Conducting customer surveys

[heini]

Starting from this thread
[webmasterworld.com...]
I'm about to set up customer surveys on an e-commerce site.
I have a free script, which gives multiple options, radios, check boxes, multiple choice, as well as free textareas.
I do at this point not plan to enable user visible output. I think anyhow for future surveys that could be the "incentive" for people to participate, when a survey is short and in a way fun for the users.

Mostly interested at this point I'm in feedback on site usability, trust, etc.

So how do you recommend to set such a survey up?
- how many questions
- where to set the entry point
- how to get users to participate
- anything else I have to consider

[jackofalltrades]

How not to conduct the survey:

>dont force it on your users (no pop ups)
>dont make it look like an advert
>dont make it too big
>dont design it so your user has to click "next" after each question (there many be varying opinion on this one, but i prefer to fill out the form and submit - not have to click and load 20 times).

Also, avoid the word "survey". Go with "feedback" and "your opinion".

How many questions?

Depends on your market, users, etc. Some will be more willing to take more time, some wont.

You can also split ur survey campaign into segments to make it more manageable.

Start with small quantitative questions - only a handful of them - yes/no or multiple choice answers.

Use the data from this to identify the main issues you want to address, and then go for some qualitive feedback (message board, forum, etc).

Entry point

Have several points.

A text advert on your homepage would be useful; also on your main entry pages; and on your "about us" page.

I would recommend have a preamble page for your survey telling your users what info you need and why.

Also have a contact email for any further feedback (may or may not be manageable depending on your traffic).

Participation

1. Bribe them - give stuff away if you can. Possibly have a competition of some sort.
2. Show them its for their own benefit (ie, this will help us improve the quality of the service we provide)....ive never bought that one myself! ;)
3. Gain your users trust over time and create a community like this one in which feedback is offered openly.

Anything else?

Publish the results and make it clear what changes have been reflected in the site as a result of the feedback. This will help you to gain your users trust and should result in a better response for your next survey. I used the word "result" too often in this paragraph, havent I? :)

Good luck

JOAT

[heini]

Hey JOAT - great tips, thanks.
Survey is going live first day of the year, will report back.
Cheers!

[TallTroll]

Try hiding the tree in the forest also. Set up several small, "fun" surveys that don't serve much purpose, but are amusing and short. Give them eyecatching titles, and no more than 5 questions, say. Maybe change them round every few months, drop the least popular, and introduce a new one

There is a certain kind of user who will see them, try them, and almost accidentally will end up filling in your real survey. A small percentage may be turned off by it, but they probably weren't going to fill in the first one anyway

Of course, you may get feedback of the form "Less surveys please"...

[ukgimp]

I did a survey not so long back using ASP. I hit them with a first page which had a couple of to the point paragraphs (background and completion).

There were some pull downs that got some of their info. Such as email address for a competition prize that I had arranged. The pull down then filtered the questions so that I could have different ones for different groups that way only the right questions were presented to the individual. I kept the number of questions per group to a minimum (max 10-12).

Promoting it to mailing lists got the biggest response along with links from sites saying “Doo Dar Survey”. I found that that branded it which worked well in my case. I got a good response from the Usernet as it was in their interest, or that’s how I plugged it. I checked that I could post in the newsgroup first.

Keeping to the above got me a very high conversion rate but I was targeting an academic area of interest.

Cheers