At the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, we used an online survey to gather information about our current website users as the first phase of a website redesign project (that is still underway). We used Zoomerang, and linked to the survey from our homepage for one week. We offered an incentive to users to complete the survey (a $5 Amazon.com credit or an SFMOMA museum store coupon) and indicated in the "ad" for our survey that users would get a $5 credit for completing the survey. We had more than 600 site visitors complete the survey, and 30% of survey respondents opted to "donate back" their $5 to the Museum. I definitely think offering an incentive, even if it's small, helps get a wide range of respondents. The people who would take the time to complete an online survey completed our survey and "donated back" the $5, while the people who might otherwise not be bothered to complete a survey were motivated by the small incentive. And we deliberately kept our survey short (I think it was around 10 questions) so that it would not take too much of our users' time. You can read more about our project in our 2007 Museums and the Web paper (http://www.archimuse.com/mw2007/papers/mitroff/mitroff.html). Best of luck! -- Dana Mitroff, SFMOMA
online surveys at SFMOMA
At the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, we used an online survey to gather information about our current website users as the first phase of a website redesign project (that is still underway). We used Zoomerang, and linked to the survey from our homepage for one week. We offered an incentive to users to complete the survey (a $5 Amazon.com credit or an SFMOMA museum store coupon) and indicated in the "ad" for our survey that users would get a $5 credit for completing the survey. We had more than 600 site visitors complete the survey, and 30% of survey respondents opted to "donate back" their $5 to the Museum. I definitely think offering an incentive, even if it's small, helps get a wide range of respondents. The people who would take the time to complete an online survey completed our survey and "donated back" the $5, while the people who might otherwise not be bothered to complete a survey were motivated by the small incentive. And we deliberately kept our survey short (I think it was around 10 questions) so that it would not take too much of our users' time. You can read more about our project in our 2007 Museums and the Web paper (http://www.archimuse.com/mw2007/papers/mitroff/mitroff.html). Best of luck! -- Dana Mitroff, SFMOMA