You know the feeling don’t you? You go on a site (often a big company, Sky, O2 and the like) and before your eyes have even attuned to what you’re looking at…. ping!

There it is. A grey or white box, flush bang in the middle of your screen asking for your thoughts on the web experience.

Allow me a little Victor Meldrewness here, but wouldn’t it be ever so nice if they’d let you get into the actual site and experience it before they pestered you and disrupted you from what you were trying to do in the first place?!?!?!

“Please tell us your experience of….” I can’t… you won’t let me get to that bit yet!!!

Ahem, beg my pardon but I do feel better now!

It all boils down to purpose though doesn’t it? What it is you want to know, how you want to find it out and how you engage with the audience to understand their views and feelings.

Web surveys are just the wrong solution but the right intent.

Trying to capture views at the time of experience while the user is on their website and “engaged” with that company. The slight problem, they aren’t there to complete a survey, certainly not one that is clearly based on lipservice for a few nominal tick box questions to keep the ISO bods happy.

The customer is there to do their business, find some information out or try and contact the company. The company needs to know what the browser is thinking and experiencing but it’s the wrong time to do it.

A little time needs to pass, the customer needs to be uninterrupted, otherwise the survey process will be an irritant and actually skew the message you’ll receive back.

Our suggestion. if you want to understand what your customers think of your website. Don’t go down the pop up survey route. It’s up there in terms of irritation with spam mail, traffic wardens and people in shops with a clipboard who say “Can I ask you a question?” (No I’m here to shop, not handle stupid transparent sales pitches).

Think of the impact on your customers and clients before you survey them.

The point of a survey is to understand, not to sell and certainly not to alienate.