How to create engaging surveys?

What You'll Learn

By the end of this lesson, you'll be able to:

• Understand why engaging surveys matter.
• Identify the strategies and traps involved in designing engaging surveys.
• Create engaging surveys that gather accurate information and improve response rates.

1. Why are engaging surveys important?

Engaging surveys let you gather accurate, actionable feedback from your target audience. When a survey holds people's attention, they are more likely to participate, give thoughtful answers, and finish. That means higher response rates, more reliable data, and a clearer picture of what your audience needs, prefers, and struggles with.

Most survey creators have sent out a survey and received only a handful of responses. Getting enough answers is a challenge on its own.

If you are a business owner, a research student, a marketing professional, or anyone who needs to build surveys people will actually complete, this lesson is for you.

This lesson covers ideas that help you create engaging forms and surveys. It walks through what to do, and what to avoid, when you want people to stay engaged.

2. What to do to create engaging surveys?

These are the points to keep in mind while building an engaging survey.

2.1 Use an Interactive design

Answering a survey made only of textboxes and multiple-choice questions gets monotonous fast. A more interactive version keeps people involved.

Interactive elements like sliders and drag-and-drop raise your survey's engagement rate. Sliders work well for rating questions, and drag-and-drop works well for ranking questions.

Adding a welcome screen at the start and a thank you screen at the end improves engagement further.

BlockSurvey provides a wide range of interactive question types to make your survey more engaging. Explore the BlockSurvey builder to see all of them.

2.2 Include Progress indicator

Imagine a survey with 10 questions. The respondent gets to the 9th question and assumes there might be more than 20. Feeling overwhelmed by the apparent length, they abandon it, even though only one question was left.

How is the respondent supposed to know the survey's length in advance, or get a sense of the whole thing? (The respondent is the person taking your survey.)

A "Progress Indicator" solves this.

Progress indicators show respondents where they are in the survey.

By default, all surveys in BlockSurvey have progress indicators.

2.3 Enable Personalization

Personalization improves almost any experience, and surveys are no exception. A one-size-fits-all approach rarely produces engaging surveys. Generic questions can lead to survey fatigue and disengagement.

To me, the future is personalization. - Marissa Mayer

Knowing demographic data such as name, age, location, and profession lets you ask your audience more personalized questions.

You can also carry an answer from an earlier question into a later one. This level of personalization is possible with the recall option in BlockSurvey.

Use skip logic so respondents only see the questions that apply to them. In a restaurant survey, for example, you can skip all non-vegetarian questions when the respondent says they are vegetarian.

Personalization gives respondents a sense of belonging as they take the survey.

2.4 Incentivize participation

Offering an incentive improves engagement because it values respondents' time and effort.

The incentive can be a discount, a gift card, or a cash reward. A few examples that encourage people to take the survey:

• 10% discount on their next purchase
• An Amazon gift card
• An e-book
• A cash prize
• Free one-month access to your product.

Make sure the value of the incentive matches the time and effort the survey requires. A long, complex survey may need a larger incentive to keep respondents motivated.

Incentives raise both the number of respondents and the completion rate, which gives your business more usable data.

2.5 Optimize for Mobile

Nearly every website built today runs cleanly on mobile devices, so your survey should too.

Keep the mobile interface intuitive and easy to use.

Because so many people are on their phones, a mobile-friendly survey reaches more respondents.

Mobile surveys also capture more in-the-moment responses, which improves response quality.

BlockSurvey is fully mobile responsive, so your surveys work well on any mobile device.

2.6 Use Branding

Good visuals improve the look of your surveys. Apply your brand assets, such as logo, colors, and fonts, consistently throughout the design. Pulling a color palette from image sources helps keep the survey's visuals aligned with your overall brand identity. This makes the survey look presentable and builds trust with respondents.

Your brand is a story unfolding across all customer touchpoints. - Jonah Sachs

When a survey is hosted on a domain tied to your brand, respondents take it more seriously and are more likely to complete it. They trust a survey hosted on the brand's own domain.

Branded surveys look more professional, and that can raise engagement.

2.7 Provide Feedback

Feedback lets respondents see the survey results right away, which can spark their interest and keep them engaged.

Showing a score at the end of a quiz can make respondents feel accomplished and recognized for their time.

Giving answers to a self-assessment as soon as it is finished helps respondents understand where they stand and what to work on.

Adding fun facts and quotes relevant to the topic at the end can make the survey more enjoyable and a bit surprising.

The point is to give respondents something in return, and feedback is a good way to do that.

2.8 Give a Call to action

A clear call to action (CTA) at the end of a survey helps. It tells respondents what to do next, which can lift engagement and participation.

A CTA can prompt respondents to take a further step, such as visiting a website, opening related resources, signing up for a newsletter, or sharing the survey.

It also gives the survey a sense of closure.

3. What to do to create disengaging surveys?

This section covers the things that will make a survey disengaging, so you can avoid them.

3.1 Run Lengthy Surveys

Ask yourself whether respondents would finish a survey that takes a long time. Lengthy surveys have a lower completion rate.

Unless the topic genuinely needs many questions, keep the survey short.

Always reduce the number of questions as far as you reasonably can. Respondents are not overwhelmed by shorter surveys. A long survey overwhelms them.

Shorter surveys have a higher completion rate.

Keep your surveys long and you will watch the completion rate drop.

3.2 Have Complex Questions

Say you own a restaurant and you want to run a customer feedback survey about food quality and the dining experience.

If you include restaurant-specific terms like Dead plate (a dish not served because of poor appearance or quality) or Totes (plastic containers used to deliver fish) in your questions, your completion rate will drop.

It drops because your customers are people who just dined at your restaurant, not staff who know the jargon. The respondent struggles to understand the term and gets confused.

Use simple, plain terms that anyone taking the survey can understand.

If your goal is a disengaging survey, do the opposite and load it with complex questions.

3.3 Have Leading questions

Leading questions leave respondents confused or caught off guard, and the data they produce is skewed.

Leading questions are built on assumptions, and they push completion rates down.

In a restaurant survey, "Why do you like our Bread Toast?" is a leading question. It assumes the customer already likes your Bread Toast.

A better version is "Do you like our Bread Toast?", which is straightforward and makes no assumption.

Use leading questions if you want lower engagement, which no survey creator actually wants.

3.4 Have Inadequate Options

Multiple-option questions need enough response choices.

Asking "Do you like our Bread Toast?" with only "Yes" or "No" is inadequate in most cases. Some respondents may want to answer "Prefer not to say", so that should be an option too.

An "Other" option with a text box also helps. Respondents who want to say "A little salt needed" or "Should be a little spicier" can then answer in their own words. They keep taking the survey because they feel heard.

So provide adequate response options that cover the situations respondents might be in.

3.5 Use Many Open-ended questions

Open-ended questions produce detailed answers. Too many of them, though, lower engagement because open-ended questions take longer to answer.

More open-ended questions mean more time to finish the survey, which naturally reduces engagement.

One open-ended question at the end is usually safe. Research surveys can include more than one when the academic purpose calls for it.

Fill your survey with open-ended questions if you want lower engagement.

Test Your Knowledge

Key Takeaways

• Engaging surveys lead to higher response rates.
• Use interactive question types, progress indicators, and branding for engaging surveys.
• Have lengthy surveys & leading questions for creating disengaging surveys.

Keep learning: get tips to increase response rates, design more aesthetic surveys, and browse survey templates.

Congratulations! You have completed this lesson.