The Do-It-Yourself Online Survey It's easier than you think—and you'll get real results.
Conducting your own online survey can be a cheap and efficientway to gain insight into your customers' minds-andpossibly their pocketbooks. Keep the following tips in mind toensure a successful online survey:
- Do the survey yourself.
- Determine the survey's goal.
- Keep the survey short.
- Select your survey channels.
- Test the survey.
- For quantitative answers, don't overlap the surveycategories.
- Always provide survey-takers the option of answering "Idon't know."
- Keep it simple.
- Ask for a personal data list.
- Offer an incentive related to respondents' interests.
- When selecting incentives, keep them unrelated to the surveyquestions.
- Keep your target audience in mind.
- Remember simplicity.
- Do market research for the right reasons.
Excerpted from Entrepreneur magazine, July2001