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Optimising Surveys for Mobile Devices

Our Top Tips for Mobile Optimisation

The number of respondents replying to surveys through smartphones and tablets has increased dramatically in recent months – it's now standing at over 25% of all responses. Increasingly, users of Facebook, Twitter and other social media are sharing links to surveys with friends, and often the respondent will access the survey while on the go. Mobile-friendly surveys are now an imperative.

We've done a lot of work on optimising ALL of our surveys to work on mobile devices without the need to create special versions of them. We've re-engineered video, audio, matrix and slider questions to work on touch screen environments and other mobile devices. So you needn't worry about what questions you are using in Demographix.

The following five tips will help you develop better surveys with bigger response rates and more accurate data.

1. Keep it simple! Keep it short!

The holy mantra for all online survey design is to keep it focussed, succinct and unambiguous. Using single choice and multiple choice questions will present fewer problems than large matrix questions, which smartphone users may find difficult to navigate.

2. One question per page

We advise that surveys streamlined for mobiles should have one question per page, and no more than 10 pages per survey. Mobile users are easily distracted, and you need them to complete your survey quickly and submit their data. A longer survey will impact response rates.

3. Matrix questions have inbuilt dynamic resize

Matrix questions with long pieces of text in the y-axis (row titles) or many options on the x-axis (answer options) are simply not suitable for smartphones, though slightly less problematic on tablets. Our surveys now create "slimline" versions of matrix questions, and these will automatically display when a survey is being viewed on a smartphone. .

4. Audio and video for tablets and smartphones

We have been working on HTML5 video and audio support, which gets round the Apple ban on Flash technology. When you upload a video or audio into your account, we automatically convert it and embed code that will play the correct version in the browser being used to view the survey. It's all done behind the scenes, and there's nothing for you to worry about.

5. Test your survey in multiple environments

While building your survey, our Preview mode means you can check out full functionality in all the main environments and browsers without needing to publish and unpublish a survey. It’s easy to send the URL to different smartphones or tablets and see what the survey looks like as you build.

Don't forget to check out our tips on maximising your survey's response rates.