Wait, what does that mean? TikTok Shop’s latest survey.
This June, I spent some time over in Michigan with my mom. We visited a dairy farm and holy cow (ha!) it was so interesting. Did you know that there is A LOT of data and technology behind milk? I sure didn’t.
I tell ya, that farmer was tracking everything about his cows and there was even an app to raise red flags about the cows’ health and changes in their milk production measured by a pill that stays in their “reticulum” (did you know cows have a separate stomach for weird things they eat?). It was really impressive.
Data is important. Even in professions where you might not expect it — like farmers! I’m passionate about good survey design because when you or an organization or business you know sends out a survey, they are doing it with a purpose — there is information they want to collect; there is something that they want to learn.
To get accurate, reliable data… you NEED good questions. You wouldn’t want to make decisions based on bad information, would you? Well, I wouldn’t. But, apparently TikTok does.
TikTok recently launched a survey to get feedback on the “TikTok Shop” experience — for those of you unfamiliar, it’s basically the ability to buy products from videos within the TikTok app. I understand why they want to know how this is going — it’s potentially a huge moneymaker for them and could be an incredible opportunity for businesses.
I don’t understand why they wouldn’t take the time to craft a question that would get them good information…
Here’s a snapshot of what TikTok wants to know:
Any thoughts right off the bat why this is NOT a good question?
Good survey questions are simple — E-Commerce platforms is not a simple term. I had to Google it to see EXACTLY what they were asking about, and I’m still not sure. Is a brick and mortar store that has a website, considered an E-Commerce platform? This is a problem because everyone who is taking this survey might think about E-Commerce a little differently. Some people might be comparing TikTok shop to Ebay or Amazon; others might think Walmart, some may think literally any website that sells things. Confusion leads to bad data — you don’t actually know what website people are thinking of.
Good survey questions have an answer for everyone — I cannot underscore how badly I wanted an “I don’t know” response option here. Because, I have zero clue how the prices in TikTok Shop compare to other places I shop. Where did that leave me? It left me picking the neutral response. When you are creating answer categories, you want to make sure everyone will be able to fit their true, honesty answer somewhere in the choices you provided.
Good survey questions are easy to answer — Unless you are running a study or initiative where you are paying me good money to slowly and carefully go through your questions, I’m going to need you to make your response choices quick and easy to get through. The repetition of “than other platforms” makes these responses longer and more difficult to read than they need to be. I also question if you need people to consider degrees of more or less expensiveness — maybe it could be enough to just know if the prices are higher or lower or about the same?
Let’s change it up for them — I’ve thought of two options below, but there are plenty more!
Can you spot the differences? The new questions eliminate the complicated language of “E-Commerce” and also streamline the responses so that they aren’t so wordy.
What do you think? How would you suggest TikTok re-write these questions to get them better data so they can evaluate TikTok Shop?
Good survey questions get you information that you can trust and that you can use. In order to trust and use the data from a question, you MUST make sure that your questions are simple, streamlined, and easy to respond to.
