Online surveys (CAWI, Computer Assisted Web Interviewing) have become an established, efficient and cost-effective feedback tool. Their advantages include real-time results, wide reach and, not least, the quality of the data collected. While paper-based surveys have fallen out of favour because of the effort involved, their susceptibility to errors and their considerably higher costs, online surveys have become increasingly accepted, both by survey creators and by participants. The following sections give you a short introduction, a step-by-step guide and tips for creating an online survey.
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Creating a questionnaire & running the survey
A questionnaire for an online survey (also known as CAWI, Computer Assisted Web Interviewing) is easy to create and can be designed to suit your needs. You can also adapt it to your corporate design, so respondents immediately recognise your organisation. Dynamic questionnaire features such as conditional visibility make sure that participants only see the questions that are relevant to them.
Once the questionnaire has been created and pre-tested, the actual online survey can begin. You can invite participants by email and/or via social media. Alternatively, you can embed the online survey on your own website, so that visitors (customers, employees, prospects, readers etc.) come across it while browsing your online shop, blog or homepage.
Even while the survey is still running, live results show how well it is being received and what response rate you can expect. Surveys with live results are also useful for collecting instant feedback during ongoing events.
How do I conduct an online survey? 9 key steps
1. Define your goals
First of all, decide exactly what you want to find out with the survey. Do you want to measure customer or employee satisfaction, gauge how likely people are to recommend or buy, or take a closer look at your company’s image? Would you like feedback on your support or on the usability of your website? As a rule, each questionnaire should cover a single topic. Combining topics is possible, but it rarely serves your goal. It is better to run several short, engaging surveys than one complex, all-encompassing one.
2. Create the questionnaire
Online questionnaires should be kept short, and the questions should be clear and easy to understand. When you create an online questionnaire, make sure participants are neither bored nor overwhelmed while answering. Engaging, varied questionnaires increase the response rate of your online survey. Use dynamic questionnaire features such as conditional visibility and branching to create individual answer paths, so each participant only sees the questions relevant to them. Also consider whether additional questions are really necessary or merely nice to have.
In academic work or market research projects, questionnaires may be longer and more complex. Even then, focus on the questions you actually need. Every unnecessary question is one question too many.
3. Start/activate the survey
To check the questionnaire and its features not just in preview but in live mode, you need to start (i.e. activate) the survey. Once activated, the questionnaire can be accessed online via the survey link.
4. Run a pretest
Before you officially publish your survey and invite participants, it is advisable to run a pretest in live mode. Invite only colleagues, the works council or other experienced people who can give you feedback on the questionnaire. This lets you have the survey tested, gather feedback and fix any flow errors or unclear content in good time before the official launch.
Further information: Testing a survey
5. Invite participants
You can invite participants by email and/or via social media by sending or publishing the survey link. You can also provide the survey link as a printed QR code (on flyers, for example). Alternatively, you can embed the online survey on your own website.
Further information: Inviting participants to a survey
6. Send reminder emails
A few days after the survey has started, check the statistics to see how many invited participants have opened, completed or abandoned the questionnaire. This also shows how many invitees have not responded (yet), perhaps because they overlooked the invitation email or had no time to take part. Reminder emails let you contact this group again and draw their attention to the online survey. If required, reminders can also be sent automatically. More details: Sending emails
7. Analyse the results
You can view the results of your online survey from the very start and keep an eye on response behaviour, response rate and drop-out rate. Live results can also be analysed immediately, for example for feedback surveys or votes during an ongoing event.
Once the survey has ended, both the raw data (individual responses) and the overall results are available for export, in a choice of file formats. To learn more about analysis terms, result filters and more, see Analysing a survey.
8. Communicate the results
Communicating the results is usually an important step in any online survey. How you report them depends on the survey goal and the target group. If the results are aimed at internal decision-makers, they are often analysed, prepared and reported on the basis of key performance indicators (KPIs).
In customer and employee surveys, the results, and where applicable the measures derived from them, are also shared with the respondents themselves to strengthen customer loyalty, employee retention and trust. This is usually done through informative emails, newsletters or team meetings. In most cases, the marketing and/or HR department takes the lead on this communication, in consultation with senior management.
9. Repeat the survey regularly
To measure change over time, it is advisable to repeat online surveys regularly. Follow-up surveys also let you check whether the measures you have taken are working, and help you derive long-term strategies.
Templates and examples for online surveys: Simply use our free questionnaire samples and templates as a starting point. You can also use them as templates within your LamaPoll account and adapt them to your needs.
Tips for creating online surveys
Make full use of the advantages and possibilities that online surveys offer. When creating online questionnaires, you benefit from a wide range of features that are impossible or difficult to implement in paper-based surveys. These include a wide variety of question types, which make the questionnaire varied and engaging and thus help achieve a high response rate. Online surveys can also include multimedia content such as images, videos and audio.
Make your questionnaire engaging and add variety with different question types and features:
- Rating scales with sliders
- Star ratings & smiley ratings
- Ranking questions with drag and drop
- Image choice questions
- Multimedia elements
- Dynamic questionnaires & individual answer paths
- Randomisation
- Drop-down menus
- Live results and much more
Using a variety of question types breaks up the questionnaire and encourages participants to complete it.
You can, of course, also adapt your questionnaires to your corporate design. You can add your logo and photos, use your corporate font and customise the questionnaire design with CSS. Our helpdesk explains how: Design features: CSS.
With LamaPoll, surveys can be created quickly and easily. The tool offers many options for individual adjustments. The help pages are useful for solving many questions independently. For special requests, competent and easily accessible customer support is available.
What is LamaPoll?
LamaPoll is a survey tool for creating online questionnaires. Our survey tool lets you create, run and analyse online questionnaires quickly and easily. Create your questionnaire in just a few steps, customise it for your organisation and conveniently invite customers or employees by email. An online questionnaire enables you to gather insights quickly and easily to improve customer or employee satisfaction. You can register for the LamaPoll survey tool free of charge and immediately create and run online surveys with up to 50 participants. If you need more responses for your online questionnaire, simply choose one of our plans: billed monthly, cancel any month. You can also choose from our online questionnaire templates and examples.
