Surveys are a great way for us to understand our target users during the discovery phase of a UX project. Using just a Google form or Microsoft form, we can reach out to potential users, asking them questions without being constrained by time or location. Oftentimes, the hard part of conducting a survey is getting respondents. Below are 3 ways to do that.
1. PollPool
PollPool is a website for posting surveys and getting respondents. Each response will cost a certain amount of PollCoins. There are multiple ways to earn PollCoins, including taking other people’s surveys, referring other users, and sharing the platform on social media. We can also purchase them online in case we need many responses or run out of PollCoins.
Getting survey participants through PollPool is convenient and relatively inexpensive. That said, because the people answering our survey are mostly users of PollPool who tend to be students or researchers, we may need to consider whether this will cause biases in our sample.
2. Reddit
If our target users share a common interest, then quite likely there’s already a subreddit for them. However, not every subreddit welcomes surveys. Some even ban them. Read the rules of a subreddit so you know whether you can post a survey there or not.
If the subreddit where your target users often hang out doesn’t allow surveys, there is still a specific subreddit called SampleSize for posting them. Compared with PollPool, people who arrive at our survey through Reddit probably will be more diversified and not just limited to students or researchers.
3. Friends
Friends can be a good source of survey participants. However, we may not want to blindly ask each and every one of them to fill out our survey just because we need more participants. Find those friends who are actually our target users. Not only will they be more interested in answering our questions, but we’ll also be more likely to get high quality responses.
Don’t Forget the Screener Question
By distributing our survey through the three channels above, we should be able to get quite a few responses. Finally, since anyone can answer the survey, it’s wise to have a screener question inside to make sure that we’re hearing from the right people. Remember to take advantage of the branching feature which is supported in many online forms when designing our survey.
How do you get survey respondents? What other platforms or channels have you tried? Leave a comment below and let me know. 😀
