How well do you understand your prospects and customers—who they are, what keeps them awake at night, and what brought them to your business in search of a solution? Asking the right survey questions at the right point in their customer journey is the most effective way to put yourself in your customers’ shoes.
This comprehensive intro to survey questions contains over 70 examples of effective questions, an overview of different types of survey questions, and advice on how to word them for maximum effect. Plus, we’ll toss in our pre-built survey templates, expert survey insights, and tips to make the most of AI for Surveys in Hotjar. ✨
Surveying your users is the simplest way to understand their pain points, needs, and motivations. But first, you need to know how to set up surveys that give you the answers you—and your business—truly need. Impactful surveys start here:
Use Hotjar to build your survey and get the customer insight you need to grow your business.
Let’s dive into our list of survey question examples, starting with a breakdown of the six main categories your questions will fall into:
Open-ended questions give your respondents the freedom to answer in their own words, instead of limiting their response to a set of pre-selected choices (such as multiple-choice answers, yes/no answers, 0–10 ratings, etc.).
Examples of open-ended questions:
The majority of example questions included in this post are open-ended, and there are some good reasons for that:
There are, however, a few downsides to open-ended questions:
Finally, the data you receive from open-ended questions will take longer to analyze compared to easy 1-5 or yes/no answers—but don’t let that stop you. There are plenty of shortcuts that make it easier than it looks (we explain it all in our post about how to analyze open-ended questions, which includes a free analysis template.)
💡 Pro tip: if you’re using Hotjar Surveys, let our AI for Surveys feature analyze your open-ended survey responses for you. Hotjar AI reviews all your survey responses and provides an automated summary report of key findings, including supporting quotes and actionable recommendations for next steps.
Closed-end questions limit a user’s response options to a set of pre-selected choices. This broad category of questions includes
Closed-ended questions work brilliantly in two scenarios:
A nominal question is a type of survey question that presents people with multiple answer choices; the answers are non-numerical in nature and don't overlap (unless you include an ‘all of the above’ option).
Example of nominal question:
What are you using [product name] for?
Nominal questions work well when there is a limited number of categories for a given question (see the example above). They’re easy to create graphs and trends from, but the downside is that you may not be offering enough categories for people to reply.
For example, if you ask people what type of browser they’re using and only give them three options to choose from, you may inadvertently alienate everybody who uses a fourth type and now can’t tell you about it.
That said, you can add an open-ended component to a nominal question with an expandable ’other’ category, where respondents can write in an answer that isn’t on the list. This way, you essentially ask an open-ended question that doesn’t limit them to the options you’ve picked.
The Likert scale is typically a 5- or 7-point scale that evaluates a respondent’s level of agreement with a statement or the intensity of their reaction toward something.
The scale develops symmetrically: the median number (e.g. a 3 on a 5-point scale) indicates a point of neutrality, the lowest number (always 1) indicates an extreme view, and the highest number (e.g. a 5 on a 5-point scale) indicates the opposite extreme view.
Example of a Likert scale question:
The British Museum uses a Likert scale Hotjar survey to gauge visitors’ reactions to their website optimizations
Likert-type questions are also known as ordinal questions because the answers are presented in a specific order. Like other multiple-choice questions, Likert scale questions come in handy when you already have some sense of what your customers are thinking. For example, if your open-ended questions uncover a complaint about a recent change to your ordering process, you could use a Likert scale question to determine how the average user felt about the change.
A series of Likert scale questions can also be turned into a matrix question. Since they have identical response options, they are easily combined into a single matrix and break down the pattern of single questions for users.
Use Hotjar to build your survey and get the customer insight you need to grow your business.
Rating scale questions are questions where the answers map onto a numeric scale (such as rating customer support on a scale of 1-5, or likelihood to recommend a product from 0-10).
Examples of rating questions:
Whenever you want to assign a numerical value to your survey or visualize and compare trends, a rating question is the way to go.
A typical rating question is used to determine Net Promoter Score® (NPS®): the question asks customers to rate their likelihood of recommending products or services to their friends or colleagues, and allows you to look at the results historically and see if you're improving or getting worse. Rating questions are also used for customer satisfaction (CSAT) surveys and product reviews.
When you use a rating question in a survey, be sure to explain what the scale means (e.g. 1 for ‘Poor’, 5 for ‘Amazing’). And consider adding a follow-up open-ended question to understand why the user left that score.
Example of a rating question (NPS):
Hotjar's Net Promoter Score® (NPS®) survey template lets you add open-ended follow-up questions so you can understand the reasons behind users' ratings
These dichotomous questions are super straightforward, requiring a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ reply.
Examples of yes/no questions:
‘Yes’ and ‘no’ questions are a good way to quickly segment your respondents. For example, say you’re trying to understand what obstacles or objections prevent people from trying your product. You can place a survey on your pricing page asking people if something is stopping them, and follow up with the segment who replied ‘yes’ by asking them to elaborate further.
These questions are also effective for getting your foot in the door: a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ question requires very little effort to answer. Once a user commits to answering the first question, they tend to become more willing to answer the questions that follow, or even leave you their contact information.
Web design agency NerdCow used Hotjar Surveys to add a yes/no survey on The Transport Library’s website, and followed it up with an open-ended question for more insights
Below is a list of good survey questions, categorized across ecommerce, software as a service (SaaS), and publishing. You don't have to use them word-for-word, but hopefully, this list will spark some extra-good ideas for the surveys you’ll run immediately after reading this article. (Plus, you can create all of them with Hotjar Surveys—stick with us a little longer to find out how. 😉)
Ask these questions when you want context about your respondents and target audience, so you can segment them later. Consider including demographic information questions in your survey when conducting user or market research as well.
But don’t ask demographic questions just for the sake of it—if you're not going to use some of the data points from these sometimes sensitive questions (e.g. if gender is irrelevant to the result of your survey), move on to the ones that are truly useful for you, business-wise.
Take a look at the selection of examples below, and keep in mind that you can convert most of them to multiple choice questions:
🚀 Get started: gather more info about your users with our product-market fit survey template.
These questions are particularly recommended for ecommerce companies:
👉 Check out our 7-step guide to setting up an ecommerce post-purchase survey.
🚀 Get started: learn how satisfied customers are with our expert-built customer satisfaction and NPS survey templates.
Use Hotjar's free survey templates to build virtually any type of survey, and start gathering valuable insights in moments.
