Tips to Help Increase Your Survey Response Rate

There are minor details one may not always think of when designing surveys. HCP would like to share some of the things that we are doing to help increase survey response rates:

• Have an incentive—it is a way to show you respect your respondents’ time.
• Keep it as short as you can! Key word “can”—make sure the questions are simple, easy to understand, and minimally “taxing” on the respondents.
• Stay relevant—keep questions on-point. It is tempting for clients to want to ask everything in one survey but keep themes to a minimum and split content into multiple surveys if length becomes an issue.
• Enable a progress bar—this tool is very valuable to the respondent to see how much they have committed and how much more they have to go.
• Keep it easy on the eyes—sometimes matrix questions can be overwhelming. There are spacing features you can adjust to help make your survey look more attractive, less daunting and easier to navigate.
• Simplify your language— now is not the time to use internal jargon or acronyms; speak the language of the people you want to hear from who don’t live in your world of shorthand.
• Make sure your survey flows—if content is in an agreeable order, people will stay engaged.

Remember, these are just some extra things to do. Make sure you have proofed and tested your survey before it goes live! You can always visit different survey platforms’ help centers to learn more. Here are a couple we recommend: https://help.surveymonkey.com/ , https://www.qualtrics.com/support/ , and https://community.surveygizmo.com/ .