We receive or are forwarded around a dozen online survey links a week, so it’s fair to say we see a wide variety of surveys and can make a solid judgement as to how we compare.

One of the main distinctions we see is how they look.  The design, the visual, the brand and identity.

We can’t believe that online survey products can look as bad as they do.  Let me give you an example.

Just last week we picked up an online survey link through Twitter asking us to take part in a survey relating to financial services.  Nothing wrong with that.  We followed the URL link and there in glorious bogey green (sorry but there really is no other way to describe it) was the survey.

For once we’ll ignore the content, instead we’ll focus purely on how it looks.

Firstly.  No brand identity.  None at all.  Just an awful shade of green.  And a darker shade of green on a top menu asking you to exit the online survey if you wish.

Black text.  All in arial.  Fine.  But nothing inspiring.

The text and headers all stretched across the page making it quite hard to follow the options and the questions on the page went on and on and on.  We’ve found people taking part in surveys prefer the questions to fit the length of a page as near as possible and then click to the next page.

And finally a simple microsoft grey “done” box with a mismatched font to the body text.

So why do we think that’s not good enough?

Firstly…. if you were writing to a client…. would you run off a black and white photocopy of your letter head … maybe on tracing paper or something equally random?  Would you be happy for the printer to be skewed so the printout is wonky or smudged?  Would you be happy if the page clipped the margins or ran on through the footer?

We hope not.  We all want our impressions to be good in the eyes of those who see us.  We want our letters to be accurate and professional.  We want e-mails to be spellchecked.  We want our brochures to be glossy and in our brand imagery.  All in all, we don’t want people thinking less of us.

So why….. I mean really, think about this….. why…. is it acceptable to send an online survey communication to hundred’s if not thousands of people that looks as bad as the letter example above?

The simple answer is “it isn’t” and the reason some people do is due to a lack of awareness of alternatives mixed with the fact many people just don’t think about the key issues before pressing the button to send a survey.

This is what we put at the heart of designing a survey template for a client at Clarity.

Firstly…. who’s the survey for?  Is it a young audience, an old audience, do they know you, or is it a new group of people?  All of these things impact on the structure of the survey and how we make it look.  Think about font size alone.

Secondly…. whitelabel (we use this when the client feels their presence would distort true results and opinions) or brand as the client?  If it’s the latter we ensure the survey is as good as (and in some cases better than) their website.  We look at their materials that clients would see and we wash that through the survey.

And we’re not talking a simple logo in a top corner.  We integrate images, logo’s, borders, font types, symbols, buttons, shading, spacing and everything needed to make the design the best it can possibly be.  Our client survey templates take around a day to put together (and once we’ve built the design template for a client, we don’t have to incur that investment again).

Imagine this.  Your biggest client clicks on the link and see’s a bogey green background.  No mention of your company.  The survey design doesn’t fit with your brand identity they are used to.  The survey language doesn’t fit the tone of the discussions they’ve experienced with you face to face.

You could easily forgive them for thinking it was spam or a phishing survey couldn’t you?  So what impact would that have?

Twofold.  A drop in survey response rate.  A drop in perception of your brand image and potentially professionalism.

So the next time you think about running a survey, pause, think it through and consider the following point…..

Would sending this survey create a more negative perception than it would positive?

This entry was posted on Monday, January 25th, 2010 at 9:53 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.