How to Create a Survey Questionnaire

If you want to create a consumer survey questionnaire for business market research, you need to have intelligent questions that target a specific market segment.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

1. 
   consumer survey

   Identify Your Goal and Target Market Segment
   
   A consumer survey is useful for market research analysis if you receive relevant responses that give you answers that help you with understanding your customers. Before you create your consumer survey questionnaire, decide what your goal for creating the survey is and which market segment you want to target with your survey. You should be asking yourself "What specific useful information am I trying to collect and from whom do I want to collect it from?". Try to narrow down your target audience and your end goal in order to get specific information.

2. 
   consumer survey

   Create Quantitative Multiple Choice Questions
   
   Create specific questions relevant to your consumer with a set of possible answers. Limit your answer options to less than 6 in order to prevent information overload. Make sure you provide the "Other" choice with a drop down box for people to elaborate wherever there is a possibility that your audience may not choose one of the survey answer options. Keep the questions brief and clear and make sure that it doesn't take more than 10-15 minutes to answer your consumer survey so that you are valuing your respondent's time. This is especially necessary if you are not providing incentives to your respondents.

3. Add in a "Benchmark" Question
   
   If you plan on sending multiple consumer surveys to the same audience, always add in a benchmark question such as "Are you satisfied with this service or product" so you can ensure that satisfaction levels are being maintained over time as you test out other metrics.

4. Use Survey Logic to Create Branches in Your Survey
   
   If you know that your users will fall into different categories, you can choose to create different branches for your survey so that people can answer a subset of the questions based on a couple of initial questions that determine their category. As an example, you can ask if your target consumer drives cars and if she does, she can answer the next 6 questions, if not, she can move on to question 7. This will help you to filter your data further.

5. Add in "Weed Out" Questions
   
   A lot of people go into auto pilot when filling out surveys and may not be paying attention to the questions. When you are going through a data cleaning process based on consumer survey results, you need to be able to eliminate "faulty" data. Add in "weed out" questions with obvious answers. If the person answering gets the "weed out" question wrong, you know that the remainder of their survey may not have been filled out with a lot of thought, allowing you to eliminate that particular data point.

6. Work on the Overall "Look" of Your Survey Questionnare
   
   Use professional, clean, simple formatting preferably with no advertising so you can establish credibility with your respondent. Incorporate your business or personal logo so it is clear that the survey is coming from you.

7. Send Out a Test Survey to a Sample of Your Target Audience
   
   Once you have created your consumer survey, send it out to a small sample audience as a test. When you get your results back, tweak your questionnaire if necessary if you find that you are not getting the information you need.

8. 
   consumer survey

   Frame the Context of Your Survey Questionnaire
   
   When you are ready with the final version of your consumer survey, frame the context of your survey with an introductory paragraph prior to sending it out. Let the consumer know how the survey will benefit them and add value to your customer base. If people know that they will be benefiting more than just your business or your bottom line, they may be more open to answering your consumer survey. Creating a well thought out survey questionnaire will provide you with consumer insights and market research at a relatively low cost.

Resources

• How to Create a Social Media Strategy Map
• How to use Marketing Techniques to Create Your Personal Brand
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[godfather25]

on 9/18/2009 Great tips on creating a survey questionnaire.

[bellerose]

on 9/17/2009 Great ideas. I have often wished for an "other" box to check on surveys that had none. It also helps motivate those taking them to have a context. 5*