How Routing and Piping in Surveys Improves UX

One of the core benefits to using an experienced market research company to manage your study is the ability to apply routing, logic, branching and piping to your survey. Applying simple skip patterns to a survey will limit a survey respondents' frustration, help them flow through the survey quicker, and obtain higher levels of engagement. Without adding proper routing to your survey, you stand the risk of respondents straightlining or dropping out of surveys, which will significantly diminish your response rates.

How Routing and Piping in Surveys Improves UX


What is Routing? (Also Known as Branching, Logic, Skipping)

Routing in surveys offers the ability of the writer to skip questions not applicable to respondents. Depending on an answer to a prior question, the survey designer knows the following question would not apply to the user. For example, let's say the respondent answers "no" to the question "have you ever been to our store before?" The next question in the survey is "how many times do you typically visit our store in a given year?" Respondents who answer "no", they have never been to the store, would find this question confusing because they do not visit typically, it's their first visit. With survey programming you can design the routing to skip the second question if the answer to the first is "no."


What are the main benefits of routing?

Routing immediately eliminates confusion and frustration for the survey taker (the user.) This helps with completion rates and limits drop outs. Routing also limits the time to complete the survey. If respondents are forced to read through a series of questions which are not applicable, it adds considerable time to the length of the survey.


How does routing differ from piping?

There is a difference between routing and piping. Piping enables the survey designer to take the information from a prior question and input it into the survey later in the experience. For example, let's say the respondent answers "McDonald's" as their favorite fast food restaurant. Later in the survey, the study covers satisfaction with the respondent's favorite fast food restaurant. Rather than asking them to rate their "favorite fast food restaurant" in general, piping allows the survey writer to input McDonald's directly into the question wording seamlessly and automatically. This helps keep respondents engaged in the survey, where the survey actively listens to their feedback and customizes the next questions accordingly.


The ability to add routing, logic, branching, and piping is a key benefit of hiring a market research firm to manage your survey. Market research companies have access to advanced survey design platforms which allow for these levels of customization. Questions about your next survey project? Contact Drive Research at [email protected] or by calling 315-303-2040.

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