Online surveys are often used for quantitative research because they are fast, easy, and most answered type of survey. They are designed to reach people who frequent the internet, especially social media and online retail sites. There can be problems associated. One main problem associated with this mode of survey, is that people are beginning to get inundated with online survey requests, and it's harder to decipher if they are legitimate people, people fishing for sales, or even a link with a virus. If a legitimate online survey, the response rate is excellent. According to a Survey Monkey, 89% of customers answer surveys that are sent to them via online means. Key considerations when designing the online survey would be whether to farm it out. Though most companies don't flaunt who is designing their survey, anyone can create and post an online survey, using one of the many online platforms, like Qualtrics, Survey Monkey, or even Google Forums. So this is a quick version of how online surveys are conducted. To conduct an online survey, you generally want to have a good idea of the questions you want to ask, and the demographic you want to sample. You would then contact the survey house, and discuss your options. You can have them do as little, or as much of the design of the survey that you want, including sending out email invitations to complete the survey, and or calculating the responses. Occasionally, some of the bigger online data houses allow you to do a survey for free, if it is limited to a certain amount of questions, and you collect the data yourself. The costs of conducting online surveys you should consider include, the number of questions, the number of possible responses for each question, if you designed the questions or they designed them, the number of respondents you would ideally like to have, how particular you are about screening. The narrower the more difficult this aspect is. You should also consider upfront how much you have in your budget for analysis of the data. It might be wiser to save some of the budget for the analysis phase if you are not proficient at data analysis. If you have to pay the company to put together the online survey, they usually charge by completed survey. For instance, for Survey Monkey, results are provided within seven days for $3 per completed survey, or in three days for $5 per completed survey. Online surveys have strengths and weaknesses. The strengths are that they are fast, usually easy to both create and complete, don't involve hiring too many people to gather the data, and often boast special features such as branch questions. In other words, an answer to a specific question can lead you down a path that differs from someone else who selected a different answer to that same question. That may be difficult to achieve through other survey methods. The weaknesses are that you are not necessarily in control of the respondent bank, since they may come from a list that the company already uses. And the company may also be using boiler plate questions, rather than creating them fresh for each client. So when's a good time to use an online survey you might ask? Well, the criteria for choosing to deliver your quantitative survey online would be, what are the habits of the target market you would like to reach? Do they go online often, or do they prefer the personal touch? How fast do you need the responses? What is your turnaround time to your client? Do you have the lists of respondents, or do you need to find people? And how many can you do yourself, and how much do you want to ship out? Recently I got an online survey request from CVS pharmacy. The reward was $10 to use at a CVS store. I thought the survey was very interesting. They were asking my opinion about a new over-the-counter medication. It took about 15 minutes and had a variety of questions about the wording and packaging of the product. I felt rewarded in completing this survey, both monetarily and creatively, since I was able to give input about a new product design. So make sure to carefully evaluate whether your target audience are regular users of the internet, and are truly online savvy, before you hit them up with a survey online.