(Posted on uie.com’s All You Can Learn video subscription site, link here)
In this triangle, trust is probably the hardest thing to establish
For mailed surveys, small payments work best to establish trust:
But money is more of a hassle to deliver online and didn’t move the needle much:
Tip 1: Offer a meaningful, immediate reward to help build trust
- Give users immediate access to results and explain how the info is going to be used
- Consider embedding a link to highly-related, good quality content
Tip 2: Be trustworthy and look trustworthy
- Check out Stanford’s Guidelines for Web Credibility here
- Be as transparent as possible about the survey
- If you’re a well-known, trusted brand it helps!
- Explain what your goal is and emphasize that you will really value and use their responses
Tip 3: Ask as few questions possible
- Get to the questions immediately, don’t make the users jump through too many demographic-based hoops
- What data points must you know in case the person doesn’t finish the survey, and what non-essential questions can you ask after the survey
- But don’t entwine multiple subjects in one difficult question when you could ask multiple simpler questions instead
Tip 3: Focus on only asking questions that deliver the most insights you need
- Ie, why ask about gender? Are you really going to design your product differently depending on the gender breakdown of survey takers??
- Users aren’t interested in or equipped to parse our design decisions—don’t ask them to answer questions about visual design unless absolutely necessary
Tip 4: To get a good survey, talk to a lot of users first
- If you are using a survey to avoid interviewing users, the chances of your asking the right questions (and in the right way!) aren’t that great
Tip 5: Don’t stress about the number of points in your rating scales
How many points should you use? 2 to keep it short, 10 to be most detailed?
- Users aren’t put off by number of points—they are much more like to be put off by questions that seems repetitive
- Best to follow your gut (unless a stakeholder has a strong opinion, in which case just give it to them)
- Personally, I like 3-5 points. When there are 10, what’s the difference between 6 and 7?—I think users may park themselves in a comfortable middle and the data won’t tell you much
Tip 6: Make sure questions are crystal clear
- Use simple, plain language to present one question at a time.
- Check out plain language guidelines here
- Avoid theoretical questions such as, Rate the overall information content of our site
- Users don’t think about your site in the abstract
- Better to ask about whether they could successfully complete content-related tasks, or:
- The more imaginative your question, the more robust and useful the answer:
Tip 7: Write interesting questions
Tip 8: Make sure your users understand your questions the same way you do
- Avoid jargon etc
Tip 9: Design the survey so people can answer easily
Tip 10: Think about the story the data can tell when creating a report
- Take this quiz about effective graph design strategies
- Focus your report on what transformational actions can be taken as a result of survey learnings
- Don’t spend time proving the quality of your survey—stakeholders assume you did a good job
- Insights are key here, not survey techniques
Tip 11: Know what decision you want to make based on survey results and formulate questions to inform that decision
Tip 12: Make sure you have asked the “most crucial question”—especially in terms of what question your stakeholder most wants answered
Bonus Tip: Test your survey (small pilot program etc) before going wide with it
There’s a nice set of Q&As in the video also so check out the link at the top!
About Caroline (from her site): Effortmark Ltd is Caroline Jarrett’s consultancy business. Caroline is the forms specialist. She advises organisations on how to make their forms easier to fill in.
