Free three month trial!

There's no obligation, and you get to try our powerful
survey builder and analysis tools - get your trial account

Online survey best practice

How to get the best response to an online survey

Top tips from the team at Demographix!

1. Prepare your survey in advance

Do a complete outline of your survey in Word or a text editor before even logging in to an online survey service to start building it. This will give you the opportunity to consider the wording of each question, the full set of responses, possible ambiguities in questions and the overall structure of a survey. Good structural design is important, especially if you use features such as our conditional questions or pages, which will tailor the size of the survey delivered according to the respondents' input (see below).

2. Keep survey sizes to a minimum

The simple fact is the bigger your survey is, the less likely respondents will be to complete it. Pare down your surveys so that you ask the crucial questions that you want answers to, and get rid of questions that are really supplemental to your current research aims. You can always add a question at the end, asking respondents if they would mind taking part in further surveys, and send them out supplemental surveys at a later date. Streamlined surveys get the best results.

3. Structure your surveys into logical chunks

Give your surveys good structure. On the first page, make it clear what the aim of the survey is. Generally, keep personal identification questions to the end (email, contact details, location). Above all, break your survey up into logically ordered pages. This helps you group relevant questions together, makes the survey less daunting (one long page can be extremely off-putting to respondents), and also gives you flexibility in creating conditional pages, which will not show questions that are irrelevant to certain respondents (see below). It goes without saying that the demographix Survey Builder has excellent facilities for ordering your pages.

4. Don't confuse multiple and single choice options

A common mistake in survey design is using a multiple choice question style for a question where you are only seeking a single answer. Think carefully for each question whether you want respondents to select just a single option, or whether you want to leave open the possibility of several responses. For example, consider the difference between these two questions:

1. What age group do you fall in? 15-25, 26-45, 46-65, 66+ (single choice)
2. What continents have you holidayed on? Europe, Americas, Africa, Asia, Oceania, None (multiple choice)

5. Use conditional logic to create interactive questioning

Conditional logic is where you display a question or questions, depending on the response to a previous question. For example, if your respondent ticks "No" in response to the question "Do you go to the gym regularly?", it's unnecessary to then ask them what gym equipment they prefer or what time of the day they go. You probably would want to know the reasons why they don't go – and could thus create two sets of questions that will display dependent on their original Yes/No answer. Do beware though that some systems have quite minimal conditional logic facilities. It probably won't surprise you if we say that demographix does it particularly well!

6. Use conditional logic to gather 'other' information

Similar to the above, where you have an 'Other' option in a set of answers to a question, you can conditionally display a write-in box if they tick the "Other" option. The information you gather could help you discover if there are any clusters in the responses that you missed out when assembling your multiple choices. With demographix, the write-in Other box will not be displayed to those who only select the main multiple choice options you give.

7. Standardise answer options

It's likely that when you start doing multiple surveys, you'll start to use the same lists of answers over and over again (for example: "Very satisfied, Satisfied, Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied, Dissatisfied, Very dissatisfied" or "Every day, A few times a week, A few times a month, Rarely, Never"). It's a good idea to build up a library of common lists, which will save time, ensure correct spelling, and enable you to be consistent across your surveys. The demographix survey builder includes many useful pre-defined answer lists, plus a handy scrap-book facility.

8. Use images sparingly

When using images in surveys, use them sparingly! A brand logo at the top of a survey can give it authority, and multiple choice image questions, where appropriate, make the survey more interesting for respondents. Make sure you resize large graphics to smaller, more easily downloadable sizes. Ideally, images should be no greater than 10K-15K, but this needs to be balanced against the number of images on a page. Check to see if your survey provider allows you to resize images that you've upoloaded, rather than having to adjust them in software like PhotoShop. With demographix you simply drag a slider to get the image size you'd like.

9. Be aware of copyright and data protection laws!

You don't need to be an expert on copyright or data protection laws, but you must always bear in mind that anything you include in your survey and any data you gather should pay due respect to the law. Do not infringe copyright on images, nor include anything that is potentially libellous. If you are collecting personal data, be aware of data protection laws in your jurisdiction, and ask for any required permissions for any uses you may make of the data gathered.

10. Be courteous!

Remember that your respondents are doing you a favour by filling in your survey. It is a good idea to include a greeting message at the start of a survey that is brief, and explains the reason for the survey and, possibly, where results will be available. If you are asking for personal information, spell out exactly what your privacy policy is. A simple short thank-you message is always a good idea just before they submit a response – and if you are gathering email addresses for future research, why not put a short opt-in to see if they'd be prepared to take part.

Don't forget to check out our tips on maximising your survey's response rates.