Surveys (Online)

Topics on this Page

• Online Surveys & What You Learn
• When should you conduct an online survey?
• How do you conduct a survey?

Online Surveys & What You Learn

Online surveys are structured interviews with users, where you display a list of questions online and record users' responses.

When you conduct an online survey, you have an opportunity to learn many types of information about who the users of your site are, how they use your site, and their opinions about your site. Some information you may want to consider collecting includes:

• Who are the users, what do that want to accomplish and what information are they looking for?
• Were users able to find the information they were looking for?
• How satisfied are users with your site?
• What experiences have users had with your site or similar sites?
• What do users like best and like least about your site?
• What frustrations or issues have users had with your site?
• Do users have any ideas or suggestions for improvements?

Surveys can also be used to allow users to rate or rank the features on your site or provide ideas for future improvements.

Conducting Surveys

You can conduct surveys at any stage of the development process. An online survey can also be a persistent item on your site that allows you to continually gauge how users view your site and identify ways to make the site better.

If you conduct them before a site re-design, you will learn more about who the current users are and what they are trying to accomplish. After a launch of a new design, you can find out if your new design meets the needs of users and identify areas for improvement.

Conducting a survey involves these components:

• What is your purpose and where will you find respondents?
• Keep it short, under 10 items and five - ten minute completion time is preferable.
• Consider a mix of open-ended (users complete the answer) and closed questions (e.g., multiple choice or user selects and answer).
• Consider having a short survey and ask if respondent is willing to answer more in-depth questions in a follow-up survey. Have them provide an e-mail address and send the follow-up survey.
• Consider combining an online survey with individual interviews. Individual interviews prior to online provides good ideas for survey questions and for the items on the multiple-choice questions. Interviews after online surveys allow you to follow up with some people on issues and ideas generated from their answers.