Wingman Marketing Communications Blog

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Questionable Questionnaires?

I recently received an online survey from an organization that I'm affiliated with. It was a pretty standard survey about customer experience, intent, and expectations. So as I got into the survey, it was 9 questions - I hit submit - and I get 12 more questions - submit - 7 more questions... submit - 11 more questions ... and it went on, with no end in sight. Additionally, the questions were redundant, asking essentially the same question in four slightly different ways. Here's a snippet of questions 11-14:
  • I possess the necessary skills to attain my goals
  • I have what it takes to reach my goals
  • I have the necessary knowledge to reach my goals
  • I have the ability to reach my goals
This survey ultimately went on for 101 questions, and with every 'Submit' I clicked, I prayed it was the last. Normally I would've bailed at about 35 or 40 questions, but since I was affiliated with this group, I felt an obligation to fill the survey out in its entirety.

Which brings me to a guideline for conducting a questionnaire:
  1. If you don't ask, you can't get an answer
  2. If there is something wrong in the questionnaire, the survey is a waste - Test your survey with a smaller audience first to make sure they're written to elicit the type of response you're looking for.
  3. Think about multiple answers
  4. Avoid leading questions - You want unbiased true answers, not leading the respondent to the answer you desire.
  5. Minimize open-ended questions - While they offer a wealth of insight, they are much harder to analyze.
  6. Use simple, direct, and familiar vocabulary - The folks at Google did a survey in NYC and asked people on the street "What is a Browser?" - less than 8% got it right.
  7. Avoid unique or ambiguous meanings.
  8. Start with easy questions, then move onto specific questions later.
  9. Create an expectation of time and progress - Most web-based survey sites have a progress bar, or you can be up front about how many questions there are before they start.
  10. KEEP IT SHORT - Don't ask for anything you won't actually use.

Labels:


# posted by Ray Huang @ 4:43 PM
0 Comments

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

New Website Completed

Wingman Marketing Communications has just re-launched our website at http://www.wingmancommunications.com. Our old site was dark and rough around the edges, but that was reflective of our nation's economic death spiral. The revamp has been long overdue, and reflects our fresh new outlook on the future of our business, our lives, and hopefully the rest of the economy. We really think there may be a correlation.

Anyways, check out our site, fish around. We've tested it, but if you come across something weird, please send Ray a tweet @rayhuang.

Labels: , , ,


# posted by Ray Huang @ 1:34 AM
0 Comments

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?
Subscribe to Posts [Atom]