Daniel Courtenay, Director, Product Operations, Communispace told attendees during his session, “Transitioning from Desktop to Mobile – Lessons Learned,” at last week’s Confirmit Community Conference held in Orlando, Florida that mobile has changed the way his company communicates with its members.
As a result, Comunispace has changed the way it writes and fields surveys. Answering long, text heavy surveys are always a challenge for people to complete when they are seated and comfortable, and they are even more challenging to complete when people are on the go.
“We were faced with the challenge of adapting to a new way to write compelling surveys that meet the research needs of our clients,” Courtenay said. “The result has been increased participation in our communities and more detailed, in the moment responses which allow our clients to make decisions quicker in order to help facilitate faster growth.”
Courtenay said that nearly 40% of global Internet traffic is mobile-based now.
“It’s a staggering number,” he said, “and it’s expected to be near 45% by the end of the year. We’ve decided to build every survey as though we want it to be taken on a mobile device.”
How do we make them better?
“Long surveys are frustrating,” Courtenay said. “A pet project of mine was figuring out where people are dropping off. For the mobile user, it was question 12. Desktop users hang in for 19-20 questions. We made a philosophical change as to what mobile friendly means. Your survey has to be as concise as possible. We don’t just ask people questions for the sake of asking them.”
Courtenay said in Communispace’s online communities, this has been a huge point of emphasis.
“We had to focus on this and dedicate ourselves to this,” he said. “We had to teach people there’s a new way of doing this. It was a struggle. We had to change mindsets and we had to start from within.”
Courtenay said his company found that asking a lot of survey questions is perceived differently if they are broken up.
“We have to make sure the responses lead to insight which leads to impact,” he said. “We started tracking usage and who was logging in with mobile devices. We said that we’d ask them more survey questions than we’ve ever asked before, but we’re going to break it up in sections and they don’t do them all at once.”
The response?
“We had 127 out of 127 respondents answer all the questions,” he said. “Then we tried a POS experiment. In that moment, customers answered five questions, which was real-time data. Clients turned around and used this data instantly. People all said yes and said it was easy and fun. It’s like a journal, a mobile diary.”
The smaller the survey, the more quickly people get in and out, the better it is for the end user, Courtenay said.
“We’re still learning,” he said. “Twelve is the number that works for us. You can’t get rid of the 25-question survey or 30-question survey. But you can see if this is something I can break up to make sure you’re hitting what you want. Don’t be afraid to fail. Don’t be afraid to throw surveys out there that are short.”