Crafting Effective Inquiry for Questionnaires
In the realm of online surveys, ensuring a user-friendly experience is paramount, especially on mobile devices. A new guide titled "Tips for Writing Good Questions" from SurveyMonkey provides valuable insights to help designers achieve this goal.
The guide is a resourceful tool for avoiding common pitfalls in survey design, offering practical advice that caters specifically to mobile devices. Here are some key takeaways:
- Keep surveys short and focused: To avoid respondent fatigue, especially on smaller screens, it's essential to make surveys concise and to the point.
- Use clear, concise, and unbiased questions: With simple language, questions become easier to understand on mobile devices, ensuring a higher level of comprehension.
- Optimize the survey layout for mobile devices: A responsive design that works smoothly across smartphones and tablets is crucial. This includes avoiding complicated input types or excessive text.
- Employ conditional branching or logic: By tailoring question flow based on previous answers, designers can create surveys that are relevant and concise for mobile users.
- Design questions with a logical flow: Starting from easier, broader questions to more specific ones creates an intuitive experience and reduces user drop-off on mobile.
- Avoid double-barreled and complex questions: These can be particularly confusing on small screens, so it's best to keep questions simple and straightforward.
- Use a balanced mix of closed-ended questions and some open-ended questions: While closed-ended questions provide faster input, open-ended questions collect valuable qualitative feedback. However, be mindful not to overuse open-ended questions on mobile due to typing effort.
- Include progress indicators: On longer surveys, progress indicators inform users how much they've completed and encourage continuation.
- Test the survey extensively: Before launching, it's important to test the survey on various mobile devices and browsers to ensure usability, accessibility, and proper functioning.
- Keep distractions and cognitive load minimal: By using clean layouts with minimal animations or unnecessary visuals, designers can create surveys that are easy to navigate on mobile.
- Consider using images cautiously: If images add clarity, use them, but ensure they do not hamper loading speed on mobile networks.
By following these best practices, designers can improve user experience, increase response rates, and ensure data quality when conducting online surveys on mobile devices. The guide is free of charge, downloadable, and available from a secure form on the SurveyMonkey website.
The guide focused on optimizing survey design, specifically for mobile devices, provides valuable insights that aid UX design in enhancing user experience. By adhering to principles such as using clear questions, responsive design, and logical flow, designers can align their surveys with the lifestyle demands of tech-savvy users, thereby catering to their preference for seamless mobile interactions.
