My friends and I are trying to do some cheap market research using the web. We are wanting to provide a "pen pal" type, subscription-based service for kids that teaches them basic character traits from the perspective of another child. We put up a web based survey and have been posting notices on parenting web sites (such as Cafe Mom) asking parents to go to the site and fill out our survey, but while we have had many people read our postings, only about 19 have filled out the survey so far. I figure we need about 200 for accurate results. The survey is not long (takes 3-4 minutes) and we tell people right up front that it is entirely anonymous and no one will contact them unless they specifically ask to be contacted. Does anyone have any ideas about how we can get more people to fill out our survey? Also, I'm a little perplexed now as to how to interpret it because of the surveys we do have, we have a very good response rate (68%), but I'm afraid that may be biased upwards because we have selected out the people who might be more interested in the product to go to the site. Any ideas about this would be helpful as well. If you would like to look at our survey site and make comments about that, it is at www.Doodlestix.com. Any ideas anyone has would be greatly appreciated!
I suggest offering some sort of prize. It doesn't have to be much. Maybe a $20 amazon gift certificate or itunes. That might be enough incentive to get people to take the survey.
hey, just came across this for my own survey I'm offering $4,500 in prizes in total - and still I'm struggling to get even 100 entries here... I also just bough 30k post sig links ... that helped a bit...
You should offer some kind of incentive. That would be the easiest way to get more participants. I have a list of about 5k people that have shown interest in online surveys, send me a PM if that can help you in any way.