+13236381128
+15199002991
+61480040096
Book a Demo
TRY A SAMPLE SURVEY
en_US English
en_US English
+13236381128
+15199002991
+61480040096
en_US English

Mobile Surveys Best Practice

SHARE THE ARTICLE ON

MobIie Surveys Best Practice Mobile Surveys Best Practice
Table of Contents

What is a Mobile Survey?

A mobile survey is one that is completed by respondents using a mobile device, such as a smartphone or tablet. Before launching your survey, optimize it for mobile users to ensure a positive user experience. Mobile-optimized surveys will adapt to a smaller screen and be built for touch-screen devices. In mobile optimized surveys, the text is bigger for better seeing, and the action click buttons are easier to use.

Get started today.
Request a free 15 min product consultation call.

BOOK A DEMO

What Factors Contribute to a Successful Mobile Survey?

The key to a successful smartphone survey is making it simple for consumers to read and react.

Questions that are brief and straightforward

Because there is little room on a mobile device, questions should be brief, succinct, and easy to comprehend.

Simple text

Questions should be easy to read as well as easy to understand.

Touch-screen capability

In 2020, there will be 3.5 billion smartphone owners globally, up from 2.5 billion in 2016. Because smartphones have touch screens, your survey must be touch-screen ready if you want a high response rate.

It is simple to choose your replies

The touch screen should be sensitive enough to allow you to scroll and pick an answer with ease.

There is no screen clutter, such as huge logos

With smaller screens, there is a greater demand for fewer distractions. A tidy page will keep people interested and focused.

Before releasing your survey, test it on a variety of devices

The poll will be tested to verify that it appears and performs properly on all devices, from desktop to mobile.

Keep the number of questions to a minimum

If someone has received an invitation to your survey and is on their phone, you have most likely just interrupted them. In an ideal scenario, keep your questionnaire to 5–10 questions.

Reduce the quantity of open-ended inquiries

These take longer to finish. And, because today’s phone users want convenience, it’s best to keep the survey’s length to a minimum.

Image dimensions – both physical and file sizes

If your image is wider than a portrait phone, the responder will have to scroll left and right to finish the form. If your image is too huge, it may create page loading delays if the respondent has a poor signal.

Don’t go overboard with page breaks

If you have 10 questions and 10-page breaks, you are requesting an additional 20 finger pushes. Mobile phones are built for scrolling.

In your response list, avoid using columns

It takes up important space, which means the answer text will most likely wrap numerous times. Smartphone users feel at ease with scrolling in 2021. 

Avoid using superfluous drop-down menus for your replies

On iOS devices, the respondent must touch three times to offer their answer, which consumes significant time.

Voxco offers a complete suite of tools for market research

Get Market Research Toolkit

How to use Mobile Surveys?

Create surveys that collect the information you need from your audience while they are on the go, such as when they enter your store or restaurant, stroll through your event display booth, or wait in your business lobby.

Increased response rates: Increase survey response rates by providing surveys to mobile devices at the time of your audience’s experience or connection. We provide a wide range of question kinds. To make replying easier, use single-choice, multiple-choice, and open-ended questions. Ask your connections to publish, tweet, or otherwise distribute your poll with their social or professional networks to broaden its reach. In order to motivate people to take your survey, include an incentive or reward.

Increased consumer involvement: Use mobile polls and surveys to make the consumer experience more enjoyable. Is your breakfast establishment well-known for its pancakes? With a tablet-based multi-user poll, encourage guests to offer their ideas for unique flapjack specials at the checkout counter. Post the results on your social media platforms or Twitter feed, award the winner with a free pancake breakfast, and establish a fun, recurring campaign that increases consumer interest, involvement, and loyalty.

Live crowd response: Is your CEO giving a controversial speech at an event? Are you launching a fantastic new product? Poll your audience to obtain a rapid feel of how the messages are being received, and then utilize that information to organize follow-up press efforts or influencer engagements.

Continuous improvement and customer satisfaction: Do you invite your consumers or clients to fill out a satisfaction survey after they’ve left your business or event and gone on with their lives? Instead, right before they depart, provide them your mobile device and urge them to remark on their experience. If they decline, inform them that they may do your survey later online or on their mobile device. Download the results to your own spreadsheets for future reference.

Wondering what will be the cost of conducting survey research using Voxco?

Get a free quote

Best Practices for Mobile Survey

  1. Use mobile-friendly survey software

Mobile optimization implies that the programme recognizes the device and screen size utilized and modifies the survey layout accordingly. Because not every survey software is suited for mobile data gathering, make sure you choose the finest software available.

2. Keep it brief

Shorter surveys are usually preferable, but consumers who use mobile devices have less patience for extensive, time-consuming questionnaires than those who use desktops. Limit both the number of questions and the number of words per question. If you can’t obtain all of your information in one survey, divide it into several.

3. Avoid using the Grid

Large, matrix-type questions have long been a hallmark of marketing research. However, studies have demonstrated that they are not the ideal instruments for improving data quality and respondent experience. If they are difficult to answer on a computer, they will be incredibly difficult to finish on a smaller screen. Simply avoid using matrix queries. Separate them into discrete questions and replies.

4. Avoid asking open-ended inquiries

One disadvantage of internet research is the inability to examine respondents’ open-ended questions. Respondents to internet polls sometimes provide minimal, even cryptic text responses. If respondents are hesitant to answer open-ended questions on their computers, you can guarantee they will be much more hesitant to answer open-ended questions on phones. 

5. Maintain the vertical position

Because smartphones cannot scroll vertically, arrange your comments in columns rather than rows.

6. Images and videos should be avoided

When creating a smartphone survey, consider the amount of screen real estate available as well as download times. Both of them are in limited supply, so use them wisely. Even a typical visual like a logo may be too much for a mobile survey.

7. How many questions are there on each page? 

We used to limit the number of questions per page to one. Now, in a well-designed smartphone survey, you may include many questions on the page — as long as the responder does not have to scroll. Aiming for two or three questions per screen is probably optimal. 

7. Avoid using progress bars

While progress bars are useful for online surveys, they simply do not fit on a small screen. (If you make your survey brief, your responders will not see the progress bar at all.)

8. Avoid using drop-down menus. 

Drop down menus are difficult for mobile users to operate without selecting one of the alternatives mistakenly. Again, make it simple for your mobile response by placing your (few) selections in a column.

9. Test, test, and test some more

Test your survey on a computer, tablet, and mobile phone to confirm that it works properly. To ensure that the programme recognizes the device, test it with both iPhone and Android phones. Check that all of the questions and response categories can be viewed without having to scroll, that the questions download fast, and that the replies can be selected.

Advantages of mobile surveys

  1. Excellent sample representation

One of the primary benefits of conducting surveys via mobile devices is the opportunity to contact a wide range of people. When compared to other platforms, the phone provides access to representative samples of various ages, conditions, and socioeconomic levels. Access to computer use is a genuine barrier to communicating with all users. For starters, not everyone has access to a computer, and even if they have, they must set aside time to do the questionnaire. It is usually simpler to find that moment between tasks while using a mobile device.

2. Quicker Results

Who takes even five minutes away from their phone these days? In fact, mobile phones are the major source of internet for many individuals, in addition to the day-to-day capabilities on which we rely. So, if marketers want to contact consumers quicker and get insights faster, the trick is to reach individuals in their wallets. With mobile surveys, consumers may complete the survey whenever they choose, without having to wait for a computer to be available. Data may be gathered early, which expedites decision-making.

3. Precision in the Present

Creating mobile-only research provides for quick findings that are precisely timed with real-time activity. Interaction through mobile allows firms to send out surveys at certain times when customers are most likely to be engaged. A survey on pizza consumption, for example, may be sent out late on a Friday afternoon, research on cleaning product usage could be sent out on a Sunday mid-morning, or a study on multimedia consumption in the family could be launched on a Saturday evening.

4. Shorter sentences produce better results.

Cell phone surveys are shorter and more to the point. Brevity increases the willingness of the sample to finish the study, allowing for higher quality data gathering. In fact, research has shown that tests lasting roughly seven minutes produce the highest quality results. To that aim, insights teams must collaborate to create surveys that capture the most important information in the shortest amount of time.

5. Access to Additional Information

Mobile phones enable the combination of stated findings with extra user data that is more easily available thanks to technological advancements. For example, while writing a review, customers may scan a purchase receipt with their phone camera to submit the last purchase data or pinpoint their location. Users can choose to share this information when it is most relevant and convenient for them.

Conclusion: It is critical to adapt a survey for mobile devices so that survey participants can read, interpret, and navigate the survey easily.

People may find it difficult to utilize a survey if it is not adapted for mobile devices, and as a result, they may likely close the survey without answering. This compromises your response rate and has a negative influence on your feedback project.

Supercharge your survey insights with Voxco

Try Sample Survey

Explore all the survey question types
possible on Voxco

Try a Sample Survey

Explore Voxco Survey Software

MobIie Surveys Best Practice Mobile Surveys Best Practice

+ Omnichannel Survey Software 

+ Online Survey Software 

+ CATI Survey Software 

+ IVR Survey Software 

+ Market Research Tool

+ Customer Experience Tool 

+ Product Experience Software 

+ Enterprise Survey Software 

Get a Free Demo

Read more