Survey questions 101: over 70 survey question examples + types of surveys and FAQs

Understanding customers is the key to improving and growing your business—but you won’t be able to understand your customers unless you learn more about them. One way to do this is by asking the right survey questions at the right point in their journey.

This piece gives you a thorough overview of different types of survey questions you can use, how to word them for maximum effect, when and why to use them, and includes over 70 examples of effective survey questions for ecommerce, software/software as a service (SaaS), or publishing companies.

Plus, you'll get access to our pre-built survey templates and even get to try out AI for Surveys in Hotjar!

We cover:

• What is a good survey question?

• Types of survey questions

• 70+ survey question examples you can use

• Dos and don'ts of writing survey questions

• 10 survey use cases: what you can do with good survey questions

• FAQs

Before diving into a list of questions (though you can skip right to it if you prefer), let’s cover a few survey question basics:

What is a good survey question?

A good survey question is one that helps you get clear insights and business-critical information about your customers, including:

• Who your target market is

• How you should price your products

• What is stopping people from buying from you

• Why visitors leave your website

With this information, you can tailor your website, products, landing pages, and/or messaging to improve the user experience and (ultimately) maximize conversions.

Why is it important to ask good survey questions?

A good survey question is asked in a precise way at the right stage in the buyer’s journey to give you insight into your customers’ needs and drives. The format you choose for your survey—in-person, email, on-page, etc.—is important, but if the questions themselves are poorly worded you could waste hours trying to fix minimal problems while ignoring major ones a different question could have uncovered. We'll explore the dos and don'ts of good question-writing towards the end of this article.

How to run your surveys

The format you pick for your survey depends on what you want to achieve, and also on how much budget/resources you have. You can:

• Use an on-site survey tool and set up a website survey that pops up whenever people visit a specific page → useful when you want to investigate website- and product-specific topics quickly, relatively inexpensive

• Use a survey builder and create a survey that people can access in their own time → useful when you want to reach out to your mailing list and/or a wider audience with an email survey (you just need to share the URL the survey lives at), has more space for people to elaborate on their answers, relatively inexpensive

• Place survey kiosks in a physical location where people can give their feedback by pressing a button → useful for quick feedback on specific aspects of a customer's experience (there’s usually plenty of these in airports and waiting rooms), relatively expensive to maintain

• Run in-person surveys with your existing or prospective customers → in-person questionnaires help you dig deep into your interviewees’ answers, relatively cheap if you do it online with a tool like Engage or over the phone but more expensive time-wise if done in a physical location you need to travel to/from, and costly if done in a lab

6 main types of survey questions

Before we dive into our list of 70+ question examples, here is a quick overview of the six different survey question types they belong to, with a few examples for each:

1. Open-ended questions

2. Closed-ended questions

3. Nominal questions

4. Likert scale questions

5. Rating scale (or ordinal) questions

6. 'Yes' or 'no' questions

1. Open-ended survey questions

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:

• What other products would you like to see us offer?

• If you could change just one thing about our product, what would it be?

When to use open-ended questions in a survey

The majority of example questions included in this post are open-ended, and there are some good reasons for that:

• Open-ended questions help you learn about customer needs you didn’t know existed, and they shine a light on areas for improvement that you may not have considered before. If you limit your respondents’ answers, you can cut yourself off from key insights.

• Open-ended questions are very useful when you first begin surveying your customers and collecting their feedback. If you don't yet have a good amount of insight, answers to open-ended questions will go a long way towards educating you about who your customers are and what they're looking for.

There are, however, a few downsides to open-ended questions:

• First, people tend to be less likely to respond to open-ended questions in general because they take comparatively more effort to answer than, say, a 'yes' or 'no' one.

• Second, but connected: if you ask consecutive open-ended questions during your survey, people will get tired of answering them, and their answers might become less helpful the more you ask.

• 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, and we explain it all in our post about how to analyze open-ended questions, which includes a free analysis template.

2. Closed-ended survey questions

Closed-end questions limit a user’s response options to a set of pre-selected choices. This broad category of questions includes:

• Nominal questions

• Likert scale questions

• Rating scale questions

• ‘Yes’ or ‘no’ questions

When to use closed-ended questions

Closed-ended questions work very well in two scenarios:

• To open a survey, because they require little time and effort and therefore are easy for people to answer. This is called the foot-in-the-door principle: once someone commits to answering the first question, they may be more likely to answer the open-ended questions that follow.

• When you need to create graphs and trends based on people’s answers. Responses to closed-ended questions are easy to measure and use as benchmarks; rating scale questions in particular (e.g. where you get people to rate customer service or on a scale of 1–10—more on this below) allow you to gather customer sentiment and compare your progress over time.

3. Nominal questions

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?

  1. Business

  2. Personal use

  3. Both business and personal use

When to use nominal questions

Nominal questions work well when there is a limited number of categories for a given question (see the example above). They’re easy for people to answer and for you 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 are asking people what type of browser they are using and only give them three options to choose from, you may have effectively alienated everybody who uses a fourth type and cannot tell you about it.

4. Likert scale questions

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 towards 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 a ‘1’) indicates an extreme view, and the highest number (e.g. a ’5’ on a 5-point scale) indicates the opposite extreme view.

Examples of Likert-type questions:

• How strongly do you agree with the following statement: [company’s] payment process is simple and painless.

  1 - Strongly disagree

  2 - Somewhat disagree

  3 - Neither agree nor disagree

  4 - Somewhat agree

  5 - Strongly agree

• How satisfied were you with your customer service experience?

  1 - Very dissatisfied

  2 - Somewhat dissatisfied

  3 - Slightly dissatisfied

  4 - Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied

  5 - Slightly satisfied

  6 - Somewhat satisfied

  7 - Very satisfied

When to use Likert scale questions

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.

💡 Did you know? A series of Likert scale questions can 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.

5. Rating scale questions

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:

• How likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague on a scale of 0–10?

• How would you rate our customer service on a scale of 1–5?

When to use 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 surveys and product reviews (such as Amazon’s five-star product ratings).

💡 Tip: 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:

6. ‘Yes’ or ‘no’ questions

These dichotomous questions are super straightforward: they require a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ reply.

Examples of Yes/No questions:

• Was this article useful? (Yes/No)

• Did you find what you were looking for today? (Yes/No)

When to use ‘yes’ or ‘no’ questions

• ‘Yes’ and ‘no’ questions are a good way to quickly segment your respondents. For example, say you are trying to understand what obstacles or objections are stopping people from trying your product. You can place a survey on your pricing page, ask people if something is stopping them, and follow-up with the segment who replied ‘no’ by asking them to elaborate further.

• These questions are also great for getting your foot in the door. When you ask a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ question, it 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.

70+ survey question examples

Below we collected a list of good survey questions, and categorized them across ecommerce, software/software as a service (SaaS), and publishing.

You don't have to use them word-for-word, but hopefully seeing this list will spark some extra good ideas for the surveys you're going to run right after reading this article. 😉

9 basic demographic survey questions

Ask these questions when you want to get some context about your respondents and target audience (so you can segment them later). Consider including demographic questions to your survey when conducting user or market research as well. 

A tip: don't ask these questions 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 really useful for you, business-wise.

• What is your name?

• What is your age?

• What is your gender?

• What company do you work for?

• What vertical/industry best describes your company?

  e.g.

  Ecommerce - Retail

  Ecommerce - Travel

  Ecommerce - Other

  SaaS

  Marketplace

  Agency/Consulting

  Lead Generation

  Other (please specify)

• What best describes your role?

  e.g. Manager

  Specialist / Team Member

  Associate

  VP Director

  C-Level Executive (CEO, CMO, etc)

  Other (please specify)

• In which department do you work?

• What is the total number of employees in your company (including all locations where your employer operates)?

• What is your company's annual revenue?

Gather more info about your users with our Product-Market Fit survey template.

20+ effective customer questions

These questions are particularly recommended for ecommerce companies:

Before purchase

• What information is missing or would make your decision to buy easier?

• What is your biggest fear or concern about purchasing this item?

• Were you able to complete the purpose of your visit today?

• If you did not make a purchase today, what stopped you?

After purchase

• Was there anything about this checkout process we could improve?

• What was your biggest fear or concern about purchasing from us?

• What persuaded you to complete the purchase of the item(s) in your cart today?

• If you could no longer use [product name], what’s the one thing you would miss the most?

• What’s the one thing that nearly stopped you from buying from us?

Editor's tip: check out our quick guide about setting up an ecommerce post-purchase survey in 7 steps.

Other useful customer questions

• Do you have any questions before you complete your purchase?

• What other information would you like to see on this page?

• What were the three main things that persuaded you to create an account today?

• What nearly stopped you from creating an account today?

• Which other options did you consider before choosing [product name]?

• What would persuade you to use us more often?

• What was your biggest challenge, frustration, or problem in finding the right [product type] online?

• Please list the top three things that persuaded you to use us rather than a competitor.

• What other products would you like to see us offer?

• Were you able to find the information you were looking for?

• How satisfied are you with our support?

• How would you rate our service on a scale of 0–10? (0=terrible, 10=stellar)

• How would you rate our support on a scale of 0–10?

• How likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague? (This is an NPS question)

• Is there anything preventing you from purchasing at this point?

Editor's tip: learn how satisfied customers are with this expert-built Customer Satisfaction / NPS survey template.

30+ product survey questions

These questions are particularly recommended for SaaS companies:

Questions for new or trial users

• What nearly stopped you from signing up today?

• What would persuade you to use us more often?

• How likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague on a scale of 0–10? (NPS question)

• Is our pricing clear? If not, what would you change?

Questions for paying customers

• What convinced you to pay for this service?

• What’s the one thing we are missing in [product type]?

• What's one feature we can add that would make our product indispensable for you?

• If you could no longer use [name of product], what’s the one thing you would miss the most?

Editor's tip: are you making the most of your pricing plan? Find out what buyers think with this Pricing Plan Feedback survey template.

Questions for former/churned customers

• What is the main reason you're canceling your account? Please be blunt and direct.

• If you could have changed one thing in [product name], what would it have been?

• If you had a magic wand and could change anything in [product name], what would it be?

Editor's tip: find out why customers churn with this free-to-use Churn Analysis survey template.

Other useful product questions

• What were the three main things that persuaded you to sign up today?

• Which other options did you consider before choosing [product name]?

• What was your biggest challenge, frustration, or problem in finding the right [product type] online?

• Please list the top three things that persuaded you to use us rather than a competitor.

• Do you have any questions before starting a free trial?

• What persuaded you to start a trial?

• Which other options did you consider before choosing [product name]?

• What other products would you like to see us offer?

• Was this help section useful?

• Was this article useful?

• How satisfied are you with our support?

• How would you rate our service on a scale of 1–10? (0=terrible, 10=stellar)

• How would you rate our support on a scale of 1-–10?

• Is there anything preventing you from upgrading at this point?

• Is there anything preventing you from purchasing at this point?

• Is there anything on this page that doesn't work the way you expected it to?

• What could we change to make you want to continue using us?

• If you did not upgrade today, what stopped you?

• What's the next thing you think we should build? (Can be multiple choice)

• How would you feel if we discontinued this feature?

• What's the next feature or functionality we should build?

Editor's tip: gather feedback on your product with our free-to-use survey templates.

20 effective questions for publishers and bloggers

Questions to help improve content

• If you could change just one thing in [publication name], what would it be?

• What other content would you like to see us offer?

• Was this article useful? (Yes/No)

• How would you rate this article on a scale of 1–10?

• If you could change anything on this page, what would you have us do?

• If you did not subscribe to [publication name] today, what was it that stopped you?

Editor's tip: does your copy and messaging resonate? Find ways to improve your website content with this survey template.

New subscriptions

• What convinced you to subscribe to [publication] today?

• What almost stopped you from subscribing?

• What were the three main things that persuaded you to join our list today?

Cancellations

• What is the main reason you're unsubscribing? Please be specific.

Other useful content-related questions

• What’s the one thing we are missing in [publication name]?

• What would persuade you to visit us more often?

• How likely are you to recommend us to someone with similar interests? (NPS question)

• What’s missing on this page?

• What topics would you like to see us write about next?

• How useful was this article?

• What could we do to make this page more useful?

• Is there anything on this site that doesn't work the way you expected it to?

• What's one thing we can add that would make [publication name] indispensable for you?

• If you could no longer read [publication name], what’s the one thing you would miss the most?

⚡️ Pro tip: whichever questions you use, the qualitative data you get from a survey will supplement the insight you can capture through other traditional analytics tools (think Google Analytics) and behavior analytics tools (think heatmaps and session recordings, which visualize user behavior on specific pages or across an entire website).

While analytics tools will tell you what is happening on a page or website, replies to your survey questions will usually help you understand why it's happening. Combining the two gives you both the context you need to solve a problem or capitalize on an opportunity and plenty of inspiration about how to do it.

How to write good (and effective) survey questions: the DOs and DON’Ts

To help you understand the basics and avoid some rookie mistakes, we asked a few experts to give us their thoughts on what makes a good and effective survey question.

Survey question DOs

DO focus your questions on the customer

It may be tempting to focus on your company or products, but it is usually more effective to put the focus back on the customer. Get to know their needs, drives, pain points, and barriers to purchase by asking about their experience. That’s what you’re after: you want to know what it’s like inside their heads and how they feel when they use your website and products.

DO be polite and concise (without skimping on micro-copy)

Put time into your micro-copy—those tiny bits of written content that go into surveys. Explain why you’re asking the questions, and when people reach the end of the survey, remember to thank them for their time. After all, they’re giving you free labor!

DO consider the foot-in-the-door principle

One way to increase your response rate is to ask an easy question upfront, such as a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ question, because once people commit to taking a survey, they’re more likely to finish it.

DO consider asking your questions from the first-person perspective

Okay, so we don’t do this here at Hotjar. You’ll notice all our sample questions are listed in second-person (i.e. ‘you’ format), but it’s worth testing to determine which approach gives you better answers. Some experts prefer the first-person approach (i.e. ‘I’ format) because they believe it encourages users to talk about themselves—but only you can decide which approach works best for your business.

DO alternate your questions often

Shake up the questions you ask on a regular basis. Asking a wide variety of questions will help you and your team get a complete view of what your customers are thinking.

DO test your surveys before sending them out

A few years ago, Hotjar created a survey that we sent to 2,000 CX professionals via email. Before officially sending it out, we wanted to make sure the questions really worked. 

We decided to test them out on internal staff and external people by sending out three rounds of test surveys to 100 respondents each time. Their feedback helped us perfect the questions and clear up any confusing language.

Survey question DON’Ts

DON’T ask closed-ended questions if you’ve never done research before

If you’ve just begun asking questions, make them open-ended questions since you have no idea what your customers think about you at this stage. When you limit their answers, you just reinforce your own assumptions.

There are two exceptions to this rule:

1. Using a closed-ended question to get your foot in the door at the beginning of a survey

2. Using rating scale questions to gather customer sentiment (like an NPS survey)

DON’T ask a lot of questions if you’re just getting started

Having to answer too many questions can overwhelm your users. You really have to make peace with the fact you can’t ask as many questions as you’d like, so stick with the most important things and discard the rest.

Try starting off with a single question to see how your audience responds, then move on to two questions once you feel like you know what you’re doing.

How many questions should you ask? There’s really no perfect answer, but we recommend asking as few as you need to ask to get the information you want. In the beginning, focus on the big things:

• Who are your users?

• What do potential customers want?

• How are they using your product?

• What would win their loyalty?

DON’T just ask a question when you can combine it with other tools

Don’t just use surveys to answer questions that other tools (such as analytics) can also help you answer. If you want to learn about whether people find a new website feature helpful, you can also observe how they’re using it through analytics, session recordings, and other user testing tools for a more complete picture.

DON’T ask leading questions

A leading question is one that prompts a specific answer—avoid asking leading questions, because they’ll give you bad data. For example, asking ‘What makes our product better than our competitors’ products?’ might boost your self-esteem, but it won’t get you good information because you’re planting the idea that your own product is the best on the market.

DON’T ask loaded questions

A loaded question is similar to a leading question, but it does more than just push a bias—it phrases the question such that it’s impossible to answer without confirming an underlying assumption.

A common (and subtle) form of loaded survey question would be, ‘What do you find useful about this article?’ If we haven’t first asked you whether you found the article useful at all, then we’re asking a loaded question.

DON’T ask about more than one topic at once

For example, 'Do you believe our product can help you increase sales and improve cross-collaboration?'

This complex question, also known as a ‘double-barreled question’, requires a very complex answer as it begs the respondent to address two questions at once:

1. Do you believe our product can help you increase sales?

2. Do you believe our product can help you improve cross-collaboration?

Respondents may very well answer 'yes', but actually mean it for the first part of the question, and not the other. The result? Your survey data is inaccurate and you’ve missed out on actionable insights.

Instead, ask two specific questions to gather customer feedback on each concept.

10 survey use cases: what you can do with good survey questions

Effective survey questions can help improve your business in many different ways. We’ve written in detail about most of these ideas in other blog posts, and have included links for each of them below.

1. Create user personas

A user persona is a character based on the people who currently use your website or product. A persona combines psychographics and demographics and reflects who they are, what they need, and what may stop them from getting it.

Examples of questions to ask:

• Describe yourself in one sentence, e.g. ‘I am a 30-year old marketer based in Dublin who enjoys writing articles about user personas.’

• What is your main goal for using this website/product?

• What, if anything, is preventing you from doing it?

📚 Read more → our post about creating simple and effective user personas in 4 steps highlights some good survey questions to ask when creating a user persona.

2. Understand why your product is not selling

Few things are more frightening than stagnant sales. When the pressure is mounting, you’ve got to get to the bottom of it, and good survey questions can help you do just that.

Examples of questions to ask:

• What made you buy the product? What challenges are you trying to solve?

• What did you like most about the product? What did you dislike the most?

• What nearly stopped you from buying?

📚 Read more → here’s a detailed piece about the best survey questions to ask your customers when your product isn’t selling, and why they work so well.

3. Understand why people leave your website

If you want to figure out why people are leaving your website, you’ll have to ask questions.

A good format for that is an exit-intent pop-up survey, which appears when a user clicks to leave the page, giving them the chance to leave website feedback before they go.

Another way is to focus on the people who did convert, but just barely—something Hotjar Founder David Darmanin considers essential for taking conversions to the next level. By focusing on customers who bought your product (but almost didn’t), you can learn how to win over another set of users who are similar to them: those who almost bought your products, but backed out in the end.

Example of questions to ask:

• Not for you? Tell us why. (exit-intent pop-up—ask when a user leaves without buying)

• What almost stopped you from buying? (ask post-conversion)

  Get started with our Exit Intent survey template.

📚 Read more → HubSpot Academy increased its conversion rate by adding an exit-intent survey that asked one simple question when users left their website: “Not for you? Tell us why.”

4. Understand your customers’ fears and concerns

Buying a new product can be scary: nobody wants to make a bad purchase. Your job is to address your prospective customers’ concerns, counter their objections, and calm their fears, which should lead to more conversions.

Examples of questions to ask:

• What is your biggest fear or concern about purchasing this item?

• What information is missing or would make your decision to buy easier?

📚 Read more → take a look at our no-nonsense guide to increasing conversions for a comprehensive write-up about you can discover the drivers, barriers, and hooks that lead people to converting on your website.  

5. Drive your pricing strategy

Are your products overpriced and scaring away potential buyers? Or are you underpricing and leaving money on the table?

Asking the right questions will help you come up with a pricing structure that maximizes profit, but you have to be delicate about how you ask the questions. Don’t ask directly about price, otherwise, you’ll seem like you’re unsure of the value you offer. Instead, ask questions that uncover how your products serve your customers and what would inspire them to buy more.

Examples of questions to ask:

• How do you use our product/service?

• What would persuade you to use our product more often?

• What’s the one thing our product is missing?

📚 Read more → we wrote a series of blog posts about managing the early stage of a SaaS startup, which included a post about developing the right pricing strategy—something businesses in all sectors could benefit from.

6. Measure and understand product-market fit

Product/market fit is about understanding demand and creating a product that your customers want, need, and will actually pay money for. A combination of online survey questions and one-on-one interviews can help you figure this out.

Examples of questions to ask:

• What's one thing we can add that would make [product name] indispensable for you?

• If you could no longer use [product name], what’s the one thing you would miss the most?

• If you could change just one thing in [product name], what would it be?

📚 Read more → in our series of blog posts about managing the early stage of a SaaS startup, we covered a section on product-market fit, which has relevant information for all industries.

7. Choose effective testimonials

Human beings are social creatures. We’re influenced by people who are similar to us, and testimonials that explain how your product solved a problem are the ultimate form of social proof. The following survey questions can help you get some great testimonials.

Examples of questions to ask:

• What changed for you after you got our product?

• How does our product help you get your job done?

• How would you feel if you couldn’t use it anymore?

📚 Read more → in our post about positioning and branding your products, we cover the type of questions that help you get effective testimonials.

8. Measure customer satisfaction

It’s important to continually track your overall customer satisfaction so you can address any issues before they start to impact your brand’s reputation. You can do this with rating scale questions.

For example, at Hotjar, we ask for feedback after each customer support interaction (which is one important measure of customer satisfaction). We begin with a simple, foot-in-the-door question to encourage a response, and use the information to improve our customer support, which is strongly tied to overall customer satisfaction.

Examples of questions to ask:

1. How would you rate the support you received? (1–5 scale)

2. If 1–3: How could we improve?

3. If 4-–5: What did you love about the experience?

📚 Read more → our beginner’s guide to website feedback goes into great detail about how to measure customer service, NPS, and other important success metrics.

9. Measure word-of-mouth recommendations

The Net Promoter Score® (NPS) is a measure of how likely your customers are to recommend your products or services to their friends or colleagues. NPS is a higher bar than customer satisfaction because customers have to be really impressed with your product to recommend you.

Example of NPS questions (to be asked in the same survey):

1. How likely are you to recommend this company to a friend or colleague? (rate 0–10)

2. What’s the main reason for your score?

3. What should we do to WOW you? (optional)

Use our NPS calculator to crunch the numbers.

📚 Read more → we created an NPS guide specifically for ecommerce companies, but it has plenty of information that will help companies in other industries as well.