Contrary to popular belief, surveys don't have to be boring.
However, most of the time, they are.
Why does this happen? We could do a forum with specialists for two full days… and even so the conclusions would probably not satisfy us all!
Nevertheless, we can offer you some short answers: surveys are daughters of the academic and scientific world. In that sense, they are not originally intended to entertain.
Despite this, the online world expanded the possibilities of incorporating playful and narrative techniques that make the process of completing a form more enjoyable.
This way, except in certain cases (academic research, medical studies) a survey can be valuable to you in terms of its research objectives while offering a pleasant experience for users.
“Fun surveys” are excellent opportunities to increase the response rate and maintain interest in the survey. The key is using the proper language, tone and design, for which online survey platforms are an excellent ally for.
Do you wanna know “tricks'' to make your online forms entertaining? Next we will introduce you to some tips that will be of great utility when thinking of your online surveys as “fun surveys”.
1. Use humor
Add humorous questions between the standard survey questions, or put your standard survey questions in a humorous way (yes, they are two totally different alternatives!).
Let's suppose you are answering a survey about your experience on an e-commerce website and between the questions about the product, the shipment, delivery and the after sales service one emerges asking: Would you rather be watching a documentary about Cristinano Ronaldo on Netflix now?
The question can be funny or simply cause a slight smile, but it wont go unnoticed. It will relax the user, pull him out of the monotony and prepare him to continue responding.
So we recommend using a 4-1 ratio; 4 serious questions for every 1 humorous one in the survey. This allows the respondent to have fun with the questions in your survey without downplaying the most important questions.
The other option to add humor is through serious questions. This will keep the focus on what you want to make your audience know, but makes it more attractive to those who respond to your online survey. It is a widely used resource in social media polls and basically consists on including ridiculous options in multiple-choice questions.
For example, if you want to ask people “who was liable for the goal they scored against our team?”, you'll be able to offer several options to the user: “the goalkeeper”, “the defendant”, or “the ball doesn't fold”. The third is just ridiculous and no one expects it to be taken seriously. It is included to relax and surprise the respondents.
2. Gamify your online forms to entertain your audience
Online surveys are a very fertile ground to apply gamification (playful elements), and provide a more pleasant experience for the respondents.
A recommendation to bear in mind when developing your next gamify survey is to, for example, use jump logic.
Do you know this resource? It's a trick (or a hack) for the user to jump directly to a predetermined page, question or element of your survey based on their answers to previous questions. Each user travels a different path, the survey is more customized and their experience more pleasant.
To apply this tool it is necessary to define a set of rules or conditions, which will or will not be met depending on the responses previously given by the respondent.
3. Give scores for each user to compete with others
Some online survey platforms have a calculator or score function, which is used to apply values to responses. For what could it be used? Strictly speaking, the calculator has several applications but what interests us to make the online form more entertaining has to do with assigning different scores to each response.
This will generate a dynamic through which the respondent will add or subtract points during the course of the form. In that sense, it can be useful to generate a real competition or race between participants in which the scores can be compared with those of others and rated according to their result.
It also works to generate trivia in which, through a binary score, “1” corresponds to those correct answers and “0” to those incorrect answers.
This way, the calculator can be combined with the jump logic to display different messages to the different answers and make the user's point of contact with the brand more interactive.
4. Add GIFs
These elements have taken a major role in digital communication, we see them daily in social networks, emails and WhatsApp, to name a few. Surveys are no exception.
By using GIFs you will be able to create a much entertaining survey which will make the user's experience more bearable and pleasant, forgetting the traditional and boring surveys.
With Survey Kiwi you can simply upload GIFs from GIPHY in just a few clicks through the existing integration, here is an explanation on how to do it.
All these elements will not only make your surveys more entertaining, but also help you achieve better results. At the end of the day your main goal is to obtain more information to make better decisions, right?