6 Useful Survey Questions to Ask Your Website Visitors

July 18, 2012 by Leave a comment

Use Online Survey Tools to Help Assess Website Productiveness, Learn About Your Target Audience and Direct More Traffic to Your Website

Online Survey, Website questionnaire

When promoting a brand or business online, it is important to use an online survey tool to assess if the website is effectively meeting goals. SurveyTool offers web designers and webmasters free online surveys that can be used to get feedback from their website visitors. The questions asked can make a big difference on the type of response, and whether the respondent bothers to complete the survey at all. SurveyTool has done some research and below we’ve listed six useful questions that are specifically tailored for website traffic surveys.

1. How did you find us?

This question is important, however you might want to narrow the potential answers by structuring it as a closed-ended query. Offer predetermined multiple-choice answers: Web Search, Advertisement, Referral, etc. and offer an Other blanks space in case the participants circumstance is not represented in the answer selection.

2. What were you looking for?

This survey question will help you understand your target market better as well as confirming if you’re reaching them. If you notice that the participants are answering that they found the exact product, service or information they were searching for then good for you – you’re reaching your desired audience effectively. However if you notice that the answers aren’t as satisfied as you would like, it’s time to improve your product or update your website.

3. What search term did you use?

While there are online website tracking and analytics services that can answer this question without getting website visitors involvement, some site administrators might prefer the answers straight from the audience. Using a free online survey to ask visitors what search term they were using confirms whether or not your site is properly optimized for your target niche. If you find that the search terms being used don’t include your site’s targeted keywords or phrases, then you can use the information gathered to tweak your site’s SEO campaign.

4. What site referred you to us?

This is a great survey question that will help to ascertain what sites are driving the most traffic to your site. If you’ve spent time getting the word out about your site using social media, then seeing Twitter or Facebook among the answers to this question will let you know that your marketing efforts are on the right track. And often you might find that an associate or blogger has done you a favor by directing some of their traffic to your site, so this is a great way of tracking the assistance and returning the favor with a link back or a thank-you email.

5. How well did we provide you with what you were searching for?

This question might be best constructed as a scale (1-5, 1-10) and is another type of closed-ended survey question that will help you gauge the satisfaction – or dissatisfaction – of website visitors. While this won’t help you discover specifically what is pleasing or displeasing visitors, it is a simple survey poll that most visitors can answer simply without having to worry about providing details. If you see responses around the upper end of the scale, you’re doing things right! If you see a lot of low numbers, give the site an overview and initiate improvements.

6. Was there any particular feature you were hoping to find but didn’t?

Even if you see a lot of happy responses and high numbers, there is always room for improvement and this question will help you know where to focus your energy. If visitors aren’t satisfied with their experience on your website then this gives them a place to voice their disapproval and notify you of where your website could improve.

Use An Online Website Survey to Improve Performance & Customer Satisfaction

Using an online survey to question site visitors will help you discover if your website is effectively promoting your service or brand. Keeping your finger on the pulse of your target audience’s opinion of your site is key to discovering how to best serve customers and earn their online approval. If you’d like more info on designing a free online website survey, here are some pointers regarding how to construct questions for a survey that will assist with gathering productive data.

Visit us at www.SurveyTool.com and create your first survey today!

Filed under Customer Satisfaction, Technology Tagged with , , , ,

Survey Questions Help Guide

April 27, 2011 by Leave a comment

Surveys seem like a great idea, right? Just ask a few questions and you’ll have all the data you need. But everyone knows that’s not really the truth; in this case, it’s like buying a pair of fashionable Nike’s and expecting to dominate the NBA. You’ve got the same tools — the shoes, the software — but you’ve got to know how to use them. Go ahead, put on your Nike’s and follow along while I hold your hand through the steps to creating efficient, precise, and valuable survey results.

Step 1. What do you want to know?

Deconstruct (break-down) your ideas and concepts into single, concrete ideas. Try to bore down to the very heart of an issue. Let’s consider an online game: if you want to know how much players “like” the game, you can ask them, straight up, how much they “like” playing. But the info will be simple and nearly useless. Perhaps 60% of people “like” the game. Great. Except that tells you nothing except that the game isn’t perfect (which you already knew). (What does “like” mean precisely? Would they play again? Would they recommend it to their friends? How long did they play for?)

Try asking about specific levels or game play factors for a more effective survey question. Always ask yourself what you will learn from the question. Target specific issues, ideas, or concerns.

Step 2. Be consistent in your answer choices.

You want responses to be comparable across the board for easy analysis. Use the same 5-point scale for satisfaction throughout (or whichever scale you find best suits your industry).

Step 3. Purge.

Your survey is probably too long. Keep it short to avoid respondents fatigue—remember how much you hated long busy work assignments in school? For respondents, overdone surveys are a little like that. Get rid of questions that don’t seem speculative or will not be immediately useful. Leave out questions that you hope might help you in the future. Use questions you know are likely to give you answers to work from.

Step 4. Precision, Precision, Precision.

One of the biggest errors we see in surveys are questions with too much complexity. Break these down into smaller questions.

Avoid technical jargon unless you know responders will understand these terms. Don’t be vague or general in your questions — don’t ask, “Were you satisfied with your visit to Yosemite?” because the information you’ll gather won’t actually tell you what you can do to improve visitors’ experiences. You’re going to need to ask a lot more specific questions.

If your questions includes “and” or “or” there’s going to be a problem. Users won’t know which part of the question they’re specifically answering.

Avoid biased questions, which clearly have a “right” answer, or socially acceptable answer that respondents will choose even if they don’t honestly feel that way.

Survey Complete!

With these tips in mind you should be ready to write and interesting survey that will yield actionable results, data that you can take directly to your boss, coworkers, or business partners and use to make real decisions. Valuable data comes from valuable questions. When it comes to surveys, that’s a mantra one must always keep in mind.

Filed under Technology Tagged with , , , ,

Hoarders: Not the TV Show

January 14, 2011 by Leave a comment

I read an interesting article today In San Francisco Magazine. The article talked about humans being hoarders. We are all guilty of it. Hoarding things that have sentimental importance, things that you “think” you will use again, clothes, birthday cards from Grandma, books, and old furniture. For some reason most of us just can’t let things go. If we just let go, our lives would be much less cluttered and far more simple.

According to this SF Magazine article this also now applies to the hard drives on our computers. In the early PC days it was almost impossible to hoard things on your hard drive, unless you we’re a .jpg collector. A 10 or 20 GB hard drive can only hold so many of those things. But, with the introduction of hard drives that have much more space, people are using that space to keep insignificant things. In other words, to hoard.

For example, do you really need all 5 of those Jennifer Aniston movies that have the exact same story line stored on your computer? Do you really need all those old episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm? You’re never going to watch any of them. It must just feel nice to know you have them “just in case”.

With even larger hard drives coming out for computers we are just going to feed the beast. Our hard drives are going to become a graveyard for junk larger than we ever could imagine your neighbors disgusting, insignificant and completely unnecessary garbage filled garage could be.

I am guilty too. So, thank you SF Magazine for the enlightenment.

You can read their entire article here

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