How to Write a Summary of Survey Results (+7 Examples)

Do you need to write a summary of your survey results? A great summary will increase the impact of your report and encourage more readers to engage with the content.

In this article, we’ll look at tips on presenting a survey report and writing up the introduction.

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How Do You Present a Survey Report?

The survey summary is often the only part of your survey that a visitor will read. So it’s important to get all of the elements right, including the presentation.

WPForms has an awesome surveys and polls addon that makes it easy to publish many types of surveys on your WordPress site. You can collect survey data using all of these fields:

• Likert Scale (sometimes called a matrix question)
• Net Promoter score
• Star rating
• Single Line Text
• Checkboxes
• Multiple Choice
• And more…

You can even turn on survey reporting when the form expiry date has passed, and the survey has closed.

But that’s not all. WPForms has unique survey reporting features too.

You can instantly create a beautiful PDF of your survey results when you click Print Survey Report right from the WordPress dashboard:

Then just click the Print button to create your report.

WPForms creates survey results reports without branding, so you can present them right away.

Now we understand a bit more about WPForms’ survey presentation and reports, let’s look at some of the content you could write to go with it.

How to Write a Summary of Survey Results

When you present your survey results, you’ll have a small space to get the reader’s attention. You’ll want to use as many tricks as possible to keep them engaged.

Here are the techniques we’ll talk about in this article:

1. Use Visualizations to Show Data
2. Write the Key Facts First
3. Write a Short Survey Summary
4. Explain the Motivation For Your Survey
5. Put Survey Statistics in Context
6. Tell the Reader What the Outcome Should Be
7. Export Your Survey Result Graphs

Let’s walk through some tricks and techniques with real examples.

1. Use Visualizations to Show Data

When you write a survey introduction, visuals are the #1 feature you’ll want to include.

Adding a chart to an introduction really helps to bring it to life and adds impact to the story you want to tell.

Examples of Survey Visualizations

Pie charts are perfect when you want to bring statistics to life. Here’s a great example from a wedding survey:

Pie charts can be simple and still get the message across. Here’s another great example from a homebuyer survey introduction:

You can easily add pie charts like this using the WPForms surveys and polls addon. It has powerful survey reporting features that are completely unique to WPForms.

If you want to customize the survey visuals for your introduction, check out this neat feature.

WPForms automatically changes the color of your pie chart when you click different visualization types at the top, so it’s easy to get a chart that looks great:

This is a handy feature that will save tons of time when you’re composing your survey results.

2. Write the Key Facts First

When you’re thinking about how to write a summary of survey results, remember that the introduction needs to get the reader’s attention.

Focusing on key facts helps you to do that right at the start.

This is why it’s usually best to write the survey introduction at the end once the rest of the survey report has been compiled. That way, you know what the big takeaways are.

This is an easy and powerful way to write a survey introduction that encourages the reader to investigate.

Examples of Survey Summaries With Key Facts

Here’s an awesome example of a survey that immediately draws the eye.

The key finding is presented first, and then we see a fact about half the group immediately after:

Using this order lets us see the impactful results from the survey right up top.

If you need help deciding which questions to ask in your survey, check out this article on the best survey questions to include.

3. Write a Short Survey Summary

Your survey summary should give the reader a complete overview of the content. But you don’t want to take up too much space.

Survey summaries are sometimes called executive summaries because they’re designed to be quickly digested by decision-makers.

You’ll want to filter out the less important findings and focus on what matters.

For most surveys, a 1-page summary is enough to get this information across.

Examples of Short Survey Introductions

One way to keep a survey summary short is to use a teaser at the start.

Here’s an example introduction that doesn’t state all of its findings, but gives us an incentive to keep reading:

And here’s a great survey introduction that summarizes the findings in just one sentence:

In WPForms, you can reduce the size of your survey report by excluding questions that you don’t need. Here, we decided to remove this question from the report PDF because it has no answers.

Just click the arrow at the top and it won’t appear in the final printout:

This is a great way to quickly build a PDF summary of your survey that only includes the most important questions.

4. Explain the Motivation For Your Survey

When you create a survey in WordPress, you probably have a good idea of your reasons for doing so.

Make your purpose clear in the intro. For example, if you’re running a demographic survey, you might want to clarify that you’re going to use this information to target your audience in a better way.

It’s important that the reader knows exactly what you want to find out. Ideally, you should also explain why you wanted to create the survey in the first place.

Examples of Intros that Explain Motivation

This vehicle survey was carried out to help with future planning, so the introduction makes the purpose clear to the reader:

Having focused questions can help to give your survey a clear purpose. We have some questionnaire examples and templates that can help with that.

Explaining why you ran the survey helps to give context, which we’ll talk about more next.

5. Put Survey Statistics in Context

Including numbers in a survey summary is important. But your survey summary should tell a story too.

Adding numbers to your introduction will help to draw the eye, but you’ll also want to explain what the numbers are telling you.

Otherwise, you’ll just have a list of statistics that don’t mean much to the reader.

Examples of Survey Statistics in Context

Here’s a great example of a survey introduction that uses the results from the survey to tell a story.

Another way to put numbers in context is to present the results visually.

Here, WPForms has automatically created a table from our Likert Scale question that makes it easy to see a positive trend:

If you’d like to use a Likert scale to produce a chart like this, check out this article on the best Likert scale questions for survey forms.

6. Tell the Reader What the Outcome Should Be

Now that your survey report is done, you’ll likely want some kind of action to be taken based on your findings.

That’s why it’s a good idea to make a recommendation.

If you already explained your reasons for creating the survey, you can naturally add a few sentences on the outcomes you want to see.

Examples of Survey Introductions with Recommendations

Here’s a nice example of a survey introduction that clearly states the outcomes that the organization would like to happen now that the survey is published:

This helps to focus the reader on the content and helps them to understand why the survey is important.

You can also cite related research here to give your reasoning more weight.

7. Export Your Survey Result Graphs

Now you’ve created beautiful graphs in your survey summary PDF, you’ll want to use them again in the main report.

By exporting visuals, you can also use them in marketing materials like:

• Presentation slides
• Infographics
• Press releases
• Blog posts

WPForms makes it easy to export any graphic from your survey results so you can use it on your website or in slides.

Just use the dropdown to export your survey pie chart as a JPG or PDF:

And that’s it! You now know how to create an impactful summary of survey results and add these to your marketing material or reports.

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Next Step: Make Your Survey Form

To create a great survey summary, you’ll want to start out with a great survey form. Check out this article on how to create a survey form online to learn how to create and customize your surveys in WordPress.

You can also create a popup WordPress survey with a plugin.

If you’re looking for ideas for survey questions, see our guide on rating scale question examples for inspiration.

Ready to build your survey? Get started today with the easiest WordPress form builder plugin. WPForms Pro includes free survey form templates and offers a 14-day money-back guarantee.

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