What are Online Surveys? Characteristics, Examples, Advantages & Disadvantages

What motivates you to drive your online business is the profit or customer feedback. The second option is vital to your success. Read this blog to know what are online surveys and what are their advantages & disadvantages.

Surveys are the traditional forms of collecting customer feedback that enlightens you about your brand value. The survey feedback is the reflection of what you provide to your customer and what impression your service marks in customer’s minds.

With the changing times and technology, feedback collection is becoming more prominent and more accessible via an online portal. 

What Are Online Surveys?

Web surveys are the source of collecting data from the users and customers on the online portal. You can ask a set of questions to a targeted audience.

Usually, the survey respondents receive surveys via emails or social media. Also, they can view it on the website as they browse through the website. You can embed a survey on the website.

Why do Organizations Need Customer Feedback?

• You can know about the powerful insights of the customers. At the same time, you can change your marketing strategies accordingly. 

• You can make external as well as internal changes to your websites. External means the strategies you want to devise to fulfill customers’ expectations, and simultaneously, you can make changes in your website’s functionalities.

Note: Compared to the other mediums, online surveys are more cost-effective and convenient sources of collecting information from the respondents. You can use online survey tools to send surveys to the targeted audience from any of the devices.

What Are The Characteristics of Online Surveys?

1. The aim or goal of the online survey

As we stated above that online surveys are the reflection of your services to the customers. Therefore, you must define the goal or purpose of your surveys. You must know the objective of your survey, which you must decide before conducting the online survey using net promoter score software.

For example – You want to increase the goal conversions for your website; you can ask the respondents in the survey as to what are the chances that they recommend your product to their friends and relatives.

It would give you an idea of how respondents like your website and what you can do to increase conversions.

2. Do thorough research  

To get efficient results from the survey, you must do thorough research before designing a survey. You must watch out how you will collect information from the audience and evaluate the gathered information.

You can decide the type of research design as per the problems you might be facing. Accordingly, you can design the survey. For example, you want to collect information at a specific point in time or for a more extended period.

3. Incorporate different question types

You can create a useful survey with a balance of some open-ended and closed-ended questions. You can ask multi-choice questions or star-rating feedback. It wholly depends on your survey’s objective as to what information you want to gather from the customers.

Also, you can use Likert or matrix questions to go in-depth with the research surveys. All in all, you must structure your survey questions well to gather crucial results.

4. Define the target audience

Once you have researched your survey design, it is time to define your targeted audience. The target sample or audience is representative of the target market. That means the results you get from the survey can be applied to the entire target market.

You can choose the sample based on demographics, profession or knowledge, and experience. Also, you can create samples based on probability & non-probability sampling methods. 

5. Analyze the survey responses

The survey results will give you productive results only if you are analyzing the results well for your organization’s overall benefit. You can watch out for the results for the key metrics of a survey through marketing automation software that will help you create a survey and evaluate the responses report.

What Are The Examples of Online Surveys?

Surveys could be the best and proficient tools to collect relevant information from the customers and employees. Let’s watch out for some of the examples of online surveys.

What is the importance of a customer satisfaction survey?

• If you are a cab service provider, it becomes imperative to ask for customer feedback to improve your future services. One way to collect this relevant feedback is through online surveys.

• You can ask for a rating for your services on their mobile apps as the users usually book cab services from their mobile devices only.

• You can ask the users instantly after they have taken a ride so that they can give you the input in real-time and tell you what they liked about your services.

Another example of an online survey could be the management performance survey :

Management performance surveys are conducted by the office management to ask the feedback from the employees. The employees are the fulcrum and an integral part of any organization. Management must take care of their concerns and worries. It can ask for the same through online surveys.

• You shall ask for your customer feedback time, and again that means at regular intervals so that you can know what they need and feel comfortable with the office’s premises. 

• Ask the employees what needs to be changed and improvised in the management scenarios.

What are The Advantages of Online Surveys?

1. Faster accessibility and reachability

In contrast to paper surveys, online surveys are much more convenient and can be reached to a broad audience in a minimal amount of time.

2. Analyze the real-time insights

With the help of marketing automation software tools, you can analyze the insights and results. Know the responses, impressions on the survey. Some tools can help you evaluate the results on a daily, monthly, or weekly basis.

3. Minimal risks or errors

You get direct responses from the respondents without the need for any mediator. Therefore the risks involved with the miscommunication and misunderstanding on the part of respondents are quite minimal.

4. Save a lot of time

It not only saves a researcher time in configuring a survey and sending it to the users. Neither takes much of the time of the users in filling up the survey questionnaire. Therefore both parties are under great benefits.

5. Authentic information

If the users have taken your services once or twice, they would be honest with their reviews and answers. Therefore there would be no manipulation on their part or your part. Detailed and honest reviews will lead you to effective management in the future.

What are The Disadvantages of Online Surveys?

Everything has two aspects like a coin: a head or tale part. One shows the right side, and the other depicts the not-so-right side. Similar is with the online surveys. After knowing the advantages of the surveys, it’s time to get acquainted with their disadvantages.

1. Co-operation issues from the respondents

If you look from the perspective of the respondents, they get lots of irrelevant pop-ups and offers. It could be possible that they can miss the surveys in the midst of all this chaos or ignore it altogether.

2. The risk of data reliability

As you know, the surveys are asked directly without the need for any mediator in it. Therefore there could be chances of authentic or reliable information on the part of the respondents. Therefore, there is a risk involved with the reliability of data.

3. Limited reachability in certain situations

There could be situations where you could not reach your respondents, as they might not be available online. In other words, it could be a possibility that your target audience might not be available online. In such cases, it would not be possible for you to fulfill the objective of your survey.

CONCLUSION

I hope this elaborative guide on online surveys has given you tons of information about online surveys and their tidbits. They are one of the most effective communication tools to come across your audience without anticipating their responses.

FAQ’s

1. What are the benefits of online surveys?

Online surveys are cost-effective, easy to style, easy to use, flexible, time-saving, accessible, convenient, and scalable. These also facilitate anonymity, which increases the likelihood of honest responses.

2. What are the different online surveys?

Customer satisfaction surveys, cart abandonment surveys, NET Promoter Score surveys, product feedback surveys, market research surveys, human resource and employee surveys, event and conference surveys, etc. 

Also Read:

• Online Survey Tools: Definition, Types, and Key Features
• 11 Guidelines for Designing an Effective Web Survey