Introduction

Sogolytics makes it easier than ever to gather responses through online surveys, polls, forms, and assessments. To ensure high response rates and gather the best possible data, keep in mind your participant’s experience and perceptions.

Technology alone does not make a better survey, but you can definitely use advanced features to your advantage. Build a better survey and improve the participant experience by using features such as Save on Next, Auto Save, and Save and Continue Later, as well as SSL encryption to ensure secure data transmission.

As you consider the participant experience, a few suggestions:

• Short and sweet is great, as time is valuable and attention can be hard to maintain. Research shows that short surveys with relevant, meaningful questions yield more responses. Setting realistic expectations about length and participation time can also be helpful. Still, not every survey can be short and sweet. To keep participants engaged in a longer survey, choose a meaningful purpose and use features that reduce effort and ensure involvement.
• Variety is the spice of both life and surveys. Avoid monotony by ensuring that your survey balances a variety of question types across multiple pages. Having a plan is very important, and you should definitely draft your questions and ideas first. Still, make sure that your structure supports your goals without becoming repetitive.
• Media might not be the main focus of your survey, but including some images or multimedia in your survey will help to keep participants engaged. Visual interest and interactive options in questions, answers, or overall formatting can appeal to your audience and add variety between pages.
• Logic tells you that participants should only see questions or pages that are relevant. Design your survey with features like Branching or Question Display Logic to allow participants to skip past items that they don’t need to answer.
• Personalize your survey for each participant to keep them involved in the conversation. Doesn’t it make you feel good when someone mentions your name, or reminds you of something you said earlier? Piping is a feature that lets you do exactly the same thing. Do you appreciate it when people remember tiny details about you, saving you the time and effort of repeating the same basic facts? Data Population lets you pre-fill information about participants in the same way, even allowing them to make corrections, if you like. Cater to participants with personalization options and they will stay involved throughout the survey.
• Thanks to your participants, you are receiving data. If it’s worth their time to respond, isn’t it worth your time to say thank you? Extend the simple courtesy of acknowledging their time and effort by thanking participants for their responses. With the Instant Thanks feature, these messages can be sent automatically when surveys are submitted.
• Focus attention on what matters. Limit the questions in your surveys to only those relevant and important. Arrange the sequence of questions in an order that helps participants understand your purpose. Group similar questions together in separate sections or pages. If it doesn’t need to be there, don’t waste the space or your participants’ time.
• Accessibility matters. Participation pages for all surveys and projects follow the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) standard so everyone can participate, regardless of disability status. All surveys are compatible and responsive on computers, laptops, tablets, and smartphones such as Android and iPhone. If you are planning to conduct surveys on mobile/tablet devices specifically, consider using primarily simple question and answer options and avoiding Matrix Grid questions. Also note: Participation on a tablet will reflect the same display as web participation.