A blog survey is simple but powerful way to learn more about your audience. With just a few questions, you can measure reader satisfaction, promote new content, and convert more blog traffic.
Here are step-by-step instructions on launching an awesome blog survey in under 30 minutes.
Building a Blog Survey
Step 1: Create a new survey.
In the GetFeedback builder, select “Create from Scratch.”
Next, remove the title page by clicking the X at the top right. When you do this, your survey will automatically begin with the first question. This means fewer clicks for your readers (and more survey responses for you).
Then, edit your survey theme. Keep in mind, readers will see it against the backdrop of your blog (example below), so be sure to stay within your brand guidelines.
Step 2: Add your survey questions.
Less is always more when it comes to surveys. Don’t exceed 3 questions. Any more, and your readers will lose interest and bounce. It’s smart to lead with your most important questions so they’ll get the most responses.
You can choose from 16 different question types in the GetFeedback builder. Stick with options that are low-calorie for your readers:
Multiple Choice
Like/Dislike
Rating
Short Answer
The less they have to think, the higher your response rate will be. In our blog survey, we start with a Like/Dislike question, giving people two options: thumbs up or thumbs down.
Tips on writing survey questions
Be concise and respectful. Don’t ask your readers for too much information. Before you write a question, ask yourself if you’d give out that information freely.
Start with a quantitative question so you can measure your performance over time. Focus on the metric that matters most to you, and find the simplest way to measure it. For example, I care most about reader satisfaction, so my first survey question is “What did you think of this article?” Yes/No questions work great, as do rating and multiple choice questions. Explore all our question types here.
Follow with an (optional) open-ended question. Give respondents a chance to elaborate on their answer, ask a question, or just write you note. The most valuable feedback often comes from the comments, so be open!
Step 3: Customize your survey logic.
Survey logic allows you to customize the question path based on how respondents answer questions. It’s a simple way to personalize the survey experience and get creative with conversion paths. Here are some examples of how we use survey logic.
Dig deeper into negative responses
If someone isn’t liking our content, we use a short answer question to ask why. Their open-ended feedback is much more telling than a thumbs down, and gives people a chance to write freely, which is always appreciated.
Here’s what that looks like on the back end.
Encourage more engagement
That same logic also allows us to skip the follow-up question when someone is liking our content. Instead, we ask happy readers if they’d like to keep exploring.
Skip irrelevant questions
When someone says they’re done reading, we skip them ahead to the end of the survey so they don’t have to answer any more questions.
Surface more content
If someone says they want to keep reading, we give them some topic options.
Then, we direct them to the appropriate category on our blog based on the topic they select.
For example, if you choose “Survey Best Practices,” you’ll be taken to the Online Surveys page of our blog.
Here’s what the logic looks like for all of our URL Redirects.
Step 4: Create your exit page(s).
Above, you saw how we use URL redirects to send readers to category pages on our blog. That’s an example of an exit page—the big finale. There are two types to choose from: a Custom Thank You Page or a URL redirect.
Custom Thank You Page
You can use a Custom Thank You Page to thank your readers for their feedback and include a final call-to-action. For example, we invite people to subscribe to our monthly newsletter.
URL Redirect
If you’d rather skip the message, you can automatically send respondents to a selected target URL using this option. As you saw above, we use URL Redirects to route readers to more blog content.
Step 5: Adjust your survey settings.
Once you’ve finished adding your questions, customizing your survey logic, and creating your exit pages, it’s time to finalize the details.
A few things we recommend doing next:
Set up custom notifications to alert relevant team members when new feedback comes in.
Enable incomplete responses so you don’t lose out on data when respondents bounce.
Integrate GetFeedback with Salesforce to automatically create new leads from survey responses and map feedback onto customer records. Learn more about the integration.
Step 6: Customize your web widget.
Finally, click Distribute > Configure a widget to create your website survey. On the next page, you can configure your widget settings, including the appearance, position on the page, timing, and other specifications.
Note: You’ll need to add a bit of javascript to your website in order to do this. Follow these instructions to probably enable your survey.
Step 7: Test your blog survey.
Once you’re ready to rock, return to the Build tab and preview your survey. Test your logic by completing the survey several times, answering each question differently. Make sure the question path feels natural and is working as intended.
If everything looks good, go back to the widget page and toggle your survey to On. Your blog survey will immediately activate. Go to your blog and test your survey live. If you added a delay or scrolling specifications, make sure it’s behaving as you intended.
As you test, review your responses under the Results tab to make sure everything is mapping properly. If you catch a mistake, just disable the survey until you’ve fixed it.
Once everything checks out, you’re ready to start hearing from your readers!
Putting Blog Feedback into Action
It’s exciting to launch a new blog survey, but that’s only the beginning. Don’t put your survey in set-it-and-forget-it mode once it’s live. Dedicate a little time each week to reviewing new responses and following up with readers when necessary.
Here are a few other ideas:
Create a survey dashboard to monitor blog feedback in one place. It’s a great way to simplify the reporting process too, since you can share dashboards with other people.
Track your performance over time. Keep an eye on how satisfaction ratings are shifting. Compare feedback from different types of blog posts to get a better understanding of what your audience likes.
Bake your learnings into your content strategy. As you learn more about your readers, you can use content feedback to tweak your overall strategy and better serve your audience.
Loop in other teams. Since your blog is an organic source of traffic for all kinds of web visitors, you may find that people fill out your survey looking for other information—pricing, customer support, product details, etc. Make sure to share feedback and questions with the relevant people.
Wrap-Up
If you made it to the end of this post and successfully launched your blog survey, congratulations! You’ve come a long way.
As you hear from your readers, you’ll undoubtedly get some negative feedback along with the good. Try not to take it to heart. When I first launched our blog survey, bad comments would get me down. Now, I see them as interesting challenges. The more you open yourself up to feedback, the faster you grow. So just enjoy the process.
Thanks for reading! Now take my survey—it’s on the bottom left.
Do you survey your readers? What do you differently? Let us know in the comments below.