Top 10 advantages of online surveys
In 1834, the Statistical Society of London conducted the earliest known survey by going door to door and asking the people of Manchester about their occupations. In the nearly 200 years since then, the world of surveys has expanded to include many more types of questionnaires. In addition to the door-to-door survey, we now have paper surveys, telephone surveys, and most recently, online surveys.
For researchers, the online survey holds many evolutionary advantages over its predecessors. In this article, we’ll limit ourselves to looking at the top ten.
1. Speed
Online surveys are faster than traditional paper surveys—in pretty much every respect. Faster to create, since online survey platforms like Sogolytics have customizable templates and other design features that allow you to quickly build professional-looking surveys. Faster to distribute, since online surveys can be emailed instantly to all of your respondents, rather than physically mailed or handed out. And, perhaps most importantly, faster to collect, since online surveys are also quick and easy for the survey participants themselves.
On average, online surveys take one-third as long to complete as traditional research methods. And half of all responses to online surveys are typically received within the first three days of the survey project going live.
2. Affordability
Online surveys are also cheaper than paper surveys. There’s no printing costs to create the surveys, and no postage cost to send them. Also, you’ll save time and money not manually collecting paper surveys and then painstakingly entering the results into a database. Online surveys automatically process and display the results—no need to hire anyone for a data entry job!
3. Accuracy
If you’re serious about getting accurate results (and you should be), online surveys are definitely a superior option to traditional paper questionnaires. Because participants’ survey responses are directly entered into the system (rather than manually entered by people), there’s no room for human error to skew the results. Also, tools like Sogolytics allow you to limit participants to only one survey per person, which safeguards against the delegitimizing influence of “ballot box stuffing.”
4. Analysis
Ease and speed of analysis is far greater with online surveys than paper ones. Online survey results are available to analyze as soon as participants complete their surveys. Sogolytics allows you to view real-time results, create custom reports and graphs, and export data to share with others.
5. Ease of use for survey participants
Most people would rather complete an on their laptop or smart device than fill out and mail back a paper survey, or directly answer someone’s survey questions in-person or over the phone. It’s a simple matter of convenience—online surveys allow respondents to complete a survey at their leisure, at any time and from anywhere.
Plus, online surveys can be designed to be shorter and more personalized than paper surveys can ever be. For example, Sogolytics’ skip logic feature will only show a survey participant questions that are relevant to them, while skipping the questions that aren’t.
6. Ease of use for survey designers
Convenience is not just a perk for the survey takers—it also redounds to the benefit of the survey makers. Sogolytics, for example, offers an extremely intuitive and easy-to-use online survey platform that’s backed by unparalleled support. And it automatically houses and analyzes your data, eliminating the need for any cumbersome statistical software or dull spreadsheets.
7. Professionalism
It’s easy to give your online survey a spectacular design that aligns with your branding. For example, Sogolytics allows you to customize your online survey so that it features your company’s color scheme, your logo, and any other images you wish to include. Online surveys can also be designed with mobile devices in mind, so that they look good no matter how participants are accessing them.
8. Feedback
Because people prefer the convenience of online surveys to other survey methods, they’re more likely to complete them. Not only that, but participants usually provide longer and more detailed responses to open-ended questions when taking online surveys (as opposed to paper or telephone surveys). The more (and more thorough) responses you get, the better your data.
9. Personalization
An online survey can be much friendlier than a form questionnaire. Pre-population can be used to automatically fill in the survey participant’s name (and any other relevant information you have about them). Online surveys can also end with a customized “Thank you” page that can thank the participant by name and even redirect them to another web page. For example, Sogolytics clients have been able to improve their online reputation by concluding their customer satisfaction surveys with pages that ask (satisfied) customers if they’d like to leave a Google review.
10. Flexibility
We’ve already mentioned how skip logic can be used to create more personalized and relevant surveys, but that’s not the only way in which online surveys are more flexible than traditional surveys. For example, Sogolytics also allows you to randomize the order of questions, which is a great way to reduce any potential bias that could be accidentally created by the arrangement of questions.
Seizing the Advantages of Online Surveys
Obviously, online surveys can do a lot of things that simply can’t be put on paper or done over the phone. For both individuals and organizations, online survey platforms like Sogolytics can provide a cheaper, faster, more efficient, more accurate, and more appealing way of collecting feedback—data which is also easier to analyze and report. That’s why online surveys are the preferred option for both the makers and takers of surveys.
