The popularity of online surveys has snowballed in the past few years. Previously, surveys were conducted over the telephone, or using door-to-door surveyors. This meant a company had to carefully select a group of people to target, and pay individuals to conduct the surveys. There was also a high risk of non-completion, as predicting a time to call when the home owner would be home and not busy was impossible.

Online surveys solve this problem. The surveys can be made using survey software, which produces an attractive survey for you to post online, either on your own website, through email to selected addresses, or on social networking sites. The benefits of this are huge. Firstly, you can target a much larger selection of people, much more accurately. Placing a survey on your website for visitors to complete will be much more successful than trying to work out what cross-section of people are likely to visit your website. You can also target them in traditional ways, as you are likely to come across a large selection of people who have not visited the site. Using the site itself to conduct the survey means every response will be from your target audience.

You are also much more likely to get a response from an online survey. The person is already at their computer and on your website, so they are likely to fill in a quick survey while they are there. If the timing is inconvenient, they can easily return to fill in the survey when they are ready. This simple change is the driving force behind the survey evolution – more results, with more accuracy