How to Make a User Research Survey - The Ultimate Guide!

February 16, 2025 |

4 min read

by Harish Kumar

How to Make User Research Survey.png

A user research survey helps you collect important information about your audience. This way, you can improve your product or service using real user feedback.

If you want to measure customer satisfaction, test a new feature, or improve your design, a good survey helps. It makes sure you gather useful data.

In this guide, you will learn how to create a user research survey. We will cover effective research methods, the best survey question types](/blog/best-survey-questions/), and survey practices. These tips will help you get useful results.

Steps to create a User Research Survey

Follow the simple steps below to create highly engaging user research surveys that will motivate users to provide real feedback.

Step 1: Define Your Research Goal

Start by deciding what you want to learn. Are you looking for qualitative insights about user behavior, or do you need quantitative data to measure trends?

Defining your goal will help you choose the right research tool and the best types of surveys to use.

Step 2: Identify Your Target Audience

To get relevant feedback, you need to recruit participants who fit your ideal user profile. This could be new customers, experienced users, or people facing specific pain points with your product or service.

Step 3: Choose the Right Question Types

The type of question you ask affects the quality of responses.

Open-ended questions allow users to share detailed feedback in their own words. These are great for uncovering unexpected insights and improving user experiences.
Closed-ended questions provide predefined answer choices, making it easier to collect quantitative data and analyze trends.
A mix of both helps balance qualitative data with measurable statistics.

Good question types include rating scales, multiple-choice, and ranking questions. If you need deeper insights, consider supplementing your survey with user interviews for a more detailed perspective.

Step 4: Select a Research Tool

Using the right research tools makes survey creation and data collection easier. Formester is a great research tool for building surveys quickly. It offers a free AI survey generator which you can use to generate any kind of survey with a simple prompt.

Google Forms is free but lacks advanced features. SurveyMonkey offers interactive designs but can be expensive for premium users.

Step 5: Distribute the Survey

Once your survey is ready, share it through multiple channels. Email, social media, and qr codes can also work well. If you're running a research study, in-app surveys and direct outreach can help you reach engaged users.

Step 6: Collect and Analyze Survey Data

After data collection, analyze your survey data to find trends and patterns. Identify common pain points users mention. If multiple respondents struggle with the same issue, it’s a clear signal for improvement.

Examine both the detailed answers from open-ended questions and the numbers from rating scales. This will give you a full view.

Best Practices for Better User Research Surveys

Follow these best practices to improve response rates:

Keep the survey short and focused.
Use clear, simple language.
Offer incentives if possible.
Avoid leading or biased questions.

User Research Survey Template

If you are struggling with which questions to ask or how to format your user research survey, use this generic user research survey template below to get started.

Conclusion

Creating an effective user research survey helps you gather valuable survey data to improve your product or service.

By using the right research methods and choosing good question types, you can get useful feedback from real users. Following survey best practices will help you achieve this.

Start building your survey today with Formester and make data-driven decisions with confidence.