Surveys: the long and the short of it 11 May, 2006
In one of those sublime serendipitous moments, I was invited to take the UK Internet User Monitor survey by another website just as I was finishing the previous post. It’s a great example of a long questionnaire that’s a data gathering marathon. Needless to say, I didn’t complete it.
Although the authors claimed it would only take 15 minutes, I’d already answered about 15 questions when I encountered this beast –
– and bailed out. Note that I’m only 20% of the way through and am being presented with 21 questions, each with several possible combinations. And completing this page took the progress bar to 22%!
True to their philosophy , the guys at 37 Signals provide a great example of a short survey that packs a punch. I like their, ‘What one thing would you remove?’ and ‘What one thing would you add?’ questions (although the actual phrasing they use is a little confusing).
It’s not difficult to remember. ‘Shorter is better. Shorter is better.’ Less time, less data, more responses, more action.