Your survey is too long but you can’t remove any question? Brew Survey offers you 8 tips to make your survey better, easier, and faster.

T he best way for your customer to have a good experience with your survey is for him to be led throughout. Also remember that you will always find your survey shorter and easier than other people because you already know the questions and answers.

1. Do not delete or shorten your survey’s introduction and conclusion

The introduction is the first thing your customer will read. It has to answer the following questions: Who is conducting the survey? Why is the survey conducted? Who is the audience? This introduction should tell the customer how important are his/her answers to you. It should not be shorter than 30 words and not longer than 100 words. Take some time to finish your survey with a conclusion by thanking your customer for answering the survey and telling him how much his contribution is helping you improve your product or service. Do not write something too long, maximum 50 words, but do not skip it either.

2. Is this question relevant to your survey? Is it compulsory? Will it impact the final results?

If you cannot answer a straight yes to these questions then you can delete the question troubling you - they will trouble your customer even more. If a question is not bringing any relevant advancement for your survey then you should consider the option of deleting it, it will save time for another more relevant question. Constantly check if you do not repeat any question, or if some questions don’t imply the same answers. Sometimes you can ask a question twice in a different way without even realising it.

3. Don’t let the customer have any doubt. Be precise!

One of the most time-consuming tasks in a survey is understanding the question. Make sure your customers can do it easily. For that, you have to adapt the tone of the survey - make it less formal - choose the easiest words to formulate your questions. Some words may be clear for you, but is your audience comfortable with your vocabulary? Prefer the easiest and more common version of words. Avoid words with double meanings, they will confuse your audience. If you still have some doubt about a word, precise its definition. It might be obvious for you, but are you 100% sure that your customers know if you are talking in inches or meters? Precise your unit of measure, above all if foreigners will answer your survey. You are the one needing to adapt to your audience, not the contrary! If you use a satisfaction ladder you should indicate either the highest score is very satisfied or not satisfied. In some countries, your intuition might be wrong.

4. Give the choice to your customer

Not allowing skipping questions will frustrate your customer and he will be more likely to answer questions randomly without knowing, hence faking the final results. If you ask a difficult or sensitive question in which everyone might not want to give an answer, you should allow people to either skip or add an “I don’t know/I prefer not to answer” option.

5. Only ask for one information per question - Rephrase the questions that require a longer time

Did you ever click on the submit button and this error message pops up, saying you missed some questions - but you can’t find these questions because they are lying in between others? Also, the customer might be bewildered if you ask more than one information per question. Brew Survey is made in such a way so that only one question appears on the page each time - making it easier and quicker for the customer who can focus on one information at the time. If one of your questions is longer than the other ones, then think about rephrasing it or splitting it into several questions. Your questions have to be intuitive, they should not be longer than 20 words each. If a question is difficult and you can't either make it easier nor delete it, then allow skipping the question (see tip number 4).

6. Avoid the open kind of questions

Customers are lazy. Formulate and writing down an answer requires more time and more thinking from your customer. Your customers will be tired by the end of the survey and will choose the easiest answers. As a consequence people are less likely to answer the “other: precise” kind of answer. Answering questions with ready-made answer options are much easier and faster than open questions. Customers commonly prefer it.

7. Avoid asking for the customer’s opinion

Most of the time if you ask for your customer’s opinion he will give you a positive one, honest or not. If you want to collect your customer’s feedback, do not formulate it as an open question. Precise the choice of answers into several balanced propositions going from a very positive opinion to a negative opinion. If you want the customer to write about his own experience, do it in a different question that can be skipped.

8. Organise your questions

Start with the easiest questions to put your customer into a comfort zone. If you want to add questions to make sure the person answering the survey is part of your audience, then put it first. Do not gather all the difficult questions at the end, your customer will already be tired about the survey and will be more likely to skip them or answer randomly. If your questions have a chronological order then you should prefer it for your survey organisation.