5 tips to create better surveys for your SaaS — Get more people to fill your surveys!

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4 min readMar 15, 2021
Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash

We all want to know more about our audiences and the best way to get the most of the information is to take a survey.

But most of the time we see that people show no attention to the surveys, they ignore them or give random answers to save themselves.

So if you are someone who wishes to use surveys more effectively and wants more people to fill your surveys then you are at the right place.

In this article, we will let you know about the 5 tips that can help you create better surveys for your business to get more fills and more information about the customer.

Ask At The Right Time

What can be more irritating than getting a survey prompt the moment you enter a website. This not only makes people feel irritated but can also increase the bounce rates of the websites.

Usually, the best practice is to let the people finish why they came on the website. If they came to download a “pdf” then let them download it first.

Once they are done with their work there is a very high chance that they may fill your surveys.

If you are seeing a drop and people are still not filling a survey and waiting for them to finish the work seems like a lot of time for you then at least let the visitor settle first.

Fire the survey prompt at least a few seconds after the arrival of the visitor.

Check your analytics to see the average time for a session by a user and set your survey prompt accordingly.

Keep the Survey Short

Well, would you like to fill a survey which is 30 questions long and takes around 3 hours to finish? No? No one will!

People are already busy. They don’t have the time to sit and finish your surveys unless you pay them to do so.

If you are running a survey on your website then keep it as short as possible.

Don’t ask for unnecessary information. Just ask for enough information that you are going to use. A lot of times just one question is enough to get your answers.

Asking for unnecessary information and then never using them is the biggest mistake that you can do.

Start from the easiest question

People’s attention span is already less than that of a goldfish. People won’t fill your surveys if you start with extremely difficult questions.

Their mind is already somewhere else. Your goal is to keep them in the flow. You can maintain the flow only if you start from extremely easy questions and slowly move to the more difficult questions.

That’s the reason why a lot of surveys use your name as the first question. As it is extremely easy to answer your name and all the other basic information.

When they answer 4 to 5 questions like this they get the feeling that they have already come this far, let’s finish the survey.

This way you will see fewer drops and more people will complete their surveys.

Add An Incentive To The Survey

Why should people bother to fill your surveys? It’s important for you not for them!

Adding an incentive to the survey makes people feel that they have not wasted their time and they got something in return.

The incentives need not be too big. You don’t have to give them something out of the world. In fact, most of the time a discount coupon for the next purchase or gift cards of the popular stores works like a charm!

These incentives look small but people don’t bother filling a survey for such incentives but if you ask them to do so without getting anything in return, people won’t bother to do so!

The Secret Trick

You have already read 4 best practices to follow while creating surveys for your business, now is the time to reveal the final secret trick!

Don’t tell your customers that you are going to give an incentive for filling a survey!

That sounds absurd, doesn’t it? Then why did we placed an incentive in the first place if we are not going to tell them about it?

Instead of letting them know before and giving it as an incentive don’t tell them anything and give it as a gift.

This way they will be filling the survey with no expectation and when they will get the gift they will be happier.

That happiness will lead them to share that survey with their families or friends or there is a possibility that they will add a social media post about the survey.

This way you can get more people to fill your surveys just by using the word of mouth!

The Final Conclusion

In this article, we read about how you can create better surveys for your business so that more people fill your surveys and you can get more information.

Let’s do a quick recap of what we learned:

  • Ask them at the right time. Don’t give a survey prompt the moment someone comes to your website. Either let them finish their work and let them settle in.
  • Keep the survey short. Only ask the questions that you are really going to use. Don’t ask unnecessary questions.
  • Start from the easiest questions in your list and slowly move towards the more difficult ones.
  • Add an incentive to the survey. No one likes to do stuff for free.
  • Don’t tell the people about the incentive, let them fill the survey and give that incentive as a gift. This way people will be happier and will share your survey with their family and friends.

Now that you know how you can create great surveys, what are you waiting for? Create your next winning survey now!

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