Why interactivity matters in surveys
One-way communication is not very motivating. In the case of surveys, you are at least asked for feedback, but otherwise you do not get feedback on your responses during the survey response process. It is left to the surveyor's activity to tell what kind of development the results of the survey have led to.
Could the whole arrangement be turned so that the respondent gets something in return for their time already in the response situation, perhaps even a complete service recommendation or a profile based on the answers?
Interactive content may not be what comes in mind first when talking about surveys. What if I said that well-executed content can go completely viral and lead conversion can be for example in 10-15% class? This is rather relevant part of survey methodology and simpler to achieve than you think.
What types of interactive content are there
Surveys do not have to be one-way forms where you, the surveyor, only collect information from respondents. You can make a completely conventional survey structurally interactive by varying the content of the thank-you page shown after the answers.
Another interactive option is to make a completely different structure from a traditional survey by building different types of profile cards, from which the best fitting with the respondent's answers is shown to the respondents at the end of the survey.
You can get the idea easily by thinking about the voting aid machines of the last elections, of which many were implemented on the Zeffi platform (these have been done in various elections of 40 different countries this far).
- In a voting aid type of content, the candidate profiles are shown based on the answers and a certain match percentage is shown for each candidate. You can implement similar comparisons for your own products or services.
- Surveys that "discuss" with the respondent during the survey progress by showing content based on set rules.
- Profiling machines, such as personality profiles, which as a result tell the respondent what kind of person they are; these are surprisingly effective, we have of several examples of over 100,000 respondents, of which a large part have also left their contact information (lead for sales).
- Virtual coach engines, related to a new campaign or concept; the respondent can be told, for example, in a maturity model, how advanced they are in a certain theme product or service selectors that combine the respondent's answers and your product range; here you can even guide the respondent directly to the online store.
- Quizzes in which feedback is given after each question as to whether the answer was correct or incorrect.
- Online tests in which the respondent is either rejected or they pass.
Below you will find an example of interactive content, a sample personality test, embedded on this page.
Creating interactive survey content simply
Zeffi has over the past quarter century been with clients to implement hundreds of popular interactive survey projects. An extreme example is the Puppy Engine ("Hauvakone") of news tabloid Iltasanomat, which has been filled by 2.3 million Finns (that is almost half of the population). The respondents have been given the most suitable dog breed from all the dog breeds registered in Finland.
- The implementation of interactive content or game-like tests is very simple, it does not practically differ from the creation of a traditional survey. In short, the whole project is built so that the type of survey outcome is changed to scored Output instead of default Thank-you page. There can be several of these scored Outcomes.
- For example, if you want to make a product selector with 30 products in the comparison. This can be done by making the same number of results, i.e. product cards, and answering the questions on behalf of these products.
- As an additional tip: the most successful product selectors contain elements of personality tests. For example, if the project type would be a ski selector, you would profile the respondent as a skier, i.e. what kind of skier you are, how often and in what kind of weather you ski, do you invest in luxury or practicality, etc.
- In this small conceptual jump, product features were turned into human features: this way it is easier to score products.
What kind of interactive survey content would you like to create? Have a look at our ready made, free Personality test template that you can use as a starting point.
