How to Improve your Survey Design

When devising a marketing strategy, redesigning a sales process, introducing a new product into the market, or segmenting a market, you need primary research to validate your hypotheses. An important component of all primary research is a questionnaire or survey design – how to ask your questions, how to get good data, how to make your questions flow better, and so on. Here are a few questionnaire designing tips for the product, marketing and research teams of expansion stage and start-up software companies:

a) It’s very important to keep in mind the objective of your research and what you’re aiming to achieve throughout the survey. This will help you focus on the questions that really matter and avoid wasting time on ones you may never use for your analysis. So, keep it short and relevant.

b) Make sure your questions are clear and to the point. You don’t want your questions to be confusing, for they will yield poor data. For instance, if you ask, “Which software do you use to manage your customer relationships?”, the respondent may consider the question as a more personal reference instead of a query addressed to the entire firm/team. If the respondent recently changed to a competitor’s product, the “when” dimension of the question may be relevant. In this case, a better way to ask this question would be, “Which software has your firm used for customer relationship management in the past 6 months? If you used more than one brand, please state each of them.”   

c) It is best to keep most questions multiple-choice and “yes or no” whenever you can. These types of queries will yield definite replies.

d) Some questions can be quantified using a ranking on a scale of say 1 to 5, or 1 to 10. For questions related to needs, wants and attitudes, it’s good to utilize a scale, for this will make your future analysis easier. This will also allow you to calculate the average of all needs and compare each to this result to determine the most important needs. An example of such a question is, “How important is ease-of-use of product X to you on a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 = not at all important; 2 = not very important; 3 = somewhat important; 4= very important and 5 = extremely important?” You can use a variation of this scale (e.g. a scale of 1-10) depending on the nature of your research and your research needs.

e) You might want to keep some questions open-ended. They are beneficial for qualitative, in-depth interviews or exploratory research.

f) The order of your questions should follow a logical sequence. Some classification questions, such as demographics, should always be placed in the beginning or at the end. Also structure the outline of your questions so that each one naturally leads to the next.

g) When sequencing your questions, keep in mind that the order can affect the response. To correct this, distribute half the questions in one order and the other half in another order.

h) Finally, always test and revise your questionnaire. Role-playing is the most important part of the testing process. Test the questionnaire length by role-playing interviews with your colleagues. Ask your colleagues about the wording and order of the questions. Reiterate on their suggestions.

Always do multiple role-plays to simulate different types of respondents and situations, as questions may be specific to certain types of respondents, and not all questions are asked of everyone.