5 tips to create the best survey

To help you design the best survey, here are some tips to follow:

1. Make your survey short

This is rule number one. People don't have 1 hour to offer you. They're pretty generous to click on your survey link already and you need to make this experience easy for them. Less than 15 questions are recommended. The other reason is that more and more people answer the survey on a mobile and a long questionnaire on a small mobile screen is a nightmare.

2. Include pictures in your survey questions

How do blogs and news sites make great content ? They include photos ! Sure, you as the survey maker are only interested in collecting the data. But people on the other side of the screen need this to be somehow entertaining and engaging. It's very easy to add pictures in SurveyNuts survey creation tool. It's even better if the question is about the photo. For example, we've had a customer publishing surveys to get feedback on T-shirts he had designed. It's really fun for respondents.

3. Be funny.

"Wait, what ? I'm a VP of market insights, this is serious business !"

Again, the number #1 reason people will take your survey is if they care. Standard questions with no soul are very, very boring. Grids are terrible and make your brain think too much and eventually answer randomly. You need to interact with respondents as if they were fans on Facebook that you need to engage. Your content has to be unique and written as if a real human-being is behind it who needs their opinions to make better products or offer an amazing service.

If you can, give some context for the survey as an introduction. Explain why you need to get their opinions and what it will help you do in your company or for the master thesis you're working on.

4. Customize the survey design

If the landing page of your survey looks amazing and different, it will automatically give you better survey completion rates. Put your logo there. Use slick fonts. This is why we're working more and more on SurveyNuts themes for your surveys. Just like Tumblr helps you customize your blog design, we want to make that for your surveys. For me this is a big weakness for SurveyMonkey surveys, their design is super functional but it really looks like basic software from ten years ago.

5. Publish the survey results

It's pretty clear that the instant reward of seeing the statistics just after you've voted is a major motivation for voting. That makes the process actually interesting and addictive. That's why we made it possible when creating a survey on SurveyNuts to let respondents see all the results right after they submit the survey responses. Think about whether you really need to keep the responses for yourself or if your customers deserve to see them also. With social media, more and more information is out there anyway. Freedom of opinion is a beautiful thing, set it free !

As always, don't hesitate to email us if you have any questions or want recommendations.