Step #1 -- Defining Your Objective:

Before you start writing your survey questions, it's important that you take time to clearly map out your objectives: what do you want to accomplish with your survey?

In fact, once you've defined your goals, it should be abundantly obvious who your survey will target, be it your customers, your newsletter subscribers, your web site visitors, visitors to another web site or newsgroup, etc.


Step #2 -- Writing Effective Questions:

The questions you write will ultimately determine the usefulness of the answers you collect, so pay careful attention not only to what you ask, but how you ask it. Poorly worded questions can result in useless, biased answers and can even cause participants to lose interest and leave your survey incomplete.

The fewer questions you ask, the more responses you'll receive. And more responses equals more accurate, more useful data!


Step #3 -- Formatting Your Survey:

The way you design your overall survey and lay out each question is going to have a huge impact on how your questions are interpreted and whether or not your survey is completed.

Of course, with that said, you should be sure to start your survey with a few easy questions that get the respondent comfortable answering your questions and develop a rapport with them. This will help to ensure that when you ask the tough questions, respondents won't shy away and you'll get more accurate, honest answers.


Step #4 -- Deciding How You'll Distribute It:

You basically have three choices for distributing your survey.
You can:

1. Send the survey directly in an e-mail
2. Host the survey on your web site
3. Use a third-party survey provider who will host the survey on their site

Step #5 -- Persuading Them to Participate

Once you're ready to launch your survey, you'll need to turn your attention to persuading your customers and subscribers to actually fill it out. Here are a few suggestions for maximizing your response rate:

Offer an incentive like a free gift or enter respondents into a special prize draw (this will increase the response you receive by as much as 17%). Let respondents know that their answers will be kept in the strictest of confidence. Tell them you want their honest opinions, good and bad.

Provide your contact information for those people who want to verify where the survey is coming from. End your survey with a nice thank you that lets respondents know you've received their answers and when they'll receive their gift, or that you've entered them in your special prize draw.