Land surveying can be defined as a scientific or
legally sufficient method to determine the location of points on the surface of
the earth, the angles formed by such points, the distance between them.
According to historical records, land surveying was practiced by the ancient
Egyptians even prior to the construction of the Great Pyramids. Surveyors in
ancient Egypt
and other people interested in civil law recognized the importance of surveying
in civilized society and began keeping a registry of land surveys as early as
3000 BC.
As a scientific method of inquiry and research,
land surveys incorporate elements of geometry, physics, math, engineering, and
law into their determination. Land surveys satisfy important needs in many
fields. For example, topographic surveys are used by geologists and
cartographers in order to create elevation maps. Archaeologists refer to
current and historic surveys prior to conducting excavations.
Engineers and builders will not risk beginning a new
construction project without reliable surveys onsite. Real estate and mortgage
professionals require knowledge of land boundaries and precisely where a
building structure is located prior to closing a transaction. Title insurers,
attorneys, and judges depend on the accuracy of legal descriptions provided by
a land survey in order to resolve property litigation issues.
The basic legal purpose of land surveying is to
determine boundaries. This can be accomplished by establishing where the metes
and bounds of land begin and end. Civilized society has depended on the
accuracy of land boundaries to respect the borders of sovereign states,
jurisdictions, municipalities, land use planning, and private property. To this
extent, different types of land surveys are used these days to recognize and
respect boundaries.
American Land Title Association (ALTA) survey
In the United States, the real estate and
mortgage lending industries rely on whether the title to a property can be
insured or if it is ¨marketable¨. This means whether an insurance company would
consider taking the risk of issuing a policy insuring ownership, or if the land
and structures attached to it can be readily transferred without fear of
outside claims. The American Land Title Institute, along with the American
Congress on Surveying and Mapping and the National Society of Professional
Surveyors, have adopted and developed a set of minimum standard detail
requirements for land surveys to be used in any legal matters pertaining to the
transfer and conveyance of real estate. The ALTA survey is essentially a
boundary survey that meets and exceeds the standards set in different states.
In most cases, ALTA surveys are thought of being legally sufficient. These
comprehensive surveys require written authorization from the client. Many
important issues are addressed in ALTA surveys: boundaries, structural
location, easements, encroachments, estoppels, etc.
Cadastral survey
All countries in the world posses some type of
land registry records system that identifies boundaries. In the United States,
for example, the Public Land Survey System keeps plats, diagrams, sketches,
maps, and other documents that establish the boundaries of all public and
governmental use lands in the country. This is known as a cadastral system.
Local governments have an interest in land surveying for the purpose of
taxation. A cadastral survey is a search conducted from records kept in a
public land record registry. Comprehensive land surveys such as the ALTA
include cadastral surveying.
Boundary survey
Government offices that issue building permits
will often require a minimum of a boundary survey or sketch prior to granting
commencement of construction work. The property lines must be clearly defined
in these surveys in order to spot possible issues such as easements and
encroachments.
Site planning survey
In addition to identifying boundaries and
obtaining the required building permits, architects and engineers will need a
topographic survey that identifies elevation features in order to create a site
plan. Construction of tall structures often requires the review of site
planning surveys prior to breaking ground.
Subdivision survey
The construction of new housing complexes that
include several units arranged in neighborhood blocks often requires that a
tract of parcel of land be divided into smaller parts. To this effect, a
subdivision survey that includes topographical elements must be used. This type
of survey is not only used for construction purposes. Lot
design, drainage, street access, landscaping, utility mapping, and recording
are also dependent on subdivision surveys.
Mortgage inspection
In certain mortgage lending operations, a simple
review of existing surveys, public records, and other legal documents may be
sufficient to prove ownership, easements, and/or encroachments. While mortgage
inspections may include a sketch and even indicate boundaries, these are not
true surveys.
GPS survey
The rising popularity of geographical positioning
systems has found its way in land surveying. While GPS surveys are not as
complete as ALTA surveys, they are being used for urban planning and to augment
the cadastral recording systems. The useful Geographic and Land Information
Systems rely on GPS data, and these systems are increasingly being used as
reference by land surveyors.
Court Exhibit or Judicial Survey
In property litigation, a court may appoint an
expert land surveyor to provide careful and detailed analysis of legal
descriptions, prior surveys, maps, recorded documents, and other existing
evidence in order to settle a dispute over real estate.
Email Based Surveys
Surveys are a great way to find out what your
customers think and want. Knowing your customers' attitudes to, and perceptions
of, your product and services is vital to the future direction of your company.
Similarly, you can ask very specific questions
about particular products - maybe a new product you have just launched or are
thinking about launching.
Or perhaps you want to find out what clients
think of your staff and your customer service?
There are three main things to think about when
sending out a survey:
What are you going to say? Ask yourself:
Timing is crucial and can make or what do you
change?
What do you leave the same?
Why are you sending this survey?
What do you want to find out?
Who are you sending it to?
Who are your targets? Why?
This last question will relate back to your
initial strategy. Why are you doing this?
When should I send the survey?
Break your survey's success.
What are you going to say?
The information gleaned from a survey is only as
good as the questions it asks. What this means is, something that might at
first seem relatively straightforward, actually requires a lot of thought and
also knowledge about your product/service and your customers. The questions and
how you word them - are your survey.
Tips for wording your survey
Keep sentences short - long, waffling sentences
and questions will confuse the respondent and lead to ambiguous answers and/or
ones that do not answer the question properly. Keep copy (number of words) to a
minimum. Less is more. Your customers are very busy people, just like you. They
do not have time to spend reading - and filling in lengthy surveys.
Tip: Once you have written your survey, go back
over it and see which words you can chop out. You will be surprised how many
words are a double up and just how many words you can get rid of. Use simple,
easy-to-understand language. Imagine you are speaking to a high school student
who knows nothing about your product or business.
You cannot assume your customers have an in-depth
knowledge of your product or service, even if they are a customer. If they
become confused, due to too much 'technical' information, they will stop doing
the survey.
Targeting your survey, who should you send it to?
Targeting your survey to the right people is
vital to the results of the survey and its overall success. You might, for
example, not want to send it to all your customers. Say you are a restaurant
and you have designed a new, fast-turnaround lunch menu to attract the business
market during their lunch breaks. You want to find out what kind of 'quick and
easy' meals they would be tempted by and also whether they would be interested
in pre-ordering via a dedicated email address, to save time.
In this instance, you would be best to send your
survey to those people who have already been to the restaurant for lunch.
Tip: Try and build your database to suit the
kinds of research you will be undertaking further down the track. So, for
example, when you gather customers' contact details, also ask them whether they
are primarily interested in lunch, dinner or both?
You might also want to capture where they live -
this is often most conveniently done by asking customers for their post code -
and whether they eat out often (more than once a week), not so often (every 2-3
months) or 'only on special occasions'.
By segmenting your database by 'key criteria' in
the first instance, your surveys will become more targeted and hence the
results will be more useful.
Demographics
At the end of your survey, you can ask respondents to give you basic
information about them that will help you build a picture of your customers or
your potential customers. Demographic information enables you to interpret your
survey results by market sectors. Information usually asked for in surveys
includes age, gender, location and, quite often, salary level. Use ranges for
age, salary etc. For example, are you:
18 - 25 years old?
26 - 40 years old?
41 - 55 years old?
56 - 70 years old?
70+?
Targeting non customers
You might also want to think about sending
surveys to non customers, for example, if you have a new product you feel might
appeal to a new market segment. The fact you are considering launching such a
product means you should have done some research into the types of people that
will consider buying it. If you don't have a market, there's no point launching
the product!
To test the reaction to a new product, you might want to send it to a totally new database (as well as your current customers of course). You can build your own database - the restaurant mentioned above, for example, could go through the local phone book and capture all the email addresses in the advertisements of businesses in the vicinity of the restaurant - or you can buy in databases (see Echoplus's help line if you would like us to source a mailing list for you).
To test the reaction to a new product, you might want to send it to a totally new database (as well as your current customers of course). You can build your own database - the restaurant mentioned above, for example, could go through the local phone book and capture all the email addresses in the advertisements of businesses in the vicinity of the restaurant - or you can buy in databases (see Echoplus's help line if you would like us to source a mailing list for you).
Timing of surveys
There are two things to think about when it comes
to the timings of email-based surveys. The first is the timing of the campaign
in relation to other activity and the second is timing in relation to the
specific target customer.
Campaign timing
When you decide to send out the survey will
depend on your overall marketing strategy and what it is you want to find out.
Say, for example, you are a florist who wants to find out which products your
customers like most, when they prefer to shop, how often they shop and how much
they spend each visit. It would make sense to send this survey out in plenty of
time before your next buying cycle. If, for example, you go to two big trade
shows a year, use the information captured from the survey to inform your
buying decisions.
This is one good reason to have an overall
12-month marketing strategy - so major decisions, many of which are cyclical or
seasonal, tie in with each other and help to create a synergistic effect for
your business. Another influencer of timings might be new legislation. Say, for
example, you are an accounting firm and new legislation is coming into effect
that you think will impact on your clients. You would be best to send out the
survey - asking clients what they think - in plenty of time before the
legislation touches down, so you can be prepared and ready to help those
customers affected.
Timings - customer focused
Timings - customer focused
The other aspect as regards timings is when do
you actually send out the survey to best suit your customers? Should you send
it on a weekday or the weekend? Morning or afternoon? Or perhaps after hours?
There has been much research done on this kind of thing but sadly the jury is
still out! Some surveys, for example, claim Thursdays and Fridays are better
than the start of the week for business clients. Maybe by the end of the week
workers feel they deserve more 'down time'?
The main thing to consider is your own targets -
Who are they? When would they be most receptive to your survey? When is it a
logical time to send it? If, for example, you are a sailing holiday company
asking specific questions about a proposed new destination, you would send out
the survey in plenty of time before your customers tend to go on holiday. This
is another example of diagnostics helping your survey - the more information
you have on your customers (e.g. their preferred holiday dates) the more
targeted the results.
Chatting to your customers can help - the results
are not scientific but quite often what a handful of customers say about your
products permeates to many of your customers. Informal feedback can often give
you a starting point for what to ask customers in your survey.
Qualitative versus quantitative surveys
You will no doubt have heard the words
qualitative and quantitative when it comes to surveys. In summary, here are
some of the main points of difference:
Qualitative
Qualitative is where you ask respondents more
in-depth questions about how they feel, what they think. Questions that require
longer, more wordy responses. Good for more in-depth surveys where you are
trying to measure perceptions, attitudes, opinions. You can ask 'open ended'
questions - questions that require the respondent to formulate their own
answers - or multiple choice answers (you can still gauge attitudes and
perceptions but have to word the questions very carefully).
Tip: Never ask questions that can be answered by either yes or no as this
tells you nothing unless this is all you needs to know e.g. Would you try this
new lunch menu if it was offered at an all-in price of $19.95 yes/no? Qualitative samples (the number of people surveyed) tend to be small - the value is in the answers, not the numbers. Qualitative research needs careful interpretation of the answers as they can be subjective, emotive and sometimes undecipherable!
Quantitative
Quantitative research requires that a minimum number of respondents be surveyed in order to make the results 'statistically significant'. In other words, if you ask 5 people something and 4 out of the 5 say they like it, this is not statistically significant (the next five people asked could just as easily say they did not like it). However, if you ask 100 people the same question and 80 out of 100 people say they like it, you would have asked enough people to give you reason to think that perhaps you are onto a winner. You have questioned a statistically significant sample of people. The number of people you need to survey to give you that assurance varies - there are some very complex sums you can do to work it out! - But for a small business 100 to 200 people would be a good start.
Quantitative research requires that a minimum number of respondents be surveyed in order to make the results 'statistically significant'. In other words, if you ask 5 people something and 4 out of the 5 say they like it, this is not statistically significant (the next five people asked could just as easily say they did not like it). However, if you ask 100 people the same question and 80 out of 100 people say they like it, you would have asked enough people to give you reason to think that perhaps you are onto a winner. You have questioned a statistically significant sample of people. The number of people you need to survey to give you that assurance varies - there are some very complex sums you can do to work it out! - But for a small business 100 to 200 people would be a good start.
If you think you're on to something - or want to
'drill down' a bit more on a specific aspect of your product or a specific
question - you can re-send another survey specifically to those people who have
said, for example, 'yes, I would be interested in a new lunch menu offered at
$19.95'.
Testing your survey
Testing your survey is one of the single most
important things you can do to ensure success. What you think is a
straightforward question might cause respondents all kinds of difficulty due to
the way it is worded (see tips for wording your survey). Ambiguous wording,
technical jargon, acronyms - all of these will put people off. Just because you
understand industry jargon does not mean your customers will (or should!). You
can do a cheap and quick test by sending your survey to five friends or
acquaintances. Ask them to complete the survey as if they were a customer and
then give you feedback. You will be surprised at which areas they stumble over!
If you are happy with the survey after your
initial test but want to really firm it up, send it to 20-30 of your regulars
(customers who will 'forgive' you a few mistakes) before sending it to your
entire database. The great thing is testing is free! It just takes time and
patience and the willingness to change when you receive feedback
Rewards
Gone are the days when busy people filled in surveys
for nothing! Give your respondents a reward for taking the time to fill in your
survey - thank them (you should thank them anyway and give them a reward).
Rewards can be anything and everything, within reason, but clever marketers
will ensure their reward is relevant and appealing to their target audience.
Think carefully about what it is you are trying to achieve. With the restaurant
example, a voucher for a free meal would probably work. If you are an
accountant, is a free tax return quite as appealing?
Money (in the form of coupons), money-off,
discounts - all work if a meaningful amount is offered. Alternatively, you
could offer respondents a chance to go into a draw for something 'big' such as
a holiday or cruise (why not consider partnering with a holiday operator if
relevant to your industry?)
Using surveys as a PR tool
Survey results make great material for media
releases. The results could be relevant to other industry members and also
customers - the 'man in the street'. Indeed, many companies survey customers
for this specific reason. You don't have to release all the information - just
the response to a particular question or questions. You could consider adding a
slightly controversial question to the end of your survey just to give you an 'angle'
for a media release.
For example, a restaurant could
ask diners whether they agree with new council regulations on pavement dining.
If you decide to go down this track, be sure to report your survey findings
faithfully and be prepared to back your release up with facts, should the
journalist call. For technical information on creating and building your
databases see Echo-plus's "Technical How-to on Databases".
