Finding out what your customers think about your company's offerings can have an enormous impact on the way you shape your business. Although gathering this vital information comes with a price tag, online surveys can be quite the bargain and just as effective as other traditional survey mediums.

The greatest advantages online surveys have over mail and phone surveys are faster turn-around time and lower costs. Response rates for online surveys are comparable to telephone surveys and typically higher than mail surveys. Online surveys also tend to be the least obtrusive approach to gather feedback since the level of time and effort required of respondents is minimal.

Typically the online survey process is divided into three stages: design, administration and analysis.

During design, you craft survey questions to yield valid, reliable feedback. While you have the option to generate the survey content yourself, your service provider should offer questionnaire design consultation services and review the survey to ensure validity, reliability and bias reduction.

The questions are then formatted for the Web, usually customized with your logo and/or colors. Potential respondents are then notified of the survey via an e-mail invitation, although sometimes they are sent a mailed invitation with directions to go online. During the survey administration period - typically two to three weeks - many vendors will allow you real-time access to up-to-the-minute survey results.

Final survey results are then compiled into a database and analyzed. You can usually view the analysis in a variety of formats, including statistical and graphical computer-generated reports, a customized executive summary or a customized Excel spreadsheet report. Keep in mind, though, that the survey analysis package you choose factors into the cost.

So where is the bargain? E-mail surveys cost about $2,500 to $5,000 - a great deal when you consider phone surveys can cost anywhere from $5,000 to $15,000 and surveys via snail mail can run you about $5,000 to $7,000 (for 200 responses).

Pricing for online surveys varies according to the survey length, number of respondents and level of results analysis. Some services also charge a per-completed survey fee. No matter how you slice it, though, online surveys usually cost less than other survey methods, especially if you have a large number of respondents.

Watch out for extra services that can inflate your final bill. Survey projects that require a high level of customization (e.g., many hours of researcher consultation in the design stage or extensive custom results analysis) always drive up costs, so you may want to keep these add-on services to a minimum. Ask about discounts if you are conducting multiple surveys.

Designing the survey questions and conducting the bulk of the results analysis in-house can reduce costs dramatically, but beware of potential pitfalls that can result by cutting corners, such as inadvertently biasing the survey results by introducing leading or double-barreled questions.

If you want to survey your customers but you do not have deep pockets in your marketing research budget, an online survey service may just be the ticket - an affordable one at that.