Online surveys are easy-to-use tools to gather feedback and when implemented properly, allow you to collect actionable data quickly and inexpensively in order to make informed decisions. Upfront planning will help lead you to higher response rates and higher quality data, ensuring a more meaningful, relevant, and successful survey experience.

To help you plan more efficiently and reap the benefits that timely, relevant information can provide, SurveyGizmo has put together 10 common survey pitfalls to avoid.

1. Not defining your survey’s objective

Why are you conducting a survey? Before you write your questions you need to clearly define what it is that you want to learn and then you can evaluate each question you pose against that objective. If the question doesn’t serve your main objective, get rid of it.

2. Making your survey too long

Short surveys that focus on a single objective generally have higher response rates and lower abandonment rates among survey takers. Research has shown that surveys should take 5 minutes or less to complete. Although 6 – 10 minutes is acceptable, longer than 11 minutes will likely result in significant abandonment rates. On average, respondents can complete 5 closed-ended questions per minute and 2 short open-ended questions per minute.

3. Asking too many open-ended questions.

If you want specific information, ask specific questions. Studies have shown that open-ended questions are more likely to produce vague, brief responses or even no response at all. Open-ended questions are best used as a follow-up to a specific question (whether it is multiple choice, rating scale, yes/no….) to collect additional feedback.

4. Changing rating scale

If you are using rating scales be sure to keep the scale consistent throughout the survey. Use the same number of points on all your scales and make sure the meanings of the numbers stay consistent throughout the survey.

5. Including poorly written or structured questions.

Review your questions to make sure you are being concise, clear, and brief. Make sure you are not using double negatives, acronyms, or obscure technical/industry jargon. The more clearly your questions are written, the more quickly and clearly your participants will respond.  Look for questions with worded with bias towards giving you a certain answer. If you’re doing a satisfaction based surveys learning where you can improve ultimately helps you more than just get high scores.  Also be on the look out for questions where more than one answer can apply or where the user may have opinion. You can often fix the former problem by qualifying with a “choose the answer that best applies” and help out a user who can’t answer a required question with a “not applicable” choice.

6. Question randomness  

Make sure your survey questions are asked in a logical order so that each question and topic flows into the next. Unless you are using demographic data to screen out survey participants it is usually best to collect demographics and any sensitive questions at the end after you’ve hopefully built some trust.

7. Forgetting to pre-test your survey

Be sure that you pre-test your survey with colleagues, associates, friends, and even a few members of you target audience to find any unexpected obstacles. Testing your survey is a quick and easy step to make sure it is functioning properly and typo-free and that the questions are clearly written. Remember to pre-test your survey invitations too.

8. Failing to think about who your audience is

Sometimes your audience is obvious, for instance if you are doing an employee satisfaction survey, but if your trying to understand your company position in the market place or gather market research for a new venture you may need a combination of current customers and non-customer panelists that fit a certain profile.  You might consider surveying lost leads or past customers for some needs. Go back to the survey objective and consider which audience can best give you the answers you seek.

9. Not sending reminders

After the first 2-3 days response rates typically drop off so you should consider sending a survey reminder email. While not appropriate for all surveys, sending out reminders to those who haven’t already responded can often provide a significant increase in response rates. When sending reminders, be sure you remove those who have already responded from your reminder list (SurveyGizmo does this automatically) and limit yourself to no more than two reminder emails, changing the time of day and the day of the week that you send out the survey reminders.

10. Failing to respect and understand your audience

It is important to respect your audience’s time by asking for it. Don’t just create a survey and send out an email blast with a default request. Make a brief case for your survey. Who should participate? Why would they be interested? What will you do with the data?  Will you share the results or offer an incentive?

Remember, just because online surveys are automated it doesn’t make it any less personal and you are asking for information from busy people. Also, consider offering a survey incentive as a thank-you. And don’t forget to thank people with a follow-up email after the survey (you can do this in SurveyGizmo email invitations) this is a great time to share back any preliminary insights if you’re doing so.

SurveyGizmo is an online survey software tool for designing online surveys, collecting data and performing analysis. Our tool supports a variety of online data collection methods including online surveys, online quizzes, questionnaires, web forms, and landing pages. SurveyGizmo was designed for market research, job applications, marketing campaigns, blogs, landing pages, contact forms, sales tracking, and lead generation.

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/marketing-tips-articles/10-survey-pitfalls-to-avoid-1709485.html

The most important step in a market research is to find the objective of the market study and the problem that has to be solved in the end or the purpose of the information that is being collected. Carefully study the target market and give a general description of the product or the service that is being studied. Study the consumer behavior towards the product/service.

 The major purposes of the market study are as follows

• Significant criteria for buying any product/service
• Relationship between the income level of a buyer and the attributes of a product/service preferred
• Preference of the product/service vis-à-vis gender, occupation and monthly income of the buyer
• Importance of the brand ambassadors in influencing the customer buying behavior
• Finding out Consumer preferences and needs of the consumer

The objective of any questionnaire design is to translate the information needed into a set of questions that the respondents will answer. In addition to minimizing the response errors, the questions must be easy to answer and should ensure that the interest level of the respondent is maintained. During questionnaire design care must be taken to ensure that the redundant and irrelevant questions are eliminated.

Most market studies require designing a questionnaire and conducting a primary research to get more insight into the consumer. During the questionnaire design the typical errors such as double barreled questions are eliminated. Care must be taken to ensure that all the questions are collectively exhaustive. Similar questions are grouped together. Sensitive questions related to demographics such as salary, age are placed at the end of the questionnaire. Response categories are provided instead of asking for specific figures as the respondents might not want to reveal the exact figures.

Pre testing of questions has to be done by submitting a sample of questions to friends and relatives. Also a peer group review should be done and errors, if any, should be corrected before launching any survey. Close attention has to be paid to the wording and sequencing of questions. The pre-test sample can vary from 10 to 15. After each significant revision of the questionnaire, another pretest has to be conducted, using a different sample of respondents. The responses obtained in pre test have to be coded and analyzed.

Ray Mason holds a masters degree in business administration in the field of International business. He is an expert in the field of Marketing and Business strategy. He currently works as a content writer for http://en.oboulo.com

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/marketing-tips-articles/how-to-design-a-questionnaire-for-market-research-1478157.html

There are many important distinctions between consumer market research and B2B market research studies.  In general, a business-to-business market research survey conducted online is more difficult and expensive to complete then is a consumer research survey.   This article describes some of the main reasons for these differences.

Consumer research surveys often target a balanced sampling of a survey population (such as the U.S. population in a nationwide survey or a designated market area for a geographic selection) or select demographics such as household income, age, education level, or gender.  Low incidence consumer studies can frequently reach respondents based on profiles that are not pre-identified in the vendor’s database through the distribution of large numbers of email invitations.   In comparison, B2B market research often targets respondents based on job title / job function, size of employer, input on purchases, and other selective items.  For example, a business-to-business market research survey might target small business owners with 25 to 100 employees who are final decision makers on purchases of accounting software.

As a general rule, survey panelists who are business professionals or small business owners require a much higher incentive for participation in an online survey than general consumers.  A simple rule to follow – - the higher the respondent’s income level and/or job title, the larger the award needed to entice survey participation.  This discrepancy in award amounts is magnified as the length of the survey increases beyond 10 minutes.  For example, a 20-minute online survey might require a $5.00 award for participation by a stay-at-home parent but a $15.00 award or higher might be needed for a senior executive at a large company.

Also entering into the cost equation (and level of difficulty) is the limited number of survey panelists and market research panels with pre-identified business information about their sign-ups.   Put differently, almost all market research panels have extensive profiles of consumer sign-ups, but very few have business profiles of these same individuals and/or have a limited number of consumer panelists who are also high-level business professionals.  

Another concern is that business profiles can frequently change whereas many consumer profiles remain constant or rarely change.  For example, demographics such as gender, date of birth, and ethnicity are static profiles.  And such profiles as geographic location, number of children, education, home ownership, and marital status change infrequently.  In the case of business profiles, type of occupation can remain fairly constant, but such items as job title, decision-making authority, size of employer, and number of persons who report to a business professional can change quite frequently.   The impact of frequently changing profiles is a lower incidence rate (and higher cost) for a market research project.

For example, many B2B market research projects require a mix of different employer sizes or the targeting of specific employer size – - often defined by company revenues or the number of employees, or both.   Not only do employees frequently change jobs, but also the size of employers can change significantly in the current economic environment.  An analogy would be a consumer market research project that targets high net worth participants.  In the past, net worth profiles have been quite reliable and rarely change.  However, in today’s economic climate, many individuals have experienced significant declines in net worth.

In summary, B2B market research studies are generally far more difficult and expensive to conduct when compared to consumer research studies.  The reasons for this are the need for higher incentives to entice participation by business professionals, the lack of available sample for business-to-business market research, and the frequently changing profiles of business professionals as compared to participants in consumer market research panels.

Marc Tillman is a member of the professional staff at Amplitude Research, Inc., a full-service online survey company headquartered in Boca Raton, Florida, specializing in consumer market research and B2B market research.

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/marketing-tips-articles/consumer-market-research-and-b2b-market-research–whats-the-difference-1439348.html