A survey is a research method you can use in order to gain data about a specific topic from a target demographic. For instance, if your business goal is to launch a new product on the market, you can conduct a survey to gather information about what customers want and need.

Creating a survey is no easy task: you need to have a clear objective in mind, phrase your questions in the most easy-to-read and understandable way and have a great system for monitoring and analyzing the results.

5 steps to create the right survey

Data analysts are the right people to interpret the results, but they won’t be able to understand your customers’ and leads’ needs without a perfectly designed survey. Here are 5 steps to design a good, useful and intuitive survey that will collect the highest possible number of quality responses.

1. Clear your mind about the survey’s purpose

In order to collect useful information, you need to have a clear purpose for conducting your survey. This may vary from:

gather information about the current state of your product and services;
collect data about your customers’ most urgent needs;
assess your brand’s reputation and how the users find you;
grab new intuitive ideas about the market;
choose one course of action or another in a marketing campaign;
and many more.

Brainstorm what you really need to focus on with your research group and find the perfect way to convey your
questions and collect responses through a high quality survey.

2. Find your target audience

With a clear purpose in mind, you will find it easier to pinpoint the right demographic. It can include new and potential leads or loyal customers, being chosen for their age, geographical location or spending habits, found with a particular media or another.

With the right survey design and intuitive software, you can even submit the same questions to different groups in different ways in order to capture a more complex and complete batch of data.

3. Choose the questions

The wonderful power of survey design is the variety of question types you can submit to the audience. Consider this when choosing a survey method:

1. Open-ended questions usually attract a limited number of participants, but they will give you more detailed answers.

2. Multiple choice questions are easier to respond to and make the job easier for collecting data, but they are also more limited and less detail-oriented.

3. True/False questions are designed to limit the choice between two clear and opposite answers.
Once you find your survey method, start brainstorming ideas as to how to submit them to audiences.

4. A survey type for each questionnaire

CATI (Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing), CAWI (Computer Assisted Web Interviewing), in person or mixed: how do you want your research to be conducted? The means you will choose are bound to affect the number and characteristics of respondents, the way to collect their answer and the staff you need to train for conducting the survey. A good software for survey design will allow you to experiment different types of questions for different media in order to choose the right one.

5. Try a free demo for your survey

When everything has been chosen, start with a test in order to understand what works and what doesn’t. A good software should allow you to have a test or use a demo for actually seeing how the survey will be conducted. For instance, a free live demo of IdSurvey by IdWeb will let you know how to design the questions, submit them and collect data from the audience’s responses. It will also showcase several different scenarios for different methodologies and question types.

What happens after the survey has been completed

After your survey has been completed, you will have a complete and exhaustive set of data to analyze. So be sure your survey software has a good system for collecting and storing them too. The ideal situation is the one in which research staff can directly register the surveyed people’s answers through the software itself.

Phone, web and face-to face questionnaires should be easy to analyze and write down right during the interview, in order to catch every glimpse of useful information given by the target audience. Try several survey softwares until you find the right one to mix methodology and means of distribution with a wide and complex data storage.

The answers you will collect could be used to guide your business decisions, better design the next marketing campaign, pick a new market’s special needs and characteristics, launch a new product or change your brand reputation. Not to mention the usage of surveys for politics, social situations and government issues. Use the survey well and it will serve your purpose with detailed information and interesting dat