Email Questionnaire

Partial responses are an unavoidable caveat of online surveys.  There are no moderators to ensure the survey respondent completes the web survey in its entirety and there are, generally speaking, no punishments or consequences should a respondent exit the survey early.  Add in the ever decreasing human attention span, and we have quite an obstacle to overcome to ensure your survey gets the most complete and most accurate responses. 

This was exactly the issue facing one of our clients.  Their survey was a decent length, only about 30 single choice questions, and the contacts on the target list were all product users.  So when they called in about the substantial number of partial and visited responses, I will admit I was a bit baffled.  Hey, it happens. 

I asked whether people had sent in messages about possible error messages when they tried to continue on to the next page or submit their responses; nothing. I checked their emails to ascertain whether any information in the messages was discouraging people from finishing the survey or telling them to return at a later date to complete; again, nothing.  It wasn’t until I previewed the survey to test whether there was any bug preventing the collection of responses that I noticed something: a hyperlink.  In the middle of the survey body.  It was so innocuous yet tempting, offering something new and unknown after having monotonously clicked through numerous page breaks and questions. 

I clicked the link and was immediately connected to a new, enchanting website filled with animated images, graphics, and wild colors.  Oh my!  What was this exciting new Wonderland I had discovered?  It was the distant, yet audible cough on the other end of the phone that brought my attention back to the task at hand.  And, I had discovered the cause. 

The hardest part of any online survey is to motivate survey respondents to not only open your email survey invitation, but take time out of their day to complete the survey.  With the proliferation of internet-based communication, people are becoming more desensitized to email marketing.  If you have already overcome the most difficult task of having a respondent start your survey, why lead them astray?

The solution was simple: take the hyperlink out of the survey body.  Put it in an email message or as a link on the separate Thank You page instead.  Keep this survey best practice in mind and you'll keep survey respondents focused on the project at hand.  Once they complete the survey, you can unleash the wonderful and ever intriguing world of the internet upon them.