No matter how well you distribute your survey, if the survey is poorly designed you are not going to receive the responses and data you desire. SoGoSurvey’s Survey Design function has incredible detail when putting together the aesthetics of a survey, so luckily you can have both a fashionable and functional survey. In order to keep a good balance between fashion and function here are a couple of things to keep in mind when designing the visual settings of your survey.
Color Coordination
You can combine any color you can think of on SoGoSurvey’s Survey Design platform, and this allows for some incredible survey customization options at your disposable! If you want the colors of the survey to be reflective of your brand, you have that freedom! Every business knows that brand consistency is important, and with SoGoSurvey you can do that. But remember when combining colors when designing your survey, make sure it’s legible. Yellow and blue might work well together for some outfits, but if you have bright yellow words with a light blue background it will be difficult to read the question. Contrasting the words of the survey to the background will make your survey pop rather than flop!
Flow
This deals more with the flow of your survey rather than appearance of it, but you want the survey to make sense. You don’t want questions jumping all over the place: you want it to have a flow. I like to look at each page of a survey the same way an author looks at a chapter of a book. Each chapter flows into the next one. Having questions jump around then jumping back to something else can be disorienting, both for a reader and a survey participant. You want each question to have a sequence, and feel like it isn’t all over the place. If the survey is all over the place, participants will get frustrated (rather than motivated) when taking your survey. If it doesn’t make sense to you, it definitely won’t make sense to your participants.
Keep it concise
Keep it simple is a common saying, and that’s because it’s good practice. When I write blogs, I find myself getting too wordy and having too cut back on what I wrote. The same goes for writing questions for your survey: keep it simple and concise! The way you write survey questions is important, so make sure makes sure each question is to the point and asks exactly what you want. If you do that rather than using colorful, but unnecessary language, you’ll survey will more than likely retain more of your participants and you’ll get the feedback you need.
Conclusion
I’ve written about how important presentation is, and it isn’t much different when you think about it. If you have a survey that is difficult to read, either from the colors or the flow, you’ll lose more participants than you naturally would have. Remember to have the colors make it so the survey pops and represents your brand accurately. Having your logo at the top of the page of the survey is a great place to start! Making sure your survey looks good and makes sense sound like a no-brainer, but it’s easy to get lost in the details.
If you want to learn more about common survey design mistakes — and how to avoid them! — you’ll want to check out this post next.