How not to suck creating surveys

Most of the marketing stuff I do as I go, which most of the time means: totally unprepared. I’m sure someone wrote a great post/book about it, but I operate on two states:

1. Read and learn about the topic to the point of exhaustion,
2. go guns blazing without any recognition and learn only on my painful mistakes.

Which is exactly how I approached my first survey. Which went great by the way, I got awesome feedback from you. Some lovely souls left cute messages that made my heart warm. But! Of course, there’s a but, when you choose to learn on your mistakes, mistakes will happen. There’s one thing I didn’t think of and I wish I had. Don’t worry, it’s coming.

But first! Why I chose Typeform? It’s easy, it was the only survey service I knew, and only because I’ve participated in a survey made via Typeform a half hour earlier. I knew that wasting time on Facebook will someday pay off.

Here are the 4 questions I asked:

1. What theme for the new FREE icon set will get you excited?
   • I would love some weather icons! – 27%
   • I want to go to space and I love rockets! – 34%
   • Other – 39%

This was the first shocker – 40% of you decided to leave a suggestion. I was happy to read all of them and I will put some of them on a list of upcoming freebies. Thank you! Want to know what the funniest was? – Rick and Morty (wut?!) – I actually tried to watch the first episode on Netflix the other day, emphasis on “I tried” 😉

2. What topics on my blog are most interesting to you?
   • Tips and tricks for graphic designers – 59%
   • How not to suck at things – 8% (The irony is – I love to write those!)
   • Motivation – 14%
   • How to make money creating art – 14%
   • Other – 6%

I’ll do my best to create more educational content 🙂

3. Are my newsletters too short and too rare?
   1. Yes’ I want more content – 48%
   2. It’s OK, I don’t read the stuff anyway-  29%
   3. Other – 23%

That’s what you call a motivation! Most of you want more content, that’s huge! Also, got some really sweet comments in the “other” section – Thank you! I’ll put those in my rainy day folder 🙂 The most Intriguing thou was: I’d like more content on things no one talks about? – Now, I’m dying to know! And I have no clue – You know why? – I’ll tell you later 😛

And the last one was about the money and we don’t talk about it, cause it’s taboo.

Gotcha! – I’m just kidding!

4. Most of the icon sets are now in $14 – $20 price range. Would you buy my icons If I double the price?
   • Yes – 10%
   • No – 90%

So I guess I’m in the sweet spot! Or… Am I (wink, wink) You’ll never know. Oh, who am I kidding you’ll find out soon enough.

To be honest I’ve asked some of those questions in my newsletters earlier but apart from a few lovely conversations I didn’t get much response. So the first lesson is: it’s easier to take a quick survey than respond to the email. If I had to guess I’d say: it’s because it takes less time to pick and choose the answers and leave the occasional comment than to write a message that requires more attention.

Big mistake

And here’s the biggest mistake the missing question I wish I asked:

Your contact info for me to thank you!

Now I can’t thank you personally so I need to thank you here in public. Thank you Pumpkin for taking the survey! I’ll repay with icon freebies, awesome blog content and warm thoughts.

So how to NOT suck at surveys? – here’s the summary.

1. Make them easy and short! Less effort = more feedback.
2. Use dedicated services – so you won’t worry about coding it and displaying on different devices – 40% of you used a mobile device.
3. Ask for contact info to get more feedback or just to say thanks! Otherwise, you will need to write the posts-of-shame such as this one 😉

p.s. Here’s the link to the survey