? Most often, only for data points.
For long survey questions, you want to go back and make sure you can’t split them in two. If you can, please do it. There should only be one topic per question.
#7: Be Timely
When sending surveys be timely. For example, if you’re sending a survey after a customer service touchpoint, it should be sent immediately, not four days later.
It’s hard for respondents to accurate complete your survey and give you meaningful data if too much time as lapsed.
To Conclude
Finally, surveys with the most meaningful results are tested by several people before they are sent out.
First, testing keeps you from having typos in your survey. Next, testing lets you know how long it takes users to complete your survey. And ultimately it lets you know if your survey makes sense.
Have your colleagues, friends, and family take your survey before you send it out. You might be surprised what they find.
The best surveys have meaningful questions that provide data you can act on. Use the tips here to create better surveys with even better results.
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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Understanding Your Import Summary Report
Survey Tips
SurveyTown filters out your imports to make sure you are not accidentally sending to people who have unsubscribed and also that every contact you have entered has a valid email address. Essentially we run your list through our filters and what comes out on the other side is a clean list of people that we sent the email.
You might be curious as to the results of this filter, so we give you the list of past imports where you can see in-depth how many contacts got added after you imported your file.
In this article, you will get a full understanding of your Import Summary report.
To find your import summary you will go to Contacts>Imports. From here, you can find any imports within the last 30 days. This information will give you a quick overview of your import summary. The top of the page will be your latest import.
On this page your “Imports” will be broken down into:
- Type – This is the method you used to import your contacts.
- Action – When adding your contacts, you can choose to have the imported contacts be subscribed, unsubscribed, or updated.
- Description – This will give a description of the method of importing contacts as well as the date and time the import occurred. You can click “View Summary” to get an in-depth look at the success of the imported contacts.
- Survey – This is the given survey you have imported contacts to.
- Contacts – This gives the number of contacts imported.
- Status – This will determine whether or not your import was successful.
You can see a review of your import by clicking on the “View Summary” link that is in the row that details your latest import. An import summary will also be emailed to you.
Here is what the “Import Summary” looks like.
When clicking on the “Import Summary”, you will notice that the summary has been broken down into:
Status – Below “Import Summary” it will be indicated whether or not your import was a success.
Started – This is when the import began.
Finished – This is when the import completed.
Total in Import – This will determine the number of total contacts imported, and whether or not they have been filtered.
Filtered – This is the initial filtering done on known bad email addresses.
Processed – This will be the total number of contacts imported after initial filtering.
- Disallowed – SurveyTown will not allow role-based email address like [email protected] or [email protected]
- Invalid – These are contacts who’s email address is malformed, meaning missing a correct domain extension, has invalid characters, etc.
- Blank – These are contacts who’s email address is blank.
- Duplicated contacts – These are contacts that are listed twice in your import file.
Left for import after screening – This will indicate the total number of valid contacts that can now be imported. There is one more check that must be done.
- Globally unsubscribed – SurveyTown will not import contacts that have requested to be Globally unsubscribed.
- Bounced – SurveyTown will filter out email addresses that have been sent to previously but bounced back to the email not being received by the recipient. Most commonly, bounced email address are due to old addresses that may be valid but has been deleted or is no longer receiving mail.
- Over quota – Each pricing level gives you a certain number of contacts you can survey. If you are over quota, you may want to upgrade your account so that you can survey more contacts.
- Already in your account – These are contacts that have been subscribed previously.
Added to your account – This will be any newly imported contacts added to your account after all the filters and processes have been applied.
Final Thoughts
SurveyTown’s filtering features can give you a sense of comfort that we are keeping track of who’s opted in and who’s bounced. It’s always a good idea though to keep a good list so you you don’t accidentally send any spam. Understanding your “Import Summary” report can be helpful to know which contacts are successfully imported helping you maintain a healthy relationship with your customers.
6 Fun Survey Questions That Make Customers Feel Important
Survey Tips
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