Top 10 Survey Design Best Practices for Actionable Feedback

Picture yourself at a fancy restaurant, eagerly waiting for your meal. The waiter finally brings out your plate, and you take a bite.

But something’s off – you can’t quite place it, but the taste is different from what you anticipated.

You flag down the waiter and ask if there’s something wrong with the dish. The waiter responds, “No, it’s perfect. Everyone else loves it.”

This may appear ludicrous, but it’s quite common in survey design.

Too often, companies create surveys that are either poorly designed or fail to ask pertinent questions. And just like a poorly cooked meal, this can leave customers feeling unsatisfied and misunderstood.

Therefore, it’s important to follow survey design best practices. From this, you can ensure that the feedback you receive is actionable and useful.

Let’s explore the top 10 survey design best practices to help you get the most out of customer feedback.

What Is Survey Design?

Survey design is the art of creating survey questions and response options that elicit useful information from respondents. It impacts the accuracy of your data and the conclusions you draw from it. A poorly designed survey can result in inaccurate or partial data, making drawing meaningful conclusions challenging.

What Are the Three C’s of Survey Design?

●      Clear

Ensure the survey questions are easy to understand and interpret by respondents. You should phrase the questions without any ambiguity or confusion. Also, avoid the use of technical jargon or complex language.

●      Concise

Survey questions should be brief and to the point. Long, convoluted questions can confuse respondents and lead to inaccurate or incomplete data. Therefore, you should avoid unnecessary words and phrases that do not add to the question’s meaning.

●      Communicative

Your survey should communicate the intended message to the respondents effectively. This involves using appropriate language, tone, and formatting to ensure the respondents understand the questions. Consequently, provide accurate answers.

How to Create Survey Design?

We’ve covered the basics of survey design. Let’s explore the top 10 survey design best practices for actionable feedback.

1. Define the research objectives: What sort of data are you looking for? What insights do you intend to gain through your research? Defining your objectives will make your survey targeted, focused and efficient.
2. Identify the target audience: Your survey ought to be relevant to your intended respondents. As a result, you should know who you’ll be surveying. Consider factors like age, gender, location, and interests to zero in on the perfect audience.
3. Choose the right survey method: Online, phone, and in-person surveys are a few of the survey methods. Select the approach that best serves your research objectives and target audience.
4. Develop clear and concise questions: Remember the three C’s of survey design? Your survey questions should be clear, concise, and communicative. Avoid using technical jargon or complex sentences; use plain language whenever possible.
5. Avoid leading and biased questions: Leading and biased questions can skew your results, so avoiding them is essential. Use neutral language and avoid making assumptions about your audience.
6. Use scales and response options appropriately: Scales and response options can help you gather more nuanced data, and using them appropriately is important. Ensure your response options cover all possible answers, and avoid using too many options.
7. Test the survey: Before launching your survey, it’s important to test it with a small group. This pilot test will help you identify any issues with your survey design. Then make necessary changes before launching it to a larger audience.
8. Consider incentives: Incentives can encourage people to participate in your survey. Therefore, it’s important to choose the right incentives for your audience. Such incentives include discounts or gifts etc.
9. Ensure confidentiality and anonymity: People may hesitate to provide honest feedback if they are not guaranteed confidentiality and anonymity. Ensure that your survey is confidential and anonymous enough to encourage honest responses.
10. Analyze and report results: Once you’ve collected your survey data, it’s important to analyze and report the results. Use data visualization tools and clear, concise language to communicate your findings effectively.

How to Analyze Your Survey Design Data?

Excel is a powerful data organization tool. However, it can fall short when it comes to visualization and analysis.

Excel has some valuable charting features, but they can be constrained in some instances. Additionally, they might not have the adaptability to produce powerful visual representations of the data.

Thankfully, there is a solution: ChartExpo.

With ChartExpo for Excel, you can easily create insightful visualizations to draw intelligent conclusions from your data.

Benefits of Using ChartExpo

• ChartExpo is the perfect tool for creating insightful visualizations with ease. It has an intuitive user interface that eliminates the need for any technical skills or coding expertise.
• ChartExpo offers a wide range of features and customization options. This allows you to create visually appealing representations of your data that effectively communicate insights.
• ChartExpo has a free 7-day trial and a $10 monthly plan. This makes it an excellent choice for businesses or individuals on a budget.

How to Install ChartExpo in Excel?

1. Open your Excel application.
2. Open the worksheet and click the “Insert” menu.
3. You’ll see the “My Apps” option.
4. In the office Add-ins window, click “Store” and search for ChartExpo on my Apps Store.
5. Click the “Add” button to install ChartExpo in your Excel.

ChartExpo charts are available both in Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel. Please use the following CTA’s to install the tool of your choice and create beautiful visualizations in a few clicks in your favorite tool.

Let’s say you run a cleaning services business. You have created a survey with the following questions to collect customer feedback.

• Do you agree with our cleaning staff’s behavior?
• Do you agree with our cleaning services?
• Will you recommend our services to your circle?

Your survey design has the scale below mapped on each question

1. Strongly Disagree
2. Disagree
3. Neither agree nor disagree
4. Agree
5. Strongly Agree

Assume your survey has yielded the results table below.

Let me show you how to harness the power of ChartExpo to craft visually engaging data representations. Then unravel valuable insights within your dataset.

1. • To get started with ChartExpo, install ChartExpo in Excel.
   • Navigate to the INSERT menu and select My Apps. 

1. • Select ChartExpo and click the “Insert” button.

1. • Once it loads, choose the “Likert Scale Chart” from the charts list.

1. • Select the data from the sheet and click the “Create Chart From Selection” button.

• When you click the “Create Chart From Selection” button, you have to map responses with numbers manually. The Likert scale has this arrangement:

Strongly Disagree=1

Disagree=2

Neither agree nor disagree=3

Agree=4

Strongly Agree=5

Once all is set, click the “Create Chart” button.

1. • ChartExpo will generate the visualization below for you.

1. • Click the “Edit Chart” button to modify your chart.
   • Click the pencil icon next to Chart Header to add a title.
   • This will open the properties dialog. Add a heading in Line 1 under the Text section and enable the Show option. Then click the “Apply” button.

1. • Let’s say you want to add text responses instead of numbers against every emoji.
   • Click the pencil icon next to the respective emoji. Expand the “Label” properties and write the required text. Then click the “Apply All” button.
   • Click the “Save Changes” button to persist the changes.

1. • Your final chart will appear as below.

Insights

• 55% of customers agree to recommend your services to others. However, 25% do not agree, and 20% remain neutral.
• When it comes to cleaning services, 60% agree, but 40% do not agree.
• Regarding the behavior of the cleaning staff, 45% agree. 35% do not agree, and 20% remain neutral.
• 54% of customers gave positive responses to the survey questions.
• 34% gave negative feedback.
• 13% remained neutral.

FAQs:

What are 3 important things to consider when designing a survey?

Take the following factors into account when creating a survey:

• Purpose: Clearly state what you aim to achieve.
• Clarity: Ensure the questions are understandable and straightforward.
• Length: Keep the survey short and focused.

What are the 7 steps for creating a good survey?

To create a good survey;

1. Define your research objectives.
2. Define your target audience.
3. Choose your survey type.
4. Create the questions.
5. Test and refine your survey.
6. Distribute your survey.
7. Collect and analyze the data.

What are the three C’s of survey design?

The three C’s are the essential factors you consider in survey design;

• Clarity ensures that the purpose of the survey is clear.
• Conciseness is aligned with the survey’s focus.
• Communicativeness ensures that the survey questions are easy to understand and answer.

Wrap Up:

Customer feedback is an essential aspect of every organization. It gives you valuable information on how your customers feel about your products and services. This data assists you in better understanding what your customers desire and how to optimize your offerings.

Success is dependent on knowing what your customers think. And surveys are a great way to accomplish that.

However, surveys can be challenging to design, implement, and analyze.

Fortunately, you can use these survey design best practices to improve the quality of your organization’s customer feedback. Consequently, increase the likelihood of actionable insights.

If you do a poor job designing your survey, respondents might not take the time to complete it. Or even bother to read the questions.

The result?

Your data set will be smaller and less helpful.

Now that you know how to create effective surveys, you can put your skills to the test.

ChartExpo offers an intuitive, few-clicks solution to creating insightful data visualizations to analyze your survey data.