Online surveys are not something you either love or hate. Well, you either hate them a whole lot, or hate them just a little bit. I am sure that 99.9% of us click on the “close” icon as soon as that little box opens up and blocks our view of what we are looking at, encouraging us to take part in a two minute (more like 22 minute) online survey that will help us more than it will help the company, so they say. Not many of us are fans of taking online surveys and I’m sure that many of us cannot remember the last time we took an online survey and remembered exactly what it was all about three minutes after clicking “done.” The question is, do online surveys really matter? And how can we make online surveys more appealing to individuals who partake in social media? (which is pretty much everyone)

Online surveys are important for businesses as gaining research as to what your customers want and what they expect of you is imperative in presenting your company as an entity that customers can relate to and therefore utilise. When formulating free online surveys that you think will captivate individuals who engage in social media, make sure that you have enough information behind you in order to actually gain valued results from your readers. Thorough research is key as you do not want your survey to look like it’s been copied and pasted from a template. Showing your customers that you know what you are talking about will encourage them to complete the online survey until the end.

Once you know what angle you would like to take in your online survey, you will have to formulate questions that can be read by a broad variety of people. Put yourself in the respondent’s shoes – find out how your particular topic is discussed in social circles and on social networking sites. It is suggested that you firstly formulate what you want to say in your online survey from a company’s point of view and then translate it from that into a “language” that customers and readers can relate with.

Be creative with your online survey questions, generic and close minded questions will deter readers and you will probably end up with a survey that is not accurate all wrong. Giving readers a fair amount of options is good, but giving them too many options will result in and overload of information, resulting in the reader just clicking on any option on the online survey just for the sake of finishing it. Time how long it will take to complete your survey and be honest about it when requesting customers to complete it. Any online survey over five minutes is pushing it.

Also, think of how readers interact with question and answer scenarios in social media. All of us have seen or filled out one of those silly “find out which part of a cow’s anatomy you are” or “what is the day that you get divorced and trip over an elephant in the street” type of thing and the truth is that these online “surveys” are pretty popular. So maybe we can take a feather from their hat and integrate a somewhat relaxed atmosphere into surveys, but this also depends on the nature of the online survey itself.

Online surveys have had a bad for quite a while as many readers abandon surveys half way through if the questions do not relate to them or the online surveys do not ask what customers want to hear. A company has to be able to translate their questions from a more sponsored language into a kind of customer language that will appeal to readers and make them want to finish the online surveys. Linking online surveys to your social media networking sites is a good way to get customers to interact but make sure that you offer them more of an opportunity to discuss and interact rather than a bunch of questions to fill out. So I suggest – keep online surveys short and sweet (to a certain extent), give the customer the option to answer and do not make answers compulsory and speak in the language that the customer wishes to hear.

Online survey and feedback applications such as Kampyle and Survey Monkey are great ways to get feedback from clients and give them an easy portal to answer questions you would like to ask. What online survey applications do you use? Do they work well for you? Let us know!

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