How to Create a Popup Survey that Works

We’d all like to know what others, particularly our prospective customers, are thinking.

And that’s what the discipline of Market Research is intended to do. But how do you conduct research on the web that’s cost-effective, and that produces results?

We’ve all seen them. Those Netflix popups that are generated when you’re leaving a website. They’re annoying and inneffective. The best way to conduct market research on the web is to be honest with people. Let them know up front what they’re getting into, and give them the option to say “Yes”, or “No” upfront.

Best practices require that you ask permission first

I’ve created a methodology, based on best practices, that I’ve implemented on my own website. Depending on the survey you design, you can use this for pure research, or for lead generation.

To pull this off, I’m using WordPress as my blogging platform, SurveyGizmo as my research software, and several different plugins and some custom code to: (1) show my popup invitation with a 45 second delay after the initial page load (2) use a lightbox effect (everything on my website behind the box greys out) (3) show it to a visitor only once per day (4) give them an option to say “yes” or “no” — if “yes” another box pops up; if “no” the original box closes using javascript (5) an onobtrusive box that waits until the user has stopped browsing and reminds them to “start questionnaire”.

It’s completely permission-based, unobtrusive, and produces great results.

The purpose of the survey I’m using in this example is purely for research, because hypothetically, I’d like to know what you think of my website.