Business History Books » Business Consulting » Can anybody share the experience of running a survey online?
Can anybody share the experience of running a survey online?
Question:
Are you looking to find out about the attitudes of your visitors or a more general sampling? If it’s just people that currently visit your site, then that’s the place to advertise the poll. If you want a larger sample, then buy a mailing list. They are much more reliable than online "targeted" lists (you will be branded a spammer) if you use them. It really depends on your objectives. Do you want to build awareness of your site as well? Is a self-selected pool a bad thing, necessarily? Be careful about what you ask for, in terms of personal and demographic information. Do not make information "mandatory" for submissions of surveys. Have a good database set-up to store your data. Include an "opt-in" email newsletter subscription (even if you don’t have one set up yet), getting permission to email in the future could help your brand and awareness building efforts in the future. Also, use javascript to avoid multiple answerers. Some people get their kicks by answering more than once (especially if you have an offer attached to the survey (which will boost your responses and yield more accurate demographic information)). Just some things from past experience. Also, if you conduct the survey, remember to KISS. BOL, Pete Fund Spot Published by Peter J. Stoermer http://www.fundspot.com Helping Investors. One LINK at a time.
:Has anyone reading this newsgroup been through the experience of running :a survey online? : :I’m working on business project and I wrote a survey to mesure whether :the concept could fly or not. If you are a mail order orchid vendor (or :just curious) have a look at :http://www.maximage-prod.com/orchidsurvey.html . : :I’m worried that if I simply annonce the survey on newsgroups like :rec.gardens.orchids, the self-selection of respondants will skew the :results and that if I email invitations to vendors I’ll be accused of :spamming. Should I spend money on snail-mail ? I already travelled 600 :km to go to an orchid show to test it live. : :Any thoughts, pointers, or suggestions would be appreciated.
Response:
>Has anyone reading this newsgroup been through the experience of running >a survey online?
Yes, although not a very formal one. Take a look at: http://www.uninova.com/cgi-bin/survey.cgi (That’s not a promotional link, btw, it’s just a silly one-question poll.) >I’m working on business project and I wrote a survey to mesure whether >the concept could fly or not. If you are a mail order orchid vendor (or >just curious) have a look at
Ok, I took a look at your survey. If you don’t mind, here is my review of it… Things you did right: * I like the coloring used to distinguish the various sections. * You seemed to take into account that not all things would apply to all respondents, which is always nice to see. Things you might consider: * When you tell somebody they can jump down to a later question, you might give them a hyperlink to get there. This can be done with the <A NAME> tag. * You are not using any reliable method of ensuring that each person can only answer the survey more than once. This means that a person could answer the survey multiple times, invalidating your data. To my regret, I’ve found no valid way of ensuring one vote per person without having people identify themselves, which most people will be hesitant to do and which also isn’t 100% accurate because people can falsify their name. You can make it 100% by asking for an e-mail address and sending a thank-you note to all addresses, and removing responses for e-mail addresses that bounce — but getting people to give you their e-mail address will be even more difficult! (Something to thank the spammers for.) >I’m worried that if I simply annonce the survey on newsgroups like >rec.gardens.orchids, the self-selection of respondants will skew the >results and that if I email invitations to vendors I’ll be accused of >spamming.
Yes on both accounts. Unfortunately, I don’t think you can have a valid survey online that doesn’t end up with the self-selection problem — the only way to get past that is to select the respondent, which can’t be done online without essentially spamming those you wish to hear from. In summary, I would say that the results of an online survey are questionable at best and should not be used as a basis for business decisions — at least, not without some method of validation. For more details on the problems with statistics from a Web page, see: http://www.uninova.com/www_info.html (That is not a promotional page, it is a preamble to an academic paper that was accepted for presentation at the 1997 meeting of the Western Decision Sciences Institute.) This may not be what you wanted to hear, but hopefully it will help anyway. For professional consulting to maximize the value of the Internet for your business, point your browser to: http://www.uninova.com/pic.html For Internet marketing help, visit: http://www.uninova.com/chime.html
Response:
[Mod: Posted to misc.business.marketing.moderated also.] Hello fellow entrepreneurs, Has anyone reading this newsgroup been through the experience of running a survey online? I’m working on business project and I wrote a survey to mesure whether the concept could fly or not. If you are a mail order orchid vendor (or just curious) have a look at http://www.maximage-prod.com/orchidsurvey.html . I’m worried that if I simply annonce the survey on newsgroups like rec.gardens.orchids, the self-selection of respondants will skew the results and that if I email invitations to vendors I’ll be accused of spamming. Should I spend money on snail-mail ? I already travelled 600 km to go to an orchid show to test it live. Any thoughts, pointers, or suggestions would be appreciated. Yves Poirier Web Developper