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CU Village recently redesigned and redeveloped the Michigan Credit Union League's Annual Convention & Exposition Web site using our Content Management System. Take a look by clicking on the image above!
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7 Steps for Creating Successful Online Surveys
An online survey can give you powerful insights from your members, insights that you can use for setting long-range plans and for making small, incremental changes in how you're running your organization.
So, how do you create a great survey—one that delivers those powerful insights? The 7 steps detailed below are proven best practices that, when followed, will greatly increase the success of your surveys.
Step 1: Define the objective of your survey
No matter what kind of survey you want to conduct, it takes thought and planning to make it count. Throwing a quick survey together skips over the #1 key to a successful survey—setting one objective.
Determine your objective by pinpointing the problem you need to fix and what you need to know from your members in order to fix it.
Example
- Problem: I need to add new services to increase revenue.
- Objective: To learn what additional services my members would buy.
- Knowledge: What services are members getting from others that I could provide for them? What services are they interested in but not currently taking advantage of? If I offered certain services, would they be interested in them?
Step 2: Select your audience
The audience for your survey is dependent upon your objective. Below are a few examples:
- Objective: To gauge the overall satisfaction of my member base
- Audience: Entire member base
- Objective: To improve attendance of my events
- Audience: Attendees at last week's seminar
Step 3: Develop your questions
Ask only what you need to know, not what you want to know. Remember that you're trying to solve a problem, not discover "nice-to-know" tidbits of information. Your members, and you, don't have time for that.
You may want to use some open-ended questions. They let you hear responses in the members' own words. However, this type of question has its drawbacks. The answers take time to sort through and categorize. Close-ended questions give you more manageable data that you can interpret quickly. Do include one or two open-ended questions, but plan to stick with close-ended ones for the majority of the survey.
You can also include some demographic questions to better understand who your audience is, but keep them to one or two questions.
Step 4: Organize your questions
The order of your questions matters! As a rule, move from general to specific. A "gut check" question like, "What is your overall satisfaction with X product?" is a good place to start. Also, make the first few questions easy to answer so you can get your respondents into a rhythm. You want them think, "This will go quickly." A couple of final tips are to put related questions next to each other and put demographic ones at the end of the survey.
Step 5: Write a compelling invitation
Make your email invitation interesting and enticing. Don't just ask your members to take your survey. Provide them details such as what you want to learn about and how you will use the data. Give them a general idea of how long it will take to complete it and, finally, for a boost in responses, make it personal by including a name and signature. Here's a sample invitation:
Subject line: How was your experience at the BSA Seminar?
Header: Your opinion is important to us; please share it!
You recently attended our BSA Seminar at the Sheraton Inn, and I want to hear what you thought about your experience. Was the information helpful? Did you learn what you expected to based on our ads? Please answer these questions and a few more in this short, 10-question survey.
Thank you for your valuable time. Your feedback will help us to serve you better!
Sincerely,
CEO’s name
CEO, League Name
Step 6: Evaluate your results
Once the results are in, go back to your main objective and the knowledge you wanted to gain. Did you get the information you needed? Are there any surprises? Before making any decisions, be sure to balance what you see in the survey data with what you know from your own experience, direct conversations with members, and your business intuition.
Step 7: Take action
Determine what changes to make based on the results of your survey. Even small changes can make a big difference. And if you are making changes that your members asked for, tell them. It strengthens your credibility and your members’ trust in you when they see that you care about what they think. They'll be more motivated to give feedback when you send your next survey.
Now, it's time to craft that survey! Start with your objective and work your way through the other six steps and you will get powerful results that you can use right away. And, to create a professional survey quickly, use Listen Up! Survey from Constant Contact.
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Find out Now with a Poll!
For a quick answer to a short question, use an online poll. You can gather results right away and gauge your members’ opinions.
If you’re using our Content Management System, the Poll Module lets you insert a poll on any page of your Web site. That allows you to target your questions toward visitors on that specific page. For visitors on the home page, you might ask about your site’s ease of use. For visitors on your education page, you might ask which types of training they’d like you to offer. Or you can run a quick poll to see what location members prefer for your annual meeting.
Easy to Use
Adding a poll is simple. You simply type in the question and the possible answer choices, choose if the user will see the results or not, and click “Add.” Then you add the poll to a page when you’re editing a page’s content.
You can add the same poll to one or several pages of your site, so you can reach your members on the pages they visit.
Finally, you can choose whether to display the results on your Web site, or keep them private so that only staff member can see what your members think
Add a poll today, and get virtually immediate feedback from your members.
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March 2008