Create Consumer Surveys

A consumer survey is a questionnaire that gathers feedback from a consumer audience about a company, brand, specific product, or other topic. These surveys ask about consumers’ preferences, habits, attitudes, demographics, etc. to better understand consumer behavior. Companies can use the feedback from these surveys to make more informed business and marketing decisions.

There are several different types of consumer surveys depending on your goals, strategies, and audiences. Below are a few of the most popular options:

Mail surveys. These surveys are typically paper questionnaires that are directly mailed to a small sample of consumers.

• Pros: Mail surveys can be targeted to consumers in specific geographic areas. They also allow people to fill out surveys at their convenience, which may yield more thoughtful and honest responses.
• Cons: Because mailing back a completed survey requires more effort from respondents, these surveys tend to yield lower response rates.

Phone surveys. In these surveys, interviewers call consumers to ask them survey questions over the phone.

• Pros: Phone surveys yield higher response rates since the interviewer can make direct contact and clarify questions as they go. They also make it easier to collect additional information beyond the given set of questions.
• Cons: These surveys can be time-consuming, so the consumer may end the call before the interviewer has completed the survey. Respondents may also only be available before or after work, when they may screen calls or be unwilling to participate in a survey.

Web-based surveys. These are online questionnaires that are typically shared via email, website pop-up, QR code, etc.

• Pros: Web surveys are convenient, quick, and low-cost. They also support multimedia features like video and streamline data collection, storage, and analysis because responses are already in digital form.
• Cons: Web surveys require consumers to have internet access, which may not work for every audience. They are also used so often that consumers may experience survey fatigue.

Face-to-face surveys. These surveys are usually in-person interviews conducted by researchers.

• Pros: Face-to-face surveys often yield high-quality responses. The interviewer can also ask follow-up questions and establish rapport with the consumer so that they may be willing to share more feedback in the future.
• Cons: Face-to-face surveys are expensive and time-consuming, leading some companies to opt for easier methods. They also usually have a more limited geographic reach.

Focus groups. These are small group discussions guided by a moderator or researcher.

• Pros: Companies can gain in-depth insights from these sessions. The group dynamic provides a chance for respondents to interact with each other about their opinions and provides multiple perspectives.
• Cons: Focus groups are usually expensive and complex to organize. They also involve the risk of certain respondents dominating the conversation and skewing the results.

A consumer survey provides crucial insights into customers, allowing businesses to develop better products, services, and marketing techniques to meet their customers’ needs. Here are some of the most common use cases for consumer surveys:

• Discovering and understanding consumer needs, attitudes, challenges, and perceptions about products and services
• Testing new concepts, services, and products
• Gathering feedback about existing services and products
• Identifying consumer demographics
• Guiding product development decisions about features, designs, pricing models, etc.
• Monitoring shifts in consumer demand and the overall marketplace
• Evaluating brand awareness and advertising effectiveness
• Comparing against competitors
• Forecasting sales potential
• And more!

When administering consumer surveys, consider using one of the following evaluation methods to make the most of your data.

Customer satisfaction (CSAT): This metric measures consumer satisfaction with a company’s products, services, or experiences. It uses rating scales to quantify satisfaction, so companies can improve their products and services as needed.

Net Promoter Score (NPS): NPS allows companies to measure customer loyalty by asking consumers to rank the likelihood that they would recommend a product or service on a scale of 1–10.

Product evaluation: Product evaluation questions gather consumers’ reactions to aspects of a product — including its features, benefits, use cases, etc. This method is often used during product development.

Market research: Market research questions are administered broadly to help analyze the market so companies can better position their products and services. This research can include audience segmentation, demand forecasting, current competition, and more.

Brand perception: Brand perception research assesses brand awareness, consumer attitudes, and brand trust. Companies can then reevaluate and adjust market strategies in response to this feedback.

Demographic surveys: Demographic data includes information like a consumer's age, gender, income, education level, and occupation. Companies can use this data to tailor marketing strategies to their target consumers.

Building a consumer survey is a breeze with Jotform. Just navigate to our template library and choose the template that works best for you — or start from scratch in Form Builder. Then, customize your consumer survey without coding using our drag-and-drop interface. Add form fields, change fonts and colors, use widgets, upload images and logos, and so much more. Once your survey looks good to go, share it via email, link, or QR code, or by embedding it in your website. It doesn’t get easier than that!

When you’re writing consumer survey questions, keep these best practices in mind. First, be sure to align your survey goals and target audiences before you start writing questions. This ensures that you gather the data and feedback you need. Once you decide on your survey format, make sure to keep your questions simple and direct to prevent survey fatigue. Only ask about one topic in each question. Avoid biased questions that may influence respondents’ answers. Use rating scales to get quantifiable data. When possible, limit the number of questions you ask so that you don’t overwhelm your respondents.

Here are some sample questions to ask:

Demographics

• What is your age?
• What is your total income?

Product/service usage

• How often do you use this product? Choose from the following options.
• How likely are you to recommend this product on a scale from 1–10, with 1 being not at all likely?

Purchase behavior

• Where do you most frequently purchase these products?
• When do you typically use this service?

Brand perception

• On a scale from 1 to 10, how would you rate this company?
• What is your perception of this company?

Marketing/advertising

• Have you ever seen advertisements from this company? If so, did they positively or negatively affect your perception of the company?
• Which advertisements for this company have you enjoyed the most and why?

Open-ended

• What could we do to improve?
• Would you order from us again? Why or why not?

With Jotform, you can build custom consumer surveys in minutes that you can reuse as many times as you need. The best part? No coding is required. Jotform makes it easy to drag and drop form elements to build professional-looking surveys, and we offer 150+ handy integrations so that you can transfer form data to the apps you love. While we offer a free plan, you can sign up for one of our affordable paid plans to maximize data collection, storage, security, and impact. Plus, Jotform offers a 50% discount to nonprofits and educational organizations and optional HIPAA-compliance features for healthcare organizations. Don’t wait — try Jotform today.