This is all you need to know to conduct a UX Survey
A Few weeks ago at Google I/O extended event, during the talk of my colleague someone asked a question “How can we design fail-proof UX Survey for our product and services?”
You can’t, I can’t and no one can (I guess).
There is no such thing as fail proof. We can just use our learnings to design a better survey experience. So that it gets us the desired learning about our users by making the surveys stink less.
So first thing first
User research is undoubtedly an important part of a product cycle whether we are launching a new product, adding a feature or Improving one.
User research is the systematic study of the goals, needs, and capabilities of users so as to specify the design, construction, or improvement of tools to benefit how users work and live.
User research is an umbrella of tools and methods of knowing who our users are, what do they want to achieve, what do they think of your product and more.
There are various ways of User Research such as User Interview, Ethnography Research, Personas, A/B testing, UX Surveys and more. For this article, we are going to focus on User Survey. How to Design them, Advantages, Disadvantages and How to Increase participation in your UX Surveys.
A form, which people answer on paper or online. These can genuinely feel anonymous, which is useful.
UX Surveys are the Quick and relatively easy way to get data about your users and potential users. But it’s equally risky as with a wrong line of questioning you will create a survey that will lie to you or of no use.
Surveys are an effective way of gathering feedback on a live product, exploring a company’s USP, Contextual inquiry, refine a new feature, lowering the risk on a poor solution.
Surveys consist of majorly two types of questions:
Closed Questions: These questions get the quantitative data from the users. It doesn’t tell us about the context, the motivation, the cause for the response. These questions are accompanied with the checkbox, radio buttons. The data obtained can be easily visualized with the help of graphical representations.
Open Questions: Open Questions are the qualitative data about a user’s behavior, action. It tells us how the user thinks about a problem. These questions required a text box to explain the cause. The Qualitative responses tend to take a lot longer to analyze.
12 things to consider while preparing a questionnaire for UX Survey
Try to ask a neutral question
Always try to ask something neutral, avoid leading questions because it won’t add any value to your research. Leading questions are intimidating.
Consider this if you ask someone about a bill splitting feature in the e-commerce app most of the people will say “yes” even though they don’t need it. If you add it they might not use it twice (might use once for your satisfaction).
Another example could be “Why do you like this?” Instead of “What do you think of this?”
Easy and simple Questions
Keep the language, meaning, and context clear for all the questions. If they need to ask someone about the question or to Google, the meaning you haven’t done your job effectively.
If your survey is supposed to send to different regions or countries, consider adding support in the local language. Also, keep in mind questions would be different.
Keep it Transparent
If you are using the data that some people might have a problem sharing it publically, tell them upfront in the beginning. Ask them if they are comfortable to share these details with you? If they agree then only proceed.
If you be honest with your users that what you are going to use their data by telling a few benefits you are more likely to get the qualitative data.
Respect your user’s anonymity
Privacy means everything to the users! If you ask someone to share their phones with you for 5 minutes. There are two things that would keep bugging them first is their privacy and second is you may run away.
So, the real life reflects in the digital world as well. Ask them do they want to share their names, gender, age and other determining factors or not. But before that ask yourself do you really need that data?
Design for Conditionality
Some questions are meaningless to some users because they do not fit the personas or this question might be dependent on the last questions to which user choose an option after which this question does not apply.
Try to apply logic in those questions so that users can avoid those questions that aren’t meant for them.
Keep it open
Try to keep the questionnaire open as possible to get the preference, cause, motivation, and reason for the particular actions, response or reactions.
For e.g. If you are conducting a survey for using a particular product and you ask question “do you use x?” answer would be yes or no you would get a quantitative number but if you ask “How would you describe x?” you get a reason they might haven’t explored it, liked it or possibly thousand other reasons.
Ask one concept at a time
Avoid questions that contain two concepts. Do not mix things up. It is confusing and also it degrades the quality of your data.
For e.g. a question like “How often do you shop for Shoes and Tshirt?” is an incorrect way to ask.
You may influence by how you ask or order of option
The way you ask something and the way you arrange options matters more than you think. It may introduce biases in the selection of a user. For e.g. “How would you rate product X?” is a better question to ask than “What do you really love about X?”
Use a balanced rating scale
If you put more positive options in the top order chances are people are going to choose one positive option even though they want to tell you your product stinks.
Focus on time, not on the number of questions
While testing the first time and preparing the questions always remember it matters less how many questions you ask but the time counts. Keep it short and sweet. Ask question to get the quality data you need to ask less to get more.
Give a way out
While asking questions always keep in mind that the options you provided might not apply to some users, they might have a different way of seeing and doing it. So, provide other, not applicable and don’t use options as per the question.
Show progress
With the decrease of the bearing capacity of the people, it is very necessary to keep them informed about how long it would take to complete this survey, or the number of questions left to keep them informed and also slightly reduce the chances of dropping off.
Designing a Survey
Understand the goal
Before getting down penning down the questions, we need to have a clear knowledge of what we are trying to accomplish (learn) about our user from this particular survey. How would the end result help us?
The goal or goals can be defined by stakeholder meetings for example: what the new feature we are trying to add to our product fits with the habits of our users, Quantitative Insights of the products such as a large no. of customers are dropping at the payment part.
What you are trying to learn about your user should be crystal clear to you and the team involved.
Prepare the Questionnaire
Now you have the goal(s) straightened out, so you need to start preparing the questionnaire for the users. What you should ask should be a right mix of Quantitative and Qualitative data.
You should remember that the good questions will give you reliable answers that can be used further but the bad question is not any data it’s actually bad data.
Test with pilot users
It’s always a good move to test the survey with the people before finalizing it. Select a small group of people who matches your persona, test with colleagues to test if it is easy to understand and respond to. This is a moderated test done to learn the problems and hardships in the form that the users are facing. Is the meaning of the words and the use in the context is clear to them?
Also, notice the time it is taking each one of them who is taking up the survey.
Iterate the questionnaire
You saw people taking up the Survey while standing quiet and noticed their hardships but you didn’t raise a finger to help. Don’t feel bad it’s alright.
You noticed a few tweaks to make it easier. You have got some corrections while testing it with the users, about the language, the length, the meaning and you spent a few hours to finalize the draft.
Set a screener
When you roll out the survey, your survey might hit the wrong audience and this happens. By the wrong audience, I mean the ones who are not amongst your personas. You would not need their feedback and answers anyway. So, this is a huge loss of resources on the monetary as well as the quality of the data reduces.
If you set some questions that act as a screener for the audience. By entering the data they tell you whether they belong to your personas or not. This can help in targeting the real users.
Roll out to the Real User
After making some changes here and there you are all set to roll this questionnaire out to the real users.
How to Increase the engagement of your Surveys?
Keep the most relevant
In a survey the length of the surveys matters more than you think, people skip the time-taking things. Reduce the number of questions you want to ask. Ask only the necessary. The lengthy the survey lesser the response you will get.
Respect your user’s time.
Organize the questions
Structure the questionnaire in such a manner for least load on the mind. Start with easy questions move to the complex ones and end with the light ones. Ask the related questions together. Add segmentation for each section if required.
Incentivize the users
Give gift cards, coupons, free trials, early access to the respondents. It increases the quality of data as the user might be interested in putting more thought into the answers. It can also backfire as the user may answer positively due to assured Incentive.
You want to conduct your own UX Survey. Do what’s more important i.e. to prepare a good questionnaire for your users and learn from it. Do not reinvent the wheel get help from platforms like:
In the end, you need to understand that your users helped you with your survey.
What do we do when someone helps us?
We Thank them.
So end with a Thank you note.
How you design UX Surveys? Please share.
These practices have helped me learn about my users with a UX Surveys. By thoughtfully applying them in your work, you can create great surveys for your users and move the needle while you’re at it. Do you have UX Surveys insights you’ve refined on your own? Please share! I love talking.
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Thank you for Investing your valuable time; hope you get the returns.
