How to write form questions people answer
4 August 20266 min read
Most form advice is about layout. But the thing that decides whether you get a useful answer is the sentence you asked, and that's a writing problem.
Write it the way you'd say it out loud
The single most useful test: read your question aloud. If you'd never say it to someone's face, don't put it on the form.
Instead of
Please indicate your level of satisfaction with our service
Try
How did that go?
Nobody has ever said the first one to another human being.
Instead of
Additional comments
Try
Anything else you want to tell us?
"Additional comments" is a box. The second one is an invitation, and it gets filled in more often.
Ask about what happened, not what they think
People are unreliable narrators of their own preferences and very reliable narrators of their own behaviour. "Would you use a feature that did X?" gets you a polite yes. "When did you last need to do X, and what did you do instead?" gets you the truth.
- Instead of "How important is speed to you?" → "What were you doing right before you opened this?"
- Instead of "Would you pay for this?" → "What are you paying for today to solve it?"
- Instead of "What features do you want?" → "What do you currently do by hand that you wish we did for you?"
One question per question
"How easy was it to sign up and get started?" is two questions. Whichever one the person answers, you won't know which. Split it, or pick the one you'll act on and drop the other.
Don't lead the witness
Instead of
How much did you enjoy the new dashboard?
Try
What did you make of the new dashboard?
The first assumes enjoyment and shifts every answer up. You'll get lovely, useless data.
The same applies to scale labels. "Excellent / Good / Fair" has two positive options and one soft negative — it will hand you a flattering result you can't use.
Give an escape hatch
If your options don't include the person's real answer, they will pick the nearest wrong one and your data will quietly lie to you. Always include "Something else", and let them type.
A good default
Offer four or five likely answers as tappable options, and keep a text box open underneath. Most people tap. The ones who don't fit tell you something you didn't know to ask about — and those are usually the most valuable responses you get.
Ask for less than you want
Every question needs to earn its place by changing something you'd do. Go through your form and, for each question, name the decision the answer affects. Any question that fails is costing you responses in exchange for a column nobody opens.
Six questions answered honestly beats fourteen answered carelessly, and it beats fourteen abandoned at question five by a much wider margin.
Say what happens next
The last question is where people decide whether to press send. Tell them what you'll do with it: "We read every one of these and we'll come back to you either way" is more persuasive than any amount of design, and it costs one sentence.
A quick checklist
- 1Read every question aloud. Rewrite the ones you'd never say.
- 2Turn opinion questions into behaviour questions where you can.
- 3Split any question with an "and" in the middle.
- 4Check your scale labels aren't tilted positive.
- 5Add "Something else" wherever you've given a fixed list.
- 6Delete every question you can't name a decision for.
- 7Put the cheapest question first and contact details last.
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