Have you heard the expression, if the mountain won’t come to Muhammed, then Muhammed must go to the mountain? It isn’t a commentary on comparative religion. It means, you can’t always get things to work your way, you may have to bend to others.
What makes me dwell on this? Surveys that don’t work on mobile devices! For years, every conference on market research I attend, everyone says mobile is where it’s at, surveys need to work on phones! But we keep getting surveys that require a laptop. I get it that there are complicated surveys, choice models, fancy sliding rating scales. But we need to figure this out! We recently launched a survey that needed to be done on a computer. We stated that clearly in our invite to our panel. The client programmed it to determine right off the bat if the respondent was using a mobile device and disqualified them immediately. I’ve never seen so much reaction. “I was disqualified before I even answered any questions!”
The reality now is that most emails are read on phones, not computers. Our panelists see the request for a survey on the phone and click the link to begin right away. They pay no attention to instructions that say use a computer. This is where people are today, we aren’t going to go back in time. So, we need to realize surveys need to work on phones. They need to be redesigned. If you insist on keeping them in an anachronistic format, you’ll get a skewed sample. The mountain isn’t coming to you – you have to go the mountain! It’s 2020 already!
