The Value Of Asking Your Customers To Fill In Surveys And Questionnaires

If you take a look around the internet you will notice that some websites have surveys or questionnaires for their visitors to fill in and submit to them. The other thing you will notice is these websites are far outweighed by the ones that don’t bother to do this.That’s a shame, because when it comes to web marketing any ethical advantage you can get over your competition is a good one, and you can glean a lot of knowledge and information from a single, well designed survey.In this sense it doesn’t matter whether a website is brand new or it has been around for many years: there are always improvements that can be made and the more you know and understand your audience – the very people who are visiting your site – the better you will be able to serve them.Webmasters use surveys and questionnaires for lots of different reasons. Sometimes they may simply ask people what they think of their site and invite comments and suggestions for the future. In fact, a simple question like this could be permanently integrated into the design of a site – either by requesting answers and opinions by email or by having an interactive multiple choice box on the site which automatically updates with the results so far whenever someone makes their choice.In this sense this kind of interaction with a website’s visitors serves as an excellent way to draw them into the website and encourage them to have their say. People like to give their opinions and if it means they stay on your site that bit longer, you could end up with a lot more people visiting a lot more pages as a result.Surveys and questionnaires can also help you to shape your site in the future. It is often difficult to see which areas of your site are working well and which ones aren’t, and by encouraging your visitors to give you the answers you can more accurately plan the direction of your site in the months to come.But there is also the problem of whether people will actually spend the time to answer the questions you have. A key point here is to make sure your questionnaire is kept short; more people can also be enticed to take part by the promise of a freebie for them to download straightaway. This can be done with or without the need for them to offer their email address, but if their details can be obtained then it is another way to help your website marketing campaign in the future.In short, there are several ways in which a survey or questionnaire can help in the ongoing development of a website. The real key to success is to plan ahead and take the time to carefully work out what you need to ask – otherwise the opportunity to improve your site by using this method can be all too easily lost.