Conduct Online Surveys Or Be Left Out!

By Nick Hill

In a world where websites and email have become ubiquitous, conducting online surveys has become so convenient that everybody is doing it. Are you? If not, here are 10 reasons why you should.

1. Develop quickly - Most survey softwares have a sample survey library, question library, and a response library that enables you to develop surveys quickly. You can also develop surveys from scratch very quickly.

2. Present the best way possible - You can use a drop-down list for questions with many responses, or you can also use audio and video where it is appropriate. Online surveys allow you to present your questions in the best possible way.

3. Pre-populate with data - You can pre-populate your surveys with data that you already have about each respondent.

4. Distribute easily - You can distribute online surveys very easily, and in many different ways: link on website, entire survey on website, link in email, entire survey in email or newsletters, or handheld devices.

5. Skip questions - You can skip questions based on the answers to some questions. The logic to determine whether to skip or not can be simple or fairly complex.

6. Personalize your surveys - You can use answers of questions in the following questions. This allows you to personalize your surveys, like saying "Thanks Steve" instead of only "Thanks". You can also ask questions like "Why do you like most about Coke?" if the respondent selected Coke as his/her favorite drink in the previous question.

7. Validate the responses - You can validate the responses given by respondents thus ensuring that they enter valid data. This increases the quality of the results.

8. Eliminate errors associated with manual entry - With online surveys, respondents take the survey themselves. This eliminates the need for manual entry and its associated errors.

9. Get fast results - With online surveys, you can begin to accumulate responses in hours rather than days, and complete surveys in days rather than months.

10. Save time and money - You save lot of time developing surveys due to the time-saving features that survey softwares have. You can also save money compared to the traditional method of conducting surveys since you have to send out postal invitations, hire call personnel, hire data entry personnel, and generate results manually.

© Web Based Survey Software 2004

About The Author

This article has been copyrighted and has been reprinted with the permission of Web Based Survey Software (http://www.web-based-survey-software.org). If you want to reprint this article, please send an email to webmaster@web-based-survey-software.org to inform us and we will grant you the permission. But please ensure that this message appears at the end of the article and proper credits are given.

nick@web-based-survey-software.org

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