Implementing a “popup” survey is a (mostly) trivial task. Our solution at Surveylab requires 1 file to be uploaded to the website and then a couple of lines of code are inserted onto the page(s) of the website where the survey popup is to appear. Other survey software suppliers have a similar installation process.
Visitors to the website will see the popup, and perhaps 2% click through to take the survey, depending on a whole host of factors such as where the popup is sited, the message, why the visitor is on the site in the first place, and so on. We once managed to get a 27% response rate (in 2002, for visitors who completed a mortgage quote enquiry), but most surveys have seen less than 10% and some just 1-2%. Which is fine if you have enough traffic, and depending on your research objectives…
Making a popup survey into a genuine exit survey so that when the visitor leaves your website a message displays asking them to take part in a very quick exit survey is technically possible… but it’s not pretty!
Read the text in the screenshot below (read it carefully).
There is no way to edit the first and last sentences of the popup message, and clicking the [OK] button will continue the visitor’s journey away from the website. If the user clicks [Cancel], we can then display the exit survey. A big IF, because this is counter-intuitive – “OK, I’ll take the survey,” visitor says clicking OK, “hey! Where’s the survey?”
I have no data to back up this view, but I believe that if a visitor has clicked away from the website or is closing the browser they’re very unlikely to pause to take an exit survey. You would be better off looking at your site analytics.
And actually, that’s not a bad idea. Site Analytics (analysing your websites traffic logs) can’t tell you everything (e.g. age and gender of visitor) but it can often tell you what they were searching for, what website they clicked through from, etc. as well as their path through the site and which pages have higher “bounce” rates. Tip – install a popup here to engage these users about a survey.
Dan Wardle
