UX SURVEY QUESTIONS
Successful UX survey is all about thoughtfully written questionnaires. The wrong type, tone, word or number of them can easily lead to a bunch of confusing results instead of useful insights. Let’s take a quick look at the UX survey questions, their types and examples.
Types of UX survey questions
Closed UX survey questions
This type of UX research survey questions is used for collecting quantitative data. It is multiple choice questions accompanied with a checkbox, radio buttons, all types of scales and numbers. Closed questions are easy and quick, that’s why they have higher response rates.
The first thing you should understand about that type is that they are much easier to analyze. The data you get is rich and can be easily represented with graphs and charts or any other visual elements. Users love them because they just need to click on a selected response, it doesn’t take much time or thinking.
When you are looking to gather some numbers, percentages etc. closed UX survey questions are a must.
Here are some great common closed UX survey question examples:
How likely are you to recommend our product/service?
Do you think our new feature is helpful?
Are you interested in buying the product today?
Open UX survey questions
Open questions gather qualitative data and require a little bit more effort from the user. Here, they really need to be thoughtful and describe their answer in a form of short written text. This type of question can bring surprisingly deep insights if asked right as you get to know user’s reasons, feelings and opinions.
Open questions take much longer to analyze but are 100% worth it. They give you a much better idea on how users think, allowing them to express themselves and be completely honest.
Carefully written, open questions are a great way of collecting user feedback, especially if you have a rather engaged audience. However, compared to closed UX survey questions, the response rate can be much lower. You should understand that users don’t always have the time to express their experiences in a written form.
Here are some great common open UX survey question examples:
How do you feel about our customer service?
What did you like most about our app?
What are your main reasons for choosing our product?
As you can see, these 2 types are totally different and therefore help you gather different types of data. That’s why it’s great to implement them both in your survey.
And there is a great strategy to do that.
Start your UX survey with some easy closed questions, put the complex and the open ones in the middle and at the end come back to the light general questions again. Related questions should go together.
This kind of strategy is proven to minimize the UX survey abandonment rate and creates a perfect-flowing experience.
Common mistakes in UX survey questions
Even though there is no formula for writing a perfect UX survey question, there are plenty of things you should avoid and be aware of while doing so.
Learn more about some common survey response biases in this video:
Here are the most important ones:
Confirmation bias
It’s basically when you ask questions, trying to prove your own beliefs. This bias does not let respondents think and express themselves, but instead pressures them to agree with your statements.
Example: Did the navigation menu get in the way of you finding the desired information?
Instead: Was it difficult for you to find specific information? Why?
Leading questions
These UX survey questions usually have the answer hidden inside of them and, therefore, make users’ answers biased even if they don’t notice it. It’s always better to hear bitter truth than a sweet lie, don’t try to fool your respondents.
Example: What did you enjoy the most about our software? (even if they didn’t like the app, the are being pressured to answer positively)
Instead: What was your experience like with our software?
Unbalanced scale
A common issue of closed questions. You ask the user about their experience using your product and the only answer options are the ones with a positive connotation. Once again, you are taking the choice away from your user.
Example: How would you describe your experience with the app?
Very positive, positive, mostly positive, not very positive, not positive
Instead: Very positive, Generally positive, 50/50, generally negative, very negative.
Double-barreled questions
Example: Did you find our documentation or chatbot?
-Yes
-No
See, this type of question has literally no sense. If the user answers yes, you don’t know what they mean. Did they find the documentation? Or the chatbot? Or maybe both? Avoid needless confusion and instead, just make two easy questions out of one. You will get much better results, if you ask these things separately.