Conducting Online Surveys

When discussing web site traffic, it’s important to think not only in terms of the number of unique users to the site, but also to understand who those users are. Knowing the make up of your web site audience demographics can help you market your site more directly to your most responsive target audience.

One of the easiest and most efficient methods of finding out this priceless information is by conducting a survey. Pre-Internet days, surveys were conducted via phone calls and clip boards, but the Internet brings efficiency, creativity, and ease to the whole process.

The “What”:

The information that you’ll want to gather in a survey depends on what your organization specializes in, whether it be small business tools, non-profit fundraising, or flowers. There is some basic information that should be addressed in your survey, however. This includes age, sex, education level and occupation; job title and income are nice add-ons, too. Avoid asking for too much personal information — you’ll turn people off and this will be counterproductive to your goals.

The “Why”:

Here are some other benefits to online surveys:

• Ability to gather impartial information from random sample

   

• Easy and inexpensive way to collect data

   

• Instant results which can be sent to a database or an e-mail address

Besides efficiency, one of the most desirable aspects of an online survey is the diversity of the methods of execution. You can implement shorter surveys and polls into pop-up windows on your home page, send HTML surveys directly to your site’s registered users, house the survey on your site, or house it off- site a third-party provider.

The “How”:

While you can simply produce your own survey in HTML, as mentioned above, there are other alternatives. The following are some services that can help you create, house, and distribute your online survey:

• Zoomerang allows businesses and individuals to easily create online surveys for gathering critical information. Zoomerang offers a free service for individuals and a paid service for businesses, although they do offer a free trial.

   

• Survey Site specializes in independent web site evaluations, online focus groups, pop-up surveys/polls, and e-mail surveys.

   

• InfoPoll offers online survey software and services enabling anyone to easily create questionnaires, collect instant feedback and business intelligence.

   

• Add-A-Form offers free “public domain” survey forms as well as a professional series of custom built paid-for surveys with more options.

Try it out — you might be surprised by what the results show!

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