How to write great user surveys - Part 8

This  is part 8 of my series on writing a good user survey. If you're just joining us, you may want to start with part 1.

Step 6: Make a catch-all question -- and tell people about it. 

It's very common that survey-takers have an agenda. After all, they're using their time to answer a bunch of questions, and many people won't do that unless they think they'll get something out of it. Sometimes they're doing it for a coupon or free item or a chance at winning something, but other times they're doing it because they have something they want you to hear. Or both.

That's great, of course. If your customer wants to tell you something and hasn't had another opportunity, we should all be thrilled that those people are willing to take a whole survey to get their message across. Unfortunately, sometimes those users with an agenda will commandeer any text-entry box available to tell you what they're thinking -- regardless of what the text-entry box is for. So why not help them out? Not only does it make their lives easier, but it increases the likelihood that they'll actually answer the questions that are being asked. So when you say "What changes would you like to see in our app?", your user can answer honestly instead of telling you about the time the app didn't work right and he missed a flight to Cleveland.

Accomplishing this is easy, of course: just tell them up front. Usually a simple message on page 1 is pretty effective:

At the end of this survey there is an optional area for any additional feedback you'd like to give.

If you already have too much text on page 1, you run the risk of users skipping over it. So if there's more than one sentence there already, just move the message back a little -- maybe to the same page as your first text-entry box. Then, at the end of your survey, include one last question: "Is there anything else you'd like to tell us?" Just be sure that you set the users' expectations appropriately regarding feedback from that box. (Depending on your survey tool, you may want to ask users to enter an email address if they want a response.)

Step 7: Ask for feedback on the survey itself.

This question is often overlooked in surveys, but it can be invaluable. Asking for survey feedback gives you one last chance to find out about all kinds of mistakes: if you accidentally made a user give you an incorrect answer (with a false-dichotomy polarizing question), if a question had confusing language, or if part of the survey wasn't formatted correctly on the user's screen. If your survey is perfect, then you'll see a bunch of empty text fields in your results. But if it's not perfect (which is extremely likely), this question can save you from making decisions based on bad data. You might learn that some of your data is invalid and the survey was a huge waste of resources, but at least it'll prevent you from doing even more damage based on something that's not true. Here's a good sample question for this:

Do you have any questions or comments about this survey? Did you have difficulty with any of the questions?

Of course, it's worth noting that this question isn't foolproof. Many users won't bother to explain a survey problem -- they don't really care and it's not worth their time. All you need is one, though -- enough to alert you to reevaluate your results.

Come back tomorrow for the conclusion of this series -- part 9 -- where I'll talk a little more about the process behind creating a survey.

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This is part 8 of my series on writing a good user survey.  If you want to start at the beginning, head back over to part 1.

Hire me, and then I'll write your next survey! I'm available for full-time or consulting work -- email me.