There is no longer a question of whether or not mobile is changing how we do what we do. One of the last frontiers to be affected by the transition to mobile dependence has been market research, but our practice is now evolving at a rapid pace.

Trend forecasters all agree that the proportion of online surveys completed from mobile devices is on the rise. They don’t agree on the percent currently completed via mobile (we’ve seen stats as low as 18 percent and others as high as 50+ percent), but that’s OK, it’s clearly getting larger.

Things to keep in mind when your audience is increasingly on mobile:

• More careful thought is required when developing questionnaires. Due to the smaller screens, ensure that your survey platform is mobile-optimized to display content with as few inconveniences as possible. Remember, mobile screens are often only 5 percent the size of PCs
• Manage list length in questions to avoid scrolling. Scrolling is so fast on mobile, respondents run the risk of missing some attributes
• Horizontal versus vertical. Account for both layouts for the most responses
• Mobile survey length best practices recommend keeping time to complete under 15 minutes
• Keep open-end boxes as large as you can. Studies show that the bigger the space, the more words respondents will type in
• Test across multiple devices. While we can’t account for every phone and tablet type, we can vet across the most common

Advantages of mobile devices:

• Image and video collection are so much more accessible. Recently, we conducted a survey on bottle design and watching the nuances of people opening the bottle one-handed versus two-handed gave us priceless insights. This creates a similar feel to an in-home ethnography or shop-along and can save on investment
• Out-of-home experiences: Being able to collect real-time data when people are in shopping mode can open doors to opportunities not uncovered before
• People are responding to surveys while in waiting rooms, attending sporting events and lying on the couch. This flexibility can lend a boon to response rates

There’s so much more to this than we’re able to share here. We look forward to diving further into mobile research with you this year.