What are Online Survey Tools and Why Should You Care?

If you know what online survey tools are and how many of them exist out there, then you might be wondering how to leverage this internet tool for maximum effectiveness. For example, how do you deliver your survey to the target audience? How do you get more eyes on your surveys? How do you post-process the survey data and gather insights from that data? And last but not the least, given so many online survey services, which one should you opt for? You can figure all of this out if you run streamlined tests and do research before creating your survey.

However, there is a chance that perhaps you have no idea of what online survey tools are. In that case, you would want to learn more about how you can leverage online surveys to scale your business, gather useful and relevant insights, propel your personal agenda, or gather valuable information to harness more profit for your product. Online survey services are a very good technique for collecting feedback.

By the end of this article, you will have a sound understanding of how to use best survey tools to increase your profits. You will see that it is not the technical part that you need to master, but rather the constructive part.

Online survey tools are essentially a portal. Such a tool helps you create a survey that could be anything from a simple poll to a complex questionnaire with multiple options to choose from. That survey is basically textual data made interactive with web scripting. Web development languages make sure that the information that people fill in delivers to the right place and in the right form.

So, once a certain someone from your target audience has filled the survey, the information will be stored in a database that can be directly accessed by you. Information retrieval, however, is not the tricky part. The tricky part is actually creating the survey.

You see, most of the online survey services provide you with the space to host your survey and mechanisms to record, store, and retrieve the data. They do not come with tips that help you get better and more accurate responses. Actually, the main battle is not getting more people to fill the survey or handling the backend of the information storage–retrieval system or even gathering insights from the information that you collect.

The main battle is creating an ideal survey in the first place that does not make the target consumer feel uncomfortable in any way. You must have heard of the term “survey fatigue.” It is something we all come across at one point or the other. A good survey does not give the target audience this fatigue because it is made so intelligently and carefully.

Tips to Make Market Research Surveys Count

Have you ever wondered how simple business ideas turn into profitable ventures whereas great ideas fail? The key is having the right data. Making correct decisions backed by accurate data is the key to success for any business. However, before investing into your idea, you must get real feedback from customers to validate its potential and assess for modifications.

A well-designed market research survey is key!

So, let us begin with some handy tips to help you conduct an actionable market research survey.

1: Have a Purpose

Your market research survey should have a purpose or objective:

• Get a feedback on new product/service/feature
• Measure experience of customers
• Analyze adding a new feature
• Analyze product upgrade
• Determine product/service quality

There can be many purposes but the objective is to stick to a purpose. The purpose gives a context to the survey – the environment in which participants would be taking the survey – phone, tablet, PC, laptop. It all makes a difference. Best-in-class market survey software is crucial.

2: Add Survey Incentives

Few would complete a survey without a direct benefit.

Adding cash incentives drives higher response rates. But what about survey data quality? Keeping that in mind, you can offer participants product discounts--especially if the market research involves product survey.

3: Buyer Persona

Buyer persona defines a fictitious character with demographics, obstacles, and personality. It includes all problems they wish to solve, and why they would engage in business.

Your aim should be to create your buyer persona for the business – just one person. Given that you cannot reach every customer type, you should aim for one ideal customer and communicate. By doing so, you would gain insight into their beliefs, fears, influences, and ultimately how you can help.

You may find your ideal right in your house or office. Just look around!

4: Focus on Quality over Quantity

Your market survey software might give you ample data. But is all that data useful?

Instead of quantity, focus on quality. Validate a market by asking open-ended questions and look for quality responses. For the most data-rich market research survey data, ensure that you have adequate qualitative questions.

Be open to all kinds of responses. A market research should also help customers to relate to your product/service instantly. 

Contact us to know about the objectives of questionnaire.