Real Life Online Business

Great Tips to Writing Effective Surveys

Writing surveys is easy; or is it? The truth is that creating surveys is easy but creating effective surveys is more difficult. The following twenty tips will help you write more effective surveys.

1. What is the survey’s purpose?

There are many reasons for conducting questionnaires. By correctly phrasing the questions and structuring the answers surveys can be used in a multitude of ways and for a variety of reasons. When designing a survey don’t lose sight of its purpose.

2. Title the survey

The title of the survey is an opportunity to instantly summarise a survey’s objective and encourage respondents to participate. Respondents need to invest time in completing the survey so you need to encourage them that their investment will be worthwhile.

3. Keep the survey as short as possible

Every question asked should be asked for a reason. Limit asking questions that will provide you with ‘nice to know’ information and instead concentrate on the ‘need to know’ questions.

4. Use plain English, avoid terminology and acronyms, be consistent and don’t ask questions that may result in ambiguous answers

Word the question carefully. If a question can be interpreted in more ways than one then there is a risk that any analysis of the survey results will be worthless or at the very least suspect.

5. Don’t have long questions

Try to use short sentences wherever possible. Long questions tend to cause respondents discomfort and can lead to respondents abandoning a survey.

6. Ask only one question at a time

Avoid confusing the respondent with a question like ‘Do you like football and golf?’

7. Do not influence the answer

Do not load the question. ‘Should irresponsible shop keepers who sell cigarettes to minors be prosecuted?’ is unlikely to have any value.

8. Make sure that the answer format used allows the respondent to answer the question being asked

Allow the respondent to answer how they really feel or they may be inclined to abandon the survey. As a last resort consider the benefit of including a “Can’t say”, “Don’t know” or similar response option.

9. While compiling your survey consider how you will want to analyse the results once the survey has been published

Appreciate that questions that allow for a free text open ended response, such as when asking the respondent for their comments, is likely to be difficult to score and/or summarised. Consider how the answers could be grouped. For example “Indicate your length of service?” - ‘less than 2 year’, ‘between 2 and 5 years’ and ‘more than 5′.

10. Try and ensure that the questionnaire flows

Group questions into clear categories as this will make it easier for the participants completing the survey.

11. Target your respondents carefully

In some cases you will want to target a specific group, in others a cross section. If you can’t easily control the respondents consider including questions/answers that will allow you to filter out respondents who don’t fit your target profile.

12. Provide a channel for your respondents to expand on their answers or make comments

Allowing the respondent to make additional comments will increase their satisfaction level and will also give valuable feedback on the specific questions and/or the survey as a whole. Remember that for large sample collections it may be difficult to analyse free text open ended responses.

13. If you are conducting a confidential survey ensure that your pledge for confidentiality is honoured

If you have assured respondents that the survey is to be confidential you need to ensure that the collated data is not shared with anyone or used for any other purpose. Confidentiality must be maintained at all times and any identifying information destroyed once the survey has finished.

14. Weigh up the advantages of allowing respondents to be anonymous or identifiable

If your respondents are to be anonymous then you will be unable to follow up specific complaints or match “pre” or “post” surveys. Allowing respondents to remain anonymous will however allow respondents to respond without possible peer pressure.

15. Consideration carefully the best response format

Maintaining a consistency in the format used for responses is good practice. When designing your survey keep in mind that when analyzing the data single selection radio buttons are easier to analyze than multiple selection check boxes. If a radio response format can be used do not use a check box format.

16. Provide the respondent with an estimate as to how much time the survey will take to complete

Respondent drop out can become a problem if the survey appears to be a stream of never ending questions. It is a good idea to give an indication as to how long the survey is likely to take so the respondents can choose the best time to complete the survey.

17. Provide respondents with the survey end date

Encourage your invited respondents to complete the survey as soon as possible but advise the respondents of the survey’s end date so that they have the opportunity to schedule the necessary time.

18. Test the survey

Before publishing a live survey publish a pilot survey to check for questions that are ambiguous or confusing and to confirm that the survey is aesthetically pleasing.

19. Before publishing the survey check the survey carefully

Check and then check again that a survey is grammatically correct and makes sense. If possible ask a colleague to check the survey before you publish, if you are unable to do this then take a break before checking again.

20. Remember to thank the respondent

Respondents invest their time when completing surveys and should therefore be thanked at the end of completing the survey or in a follow up letter. You may even want to consider incentives such as a prize draw or reward.

For more information please visit Survey Galaxy

Tags: advertising, customer services, employee surveys, employer, feedback, market research, marketing, Online surveys, promotion, questionnaires, satisfaction surveys

How Much Hosting Do You Need?

When shopping for web hosting people get in awe of how much space and bandwidth is available for rather cheap prices.  This can confuse many because they are not sure how much they actually need for their use.

Let us take a step back and see how much you actually need of both for your hosting needs.  After reading this you will be able to purchase a package that is inline in what you need.

First up is how big is your web site going to be.  At first your site is going to be smaller than you ever imagine.  I know you want to place video and graphics on your site.  But be realistic in web hosting first making those are harder than you can imagine and second you don’t want to make your website so big it is hard for people to download. Do not forget that everyone does not have fast access making it hard to load for many.  Your website should not be any larger than 500k.  This let you purchase web space in line with your needs.

The next question is the amount of visitors you will get.  A goal of 1,000 visitors would be plenty.  This is hard to do but can be done by many that are good in the field.  So if you have a 1,000 people a month visiting your site at 500k you can figure out the bandwidth you need for your web hosting. 
I’m assuming it is a lot less than you ever imagined.  You do not need to purchase larger packages when starting off.  You just need to get enough for the start and for some expansion for the first time.

For all your Search engine optimisation and hosting services

Tags: amount, hosting

Reverse Cell Phone Lookups - Bust a Cheating Spouse and Find the Owner of a Mobile Number

Nowadays the internet offers so many options to us to make life easier. With just a little typing on a keyboard and a few clicks of a mouse, we can literally strike up relationships with people all over the world. Through internet dating sites, it isn’t very hard to go from exchanging emails to actually talking on the telephone. But, how does someone know if the person on the other end really is who they say they are? The person called you and you have his or her phone number, but how is it possible to get details on the caller?

A quick first step to verifying that person’s information is to do a reverse phone number look up. Do a quick internet search, and you’ll find several websites that claim to provide a free reverse phone number look up, but it’s important to remember the old adage about getting what you pay for. The data you get from one of the many free reverse phone number lookup sites will be sketchy at best and nonexistent at worst.

Or, let’s say you have a spouse that you suspect is cheating on you. So you have an unknown phone number in your missed calls list or you found a phone number on a sheet of paper. Above all, you want to be dead certain you have good information before any accusations are made. Would you really want to trust the information you received on some free reverse phone number look up in such an important matter?

The cold, hard fact is, the free reverse phone directories have a very limited database they draw the data from. Their land line numbers are taken from local white pages that could, literally, be years out of date. The individual listed might hav ethat phone number or live at that address any longer. For cell phone numbers, you need to forget about it. One thing you need to know is that cell phone numbers are not listed in white pages, and thus cannot be found on free reverse phone number directories, because these only have access to landline number data.

If you want information you can trust, you must visit Reversephonedetective. With this site you can trace any phone number, whether land line or mobile, and verify the name and address of the number’s owner. Just think how easy it can be to put an end to any unwanted or harassing calls with this information. Reverse looking up a phone number is really easy.

But the benefits do not stop here. Members of reversephonedectective.com not only get unlimited access to reverse phone look ups, they also receive free people search tools that can make it easy to not only verify who might also live in the household of the phone number in question, but can also be very useful in looking up and reuniting with friends and relatives.

Always keep in mind that if you need information you can trust, never trust in free services.

Tags: free reverse cell phone directory, free reverse phone lookup, reverse phone, reverse phone directory, reverse phone look up, reverse phone lookup, reverse phone number, reverse phone number look up, reverse phone number lookup, reverse phone search