How to Create a Survey Using a Free Online Tool?

Nastja Slak

By Nastja Slak

25 Feb 2020

Learn how to create an effective online survey using free tools with these four essential tips. We cover setting clear goals, keeping surveys concise, ensuring clarity for respondents, and maintaining question relevance.

Creating an online survey is easy with the right tool. Tips on how to create a survey using a free online tool will help you make a good free online survey that will bring you useful results.

Online surveying allows you to decide today to conduct research, and tomorrow you will already have useful results. If, of course, you have approached the creation of an online survey correctly. We have prepared some starting points that will help you create a good free online survey.

While creating an online survey with the right tool is truly simple, you need to pay much more attention to the content preparation of the survey. Thoughtfulness and knowledge of tricks for preparing an effective survey are invaluable for obtaining useful results. Asking the wrong questions or the right questions at the wrong time will not yield useful results. Therefore, the right approach to creating online surveys is extremely important. We have prepared four tips that will help you create a good free online survey.

1. Set a Goal

Before you start, consider what the goal of your research is. What do you want to find out with the survey? Why do you want to know this? Do you want to increase customer satisfaction? Simplify the purchasing process? Launch a new product to market? Check general opinion about something? A clear goal will help you formulate relevant questions that will give you useful answers. Omit questions that are not related to the goal from the survey.

2. Keep the Online Survey as Short as Possible

It is very important that your survey is short! Everyone lacks time, and if you send out a survey that takes half an hour to complete, you will get very few responses. Instead, opt for a short survey with 3 to 5 good questions. The response rate will be incomparably higher, and the results will be just as useful, if not more so. You will find out what your goal is. How do you judge how many questions are too many? Put yourself in the shoes of the respondent and open your survey – would you complete it?

3. Be Friendly to the Respondent

Do not use terms that the respondent will not understand. Ask a question that there is no doubt your target audience for the survey will understand. Also, include at least one open-ended question in the survey. This will give the respondent the opportunity to write their honest opinion (without influencing them with possible answers), and you will gain useful insights through these answers. Avoid questions and answers that are "misleading" – that cause the respondent to lean towards an answer they would not otherwise choose.

4. All Questions Must Be Relevant

There are relevant and also inappropriate questions you can ask depending on your goal. You cannot ask someone who has just come into contact with you if they would recommend you to friends or acquaintances. It makes no sense to ask someone who doesn't watch TV how they would rate a new gardening show. The logical structure of surveys is very useful in this regard. This means that the answer to a question affects the further course of the survey. If someone doesn't watch TV, they can skip the question about rating the new show. Not only can they, but they must skip it. Using logic will ensure that all questions the respondent receives are relevant to them. So. Now you know all 4 tips for preparing a good online survey. It's time to put your knowledge into practice and create your own survey.