Questions Every UX Survey Should Ask

We often are asked for example survey questionnaire templates for evaluating the effectiveness of a website, and while each survey deserves its own unique set of questions and considerations, there are specific questions we feel are standard and important. Having consistent questions across your surveys not only makes it easier on you as a researcher, but also serves as a basis for establishing benchmarks. Over time, you can create your own library of benchmarks and understand what a high performing site is versus a low performing site.

First, a few things to think about when designing your questions.

1. How will people be coming to your survey? In other words, if it is an intercept and you want to learn who is coming to your site, then your questions will need to establish a clear understanding of who they are, what their site familiarity is and what they hope to accomplish. If it is a targeted survey that is emailed to respondents (e.g., customers or prospects who are specifically contacted for their feedback), then your introduction and profiling information need not be as extensive.

2.  How much time/patience do they have? Remember, time is of   the essence and everyone multi-tasks these days. Intercept surveys should not be longer than 20 questions, or 5-10 minutes in total (including entry and exit questions). Emailed invitations for surveys can be longer – up to 60 questions, or 30 minutes in length. And if your audience is more sophisticated (e.g., business decision makers or physicians), then you should reduce the amount of time required to complete the survey. Also, your industry and brand loyalty may also impact willingness to participate, so it is helpful to run a test with a small sample of users to understand your incidence of completes.

3.  Are you offering any incentive for completion? This may make respondents more engaged and willing to answer more questions; however, if you try to ask too many questions, you may end up getting the extremes in terms of respondents (e.g., the most loyal and the least satisfied users), which can skew your results.

The survey template example questions include:

• What is your familiarity with this site?
• How did you first hear about this site?
• Overall, how satisfied were you with this site today?
• How easy or difficult was it to use this site today?
• Which of the following frustrations, if any, did you encounter on the site today?
• Which of the following words would you use to describe this site?
• Based on your experience, how likely are you to do the following?
• What is your gender?
• Which of the following best describes your age?
• What is your highest level of education?

Click here to download the Survey Template Example Questions.

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