A Guide to Setting-Up and Online Survey or Poll

Online polls are becoming an increasingly important business tool. They help organisations to establish the wants and needs of their clients and customers, informing the organisation about those things they do well, but also about those things that thy need to change. For many businesses that are an invaluable resource that helps them to understand the direction in which they need to take the business. However, it takes skill to make a poll that asks the right questions to the right people at the right time. Below, we discuss the various features that you need to consider when you make a poll. It is important to get it right, because customer feedback is instrumental to business success.

Do You Have the Time and Resources to Make the Survey Yourself?

The first thing that you need to think about is who is going to make the survey. This question is multilayer, and you need to establish the following:

·         Are you going to use an existing survey website? Most people opt to use specialist software or to use survey sites directly, as it’s much more convenient. The problem with this is that you may not be able to put the survey on your site, but instead direct your web traffic to the survey via a link on your site.

·         Or, are you going to use computer programming to develop the survey on your own?Webmasters may choose to make their own surveys using CSS, but it is a long process.

·         Do you need to hire someone to work out what sort of questions need to be asked and to whom they need to be posed? If you know your business well, and it is relatively small, you will probably write the questions yourself.

Work Out What You Want to Know

If you have decided to write the questions yourself then you need to take your time to establish exactly what it is you want to know. You should spend a good few hours working out the questions. You need to make them as simple as possible and make sure that the answer to the question can be either ‘yes’, ‘no’ or ‘maybe/don’t know’. Think about how the respondent might want to develop the question, and then ask it. For example, you want to know if they like donuts, they say ‘no’, so you want to know ‘why?’ you can’t ask ‘why’, so you need to expand by asking further questions, such as ‘Do you think donuts are too sweet?’,  ‘Do you like strawberry jam?’, etc. Clearly, the way you expand your questions depends on what you want to know from your customers.

Decide Who You Want to Ask

You may want to ask specific customers, for example, those that bought donuts, rather than those who bought scones. You need to make sure that the survey targets the right demographic. To do this you must establish who you want to hear from, and use questions to eliminate those that you don’t want to talk to.

If you would like to make a poll, or if you would like further help and advice, then please visit http://www.likepoll.com/.