Let's be honest: If we ask users about a product or a service to elaborate a list of their favorite activities, the answer “Complete an online survey sharing my experience” will probably not appear on the top rankings.
At the same time, as we have pointed out on several occasions, the data provided by online surveys allows companies to improve the consumer experience and is extremely valuable.
Incentives, that is, prizes, discounts or benefits, for completing the online survey are a way to motivate users to participate, but they are not always enough.
For this reason, in recent years, playfulness, added to narrative, emerged as a very valuable strategy to involve the participants.
Use gamification to entertain your audience
For several years now, the digital ecosystem has incorporated the word gamification to refer to the implementation of classic elements of the game such as points scoring or gaming competitions as a marketing strategy to generate greater customer or user involvement.
Online surveys, in that sense, are a very fertile ground to apply gamification and thus provide a more pleasant experience for respondents.
This naturally brings benefits for companies, given that more fun also leaves your respondents with a favorable impression of the company and increases surveys’ completion rate. At the same time, engaging the user in a game commits them to delivering more accurate data. And making completing the survey “challenging” motivates you to take it more seriously.
Now, how can we do gamification using the resources of an Internet survey platform? Here are three tips that will be useful to keep in mind when developing your next form.
Use jump logics
In the style of the "Choose Your Own Adventure" book collection, jump logics allows a participant to access or "jump" directly to a particular page, question or item in your survey based on their responses to previous questions.
This type of question logic ensures that your respondent never has to answer a question that doesn't apply to them, that the survey is more customized, and their experience is more enjoyable.
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.
Give scores
Every game -that is, every competition- awards points for each action performed. Online surveys allow you to develop this function through the calculator or score to apply values to the responses.
In your role as a pollster, you can assign different scores to each response using the calculator, which will cause the respondent to add or subtract points during the course of the form. Thus, when completing it, you will reach a final score that you can compare with those of others and see who obtained the most points.
Another use of the calculator is the creation of tests, where a score of "1" can be assigned to correct responses and "0" to incorrect ones. This functionality can be combined with the Jump Logic functionality to display different messages to the different responses, which also allows users to interact with the brand in a completely different and interactive way.
"Gamify" the questions
A creative way of fooling the user and adding a layer of challenge to the form’s questions is to modify their wording. You will be surprised to see how you can achieve a higher engagement rate and a higher quality of responses by simply changing the way in which you write questions.
For example, instead of asking the respondent to introduce themselves using phrases like "Tell us about yourself," you can ask them in another way and challenge them to play. For example, if you say "Introduce yourself using only 10 words", they will be forced to think more and play with the language so that the correct amount of information fits in that format.
Another "trick" is to ask the respondent to fill in the blanks using an online survey tool called Short answer. Instead of asking them to fill in socio-demographic data that is displayed from a combo, you can ask them to fill in the blanks of a sentence: “My name is ________. I am __________ years old. I was born on ____ of _____ of _____. I live in ______________."
We invite you to visit SurveyKiwi, a cloud tool that allows you to create highly visual and dynamic online surveys. You can use our customizable templates, jump logic tools, short answer, calculator and other very useful resources to build online forms that challenge and entertain your audience, increasing your response rate and getting to know your customers better.
Visit our website and get in touch with us! We will explain how to create, manage and distribute online surveys that automatically adapt to the screen resolution of each mobile device, improving the user experience.