Properly format your online survey for optimized viewing on mobile devices
To effectively administer today’s online surveys, you must develop online surveys that can adapt to all mobile devices and their varying screen sizes. Properly optimizing your survey for mobile devices determines the ease in which your respondents can read, comprehend, and provide accurate answers.
Make online surveys easy and convenient to complete. If the majority of your respondents will access your online surveys using mobile devices, be sure to optimize your surveys for mobile devices. Many respondents are on-the-go and prefer the opportunity to complete a mobile survey at their convenience.
When designing an online survey for mobile devices using survey software, take into consideration the following tips:
Do:
- Think about the size of the screen that people will read it on
- Have ten or fewer survey questions
- Use small graphics or no graphics
- Have one question per page (to reduce the need to scroll)
- Turn off the progress bar
- Be careful about your choice of image boxes if you use graphics
- Turn off the option of having the title on every page
- Choose buttons which look good when small
- Consider the pros and cons of using data pickers
- Check how your survey looks on different phones and browsers
Do not:
- Use items that use a lot of memory, such as sliders, map controls and large pictures (some older devices may not display sliders and map controls correctly)
- Have lots of questions that take a long time to look through on a small screen
- Have many open-ended questions where you ask respondents to enter free text
Snap Mobile Anywhere, a mobile surveys module for Snap Survey Software, enables users to run mobile surveys on mobile devices, including: iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, Android, Smartphones, Tablet PC, and Kiosk. Snap Mobile Anywhere allows a 2-way flow of information in real-time between mobile survey respondents or field survey interviewers and the researcher via our online data management system. The researcher can update mobile surveys and send directly to interviewers or respondents in real-time. Data is sent back automatically from the field.
