It is well known the getting a high response rate from surveys is difficult. One way to get around this is to place questions that are important to you on forms that people will need to fill out. One such place is your membership form. Another area is the online registration form.
The registration form is a great place to get answers for critical data such as demographics. The registrant will already be entering personal information, so asking additional personal information in this area will already seem somewhat natural. Here are some tips to get the data you need on your online registration form.
Place the “survey” questions on the same screen as where you collect the registration information. If you put it on a separate screen, it will appear as a survey to the registrant’s mind, and they will be less forthcoming.- Keep the survey questions to a minimum. Five seems to be the magic – not too little and not too many. One advantage of restricting the number of questions is that it makes you, the planner, think long and hard about what data is actually important.
- Too many questions will also annoy the registrant. In the worst case, he or she may actually abandon the registration form and just mail in a paper form – creating more work for you. I’ve actually seen this happen!
- Related to all of this is careful consideration of what questions are required or not. If you make the questions required, then consider the previous two bullets. If you want to make all the questions mandatory, do everything you can on the form to make the question clear and choosing the correct response easy.
With this general strategy in place, now read about 5 Tips for Writing Effective Event Survey Questions.
