Article
An online survey will
kickstart your business:
Here's how and why
By Robin
Houghton
How
many times have you sat down and thought 'I need more business - should
I be offering more products? Are my prices scaring people off? Do I need
to do raise my profile?…” Rather than getting out your crystal ball,
there's only one sure-fire way of finding out what people think of you -
and that's to ask them. Before the internet, a customer survey was a
pretty tedious task - you had to design your questions, print it out,
send the survey to your customers or prospects and hope that they would
take the time and trouble to fill it in and mail it back to you. Weeks
later, if you were lucky, you would have a little pile of replies to go
through and results to collate and interpret. It was more than likely
that the sample wasn't large enough to be meaningful, so the time and
expense was hard to justify.
With the
internet, you now have the possibility of conducting online surveys. And
if you're not already, then this is the time to get started. Here are 5
top survey tips to get your business kick started for 2003.
1.
Design questions carefully around what it is you wish to know
Sounds
obvious, doesn't it? But it's easy to be drawn into 'survey clichés' -
asking for things such as age and location, just because that's what
surveys always seem to ask. Each of your questions should have a
rationale - why do you want to know that? To what use will you put that
information? And pare it down to as few questions as possible. Finding
out 5 key facts is more useful than 20 general ones - and remember the
longer your questionnaire the more likely your respondents will be to
drop out and leave it incomplete.
2.
Unless you are a real techie, use an ASP service
There's
no need to sweat over Perl scripts and importing tab-delimited files.
There are many services which allow you to create online surveys very
simply, store the responses in a database and provide you with the
results in user-friendly graphical format. You are given the code to
insert into your webpage or email which takes the respondent to the
survey. You can usual customize the look of the survey, and set the
criteria so that people can only fill it in once, for example. Some of
the solution providers are more pricey than others, but one that it easy
to use and reasonably priced is SurveyMonkey,com.
Their basic service is free.
3.
Online surveys enjoy far higher rates of response than offline surveys
Clicking
through an online survey really does only take a few minutes. People are
simply more likely to fill it in when it's this straightforward. If you
combine your survey with a small incentive or 'thank you', or entry into
a prize draw, response rates climb even higher.
4.
Send your survey to your email subscribers and encourage it to be
forwarded
Permission-only
email lists already enjoy higher open and click-through rates than
unsolicited email. Utilize the goodwill of your list and encourage (or
incentivise) them to forward the email to a friend. That way the link to
the survey is likely to reach more people with similar interests/tastes.
5.
Remember to thank them - and act on the information gathered
The final
question should be followed by a thank-you page. Don't forget to gather
respondents' email addresses, and permission to contact them again with
future surveys. Survey results should be acted on, not sat on for
months. Your customers have gone to the trouble of giving you feedback,
so the worst thing you can do is to appear to ignore it. You could
mention some of the results in your email newsletter, on your website,
or in a press release - together with how you are answering the issues
raised. Your survey results may even be newsworthy. But if you do make
this information public, be sure to respect your respondents' privacy
and not mention individual names.
One thing's for sure - you'll learn a lot
and the knowledge you gain will help you rejuvenate your business in
2003. Good luck!
Robin
Houghton advises small businesses and non-profits on how to make the
most of their marketing budget, specializing in online. With a masters
degree in Digital Media, she also writes for a variety of offline and
online media. You can
contact Robin at robin@robinhoughton.com
or visit her web site at http://www.robinhoughton.com
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