Getting started

Determine your primary questions

There are two major questions that you yourself need to answer first, before starting to write the questions for your survey.

Primary questions	Focus questions
What do I want to learn, know, or understand?	· How do my clients/customers rate my shop/company overall? · Which aspects/characteristics of my products/services do my clients find appealing? · Which aspects/characteristics of my products/services can be improved? · …
Who is my target group, population, respondent?	·Do my returning clients, first-time clients, or one-time clients give the same answers to my questions? ·What are the differences in their responses?

These questions are just here to inspire you. They are too general, so don’t ask them directly in your survey. However, having these general questions in mind will help you make customized questions for any survey topic.

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Create survey topic and subtopics

Now you should narrow your focus and extract a topic from your questions. After that, you can easily divide your topic into subtopics.

Focus questions	Topic	Subtopics
Overall rating of my shop/company	Overall rating	Customer satisfaction
· Aspects/characteristics clients like most? · Aspects/characteristics to improve	· Characteristics · Aspects · Highlights	· Service quality · Location · Interior design · Interface design · Price · Availability · Accessibility · Responsiveness · Etc… (based on the nature of your business)
Difference between responses based on various client groups.	Customer demographics	· Returning customers · First-time customers · One-time customers · Referred by other customers

After determining subtopics, it will be easier for you to write many survey questions. Just keep in mind that the questions which you create now may not always be the absolute best ones. You may need to modify them, or choose to ask some of them, based on your research preferences. However, they will be of great help to you in organizing, and making up your mind about what you need to ask.

Questions below are some examples of what can be asked:

Subtopics	Customized questions
Customer satisfaction	How satisfied are you with our company/shop in general?
Service	Overall, how do you rate our product/service?
Quality	Please rate our performance on providing quality parts and service.
Price	How important is price to you when choosing this type of product/  service?
Returning customers	How likely are you to recommend our company/shop to your friends?
First-time customers	How likely are you to visit us again?