The Beginner's Guide to Online Survey Technology By Frank Lucer At Isnare.com Ezine Articles

Surveying an audience online is far different than doing so offline. With the plethora of tools and software at your disposal, you can create a questionnaire that has a fluid quality. For example, you can allow respondents to jump past questions and sections that are irrelevant to them. When appropriate, you can dig further into areas based upon the responses given. You can even use the technology to reduce the level of bias in your results.

By taking advantage of the robust features that are now available, you can design personalized surveys that increase your response rate and reduce your abandonment rate. Below, we'll take a brief tour through three online survey features that you may not yet realize are at your disposal.

What Is Pipe Logic?

To understand pipe logic, it's worth revisiting how products were sold decades ago. Before the internet changed the way in which we work, play, and communicate, many companies sold their products by mail order. Like today, the challenge was to increase an audience's response rate. When "mail merge" debuted, it changed the industry. A form letter sent to tens of thousands of people could be personalized by using data fields and their associated tags.

Pipe logic works in a similar manner. You can use variables within the software to personalize your questionnaire for each respondent. But, it has an advantage over mail merge. Instead of relying upon data that is already held in a database, piping allows you to customize questions based on answers provided on the questionnaire. For example, an answer to question #4 can be used to customize question #7.

What Is Branch Logic?

Consider a paper questionnaire. Respondents are forced to read every question, even if a particular item is irrelevant to them. What's more, there is little flexibility for the surveyor to follow a specific path of questions based upon the responses given.

For example, suppose you survey your market about their buying activity at your website. To that end, you ask them to respond "yes" or "no" with regard to whether they have ever bought an item from your site. You might follow that question by asking why they have never purchased something. Those who answered "yes" to the first item would not need to respond to the second item. The second one is irrelevant.

Branch logic lets you personalize your surveys and direct respondents down "branches" of questions based on their previous answers. For example, those who have purchased an item could be led down one branch of questioning while those who have not could be led down another. This is a powerful feature for digging further into your audience's behaviors.

How Does Skip Logic Work?

Skip logic is the easiest to understand and implement. In its simplest form, it lets the respondent skip items that are irrelevant based on their previous responses. Using our example above, a respondent who answered that he or she purchased a product could skip the question that followed (which asked why they have never purchased in the past). This feature streamlines your questionnaire.

Using Technology To Design Robust Questionnaires

Paper surveys are still powerful tools that can be used to gain access to valuable information about your customers, employees, or target market. That said, online surveys place a number of helpful technologies into your hands. By using pipe, branch, and skip logic, you can design your surveys to better engage respondents. That encourages people to complete your questionnaire rather than abandon it due to frustration or boredom.

Most online survey vendors will offer all three features within their software. Some also provide tutorials that will help you get started using them. Over time, you'll find that pipe, branch, and skip logic can help you maximize the data your surveys collect.

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