6 Key Advantages Of Using Online Surveys

Depending on the type of information you're trying to collect, there are several research methods you can use. For example, if you're conducting market research, you can organize focus groups, conduct personal interviews, and host observational research (a form of ethnography). If you're surveying your customers, you might rely on direct mail, telephone, or paper questionnaires.

Over the last several years, online surveys have become the tool of choice. While they are not appropriate for all projects, they offer several advantages over traditional research methods. Below, we'll present six of the most compelling reasons to consider using online surveys in your organization. If you have yet to make the transition from paper questionnaires, the following items may convince you to revisit the issue.

Conducting phone or in-person interviews is costly since you need to pay wages to those you hire. Direct mail and paper questionnaires are also costly; besides printing costs, you'll need to pay for postage.

In comparison, online surveys are cheap. There's no need to print them. Nor is postage a factor since invitees will be sent to the survey on the internet. This also means there's no need to pay people to conduct interviews.

Online questionnaires can be designed with advanced features that streamline and personalize the survey experience for your respondents. For example, branch logic allows you to send the respondent down specific "branches" of questions based on his or her answers to previous items. This all but removes questions that are irrelevant to the respondent.

Pipe logic gives you the ability to insert a respondent's answer from a previous item into a subsequent item. This provides a smoother survey experience, and thus reduces your abandonment rate.

Skip logic can be valuable when certain items do not apply to the respondent. His or her previous responses can be used to skip them past questions that are irrelevant to them.

With a paper questionnaire, it can take months to collect a sufficient pool of data from your population. Once collected, the data must be analyzed, which requires even more time.

An online survey can be launched quickly with invitations distributed via email. Results often begin filtering in within minutes, and are tabulated automatically. This saves time and money, and allows you to make decisions based on the data more quickly.

You can schedule invitations and reminders to be distributed without your direct involvement. This is valuable because it can dramatically improve your response rate. Your recipients may open your email invitation with every intention to complete your survey. Sometimes, however, other things take priority, and your questionnaire is placed on the back burner. There, it may be forgotten.

With automated email reminders, you can gently encourage invitation recipients to complete your questionnaire. This subtle prodding results in a higher response rate, which translates into a bigger and more reliable data pool.

Sometimes, respondents will show order bias in their answers. This occurs when they recognize the order of a survey's questions, and identify a distinct pattern. Their responses then begin to reflect the pattern rather than what they actually think or feel.

Online surveys can be designed using a randomization feature. This feature arranges the questions and pages in an unpredictable manner so that patterns are all but eliminated. This minimizes the risk of order bias, and thus improves the strength of your data.

 Survey software gives you an opportunity to design your questionnaires with different levels of anonymity. If respondents are confident their identity is protected, they will be more willing to answer questions openly and honestly.

Online survey software offers many features that are unavailable with traditional research methods. These features provide a better experience for respondents, and more reliable data on which to base decisions about your company.