I just paid my tax online (how fascinating) and was asked to take a quick survey. One of the questions was a ‘If so, then…’ type question. Of course I’d answered ‘no’ to the previous question so I skipped it. And of course I couldn’t submit the form without answering it.
I did another survey a few weeks back (I was procrastinating that day as well) and it assumed a few things about my job that weren’t true. As a result half the questions - which were again compulsory - were unanswerable. After a page or two of entering junk just to be allowed to go on to the next page I gave up.
The problem with the tax question was just silly but this is a much more subtle issue.
If you’re designing an online survey you’re obviously assuming respondants are fitting a certain profile and this will be reflected in the design of your questions.
If you get this wrong you’ll either be getting a high drop-out rate or people will fill in junk answers.
I’m apparently the CEO of a company called ‘N/A’. I’m sure there’s a few of us on the board…
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I’m english, and whenever I have to put in a US zipcode I always use 90210. Thank you shit TV, I’ve finally learned a useful fact! I wonder how many people who allegedly live in Beverly Hills are actually brits who just want to fill in the damn online form.
Oh yes! The US-centric address form. Thankfully getting less common but there is nothing better calculated to irk a Brit.
Another related sin is the site that’s national in scope but forgets to mention which nation it refers to. If they are selling stuff then the presence of a currency symbol is often the only clue. I suppose the lack of .UK in the domain should probably be an indication but there are enough exceptions (non-US companies with .com domains) for this to be unreliable.
(Do you know UK is the only country that doesn’t put it’s name on it’s stamps? That’s coz we invented stamps - back in the day when we were a contender. Sniff.)