Knotch Reveals How Survey Question Design Impacts Audience Sentiment

‍Top 3 Takeaways:

1. Helpfulness-focused questions tend to generate strong sentiment and engagement, and serve as a useful benchmark for understanding broader audience response.
2. Emotionally driven prompts spark higher interaction and surface more diverse sentiment, valuable for understanding how content resonates, even when feedback is mixed.
3. Pages with longer time on page, deeper scroll depth and more video completions saw stronger sentiment, while high traffic without value often led to negative feedback.

Knotch captures content sentiment through interactive on-page surveys that collect direct audience feedback through a color-coded sentiment scale. Brands can customize these questions to align with goals like gauging purchase intent, brand perception, or content effectiveness.

Our analysis began with a broad view of how question types stack up across two key dimensions: sentiment and engagement. Certain question categories consistently stood out. 

For example, those asking about content helpfulness drove high positivity and strong response rates (total responses relative to those who interacted with the survey card). Others, like emotional engagement questions, prompted more interactions (a hover or a click) with the card but delivered a wider range of reactions, offering a clearer lens into how content connects emotionally, even when sentiment is mixed.

This mapping surfaced the question types that provide the most consistent value-and those that may benefit from refinement. From there, we dove deeper into six recurring question categories to surface patterns in sentiment, response behavior, and user engagement.

Sentiment vs. Response Rate by Question Category

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A Closer Look at the Categories

We analyzed six major question types:

• Content Helpfulness / Informativeness — e.g., "Was this content helpful to you?"
• Content Relevance / Satisfaction — e.g., "Did this content meet your expectations?"
• Brand Perception — e.g., "How would you describe your opinion of our brand after reading this?"
• Emotional Engagement / Inspiration — e.g., "Did this content inspire or move you?"
• Brand Consideration / Likelihood to Act — e.g., "How likely are you to explore our services further?"
• Other / Custom Program Questions — varies by client, often bespoke or campaign-specific

For each type, we calculated weighted averages for positive, neutral, and negative sentiment. We also examined response rates, both in relation to how many users interacted with the card and to overall page views.

Content Helpfulness Stands Out as the Most Reliable Performer

Questions about how helpful or informative the content was generated the most consistent results across the board. With a 75.5% positive sentiment rate and a strong 37% response rate, this category strikes the ideal balance between engagement and affirmation.

These questions score higher because they are universally relevant, easy to answer, and aligned with why users arrive on the page in the first place. For organizations seeking broad feedback strategies, this is the most reliable category to use.

Emotional Engagement Questions Drive Response and Reveal Range

Emotional engagement and inspiration questions produced a high response rate at 46%. However, sentiment averaged just 59% positive, averaging a lower score than the helpfulness category.

This suggests that emotionally charged or mission-driven questions are effective at prompting action, but do not guarantee a favorable reaction. These are best deployed in targeted campaigns where the goal is to provoke thought or build affinity rather than gather broadly positive feedback.

Brand Perception and Relevance Questions Offer Moderate Results

Brand perception and relevance/satisfaction questions both landed in the middle of the pack. Sentiment hovered around 72% to 75% positive, and response rates ranged from 19% to 45%.

These question types are generally effective but may benefit from more strategic placement or rewording to clarify what kind of response is being asked for. In many cases, audiences may feel less inclined to answer without a clearer connection to the content.

Brand Consideration Questions Reveal Tougher Feedback

Questions asking about likelihood to act or future brand consideration performed moderately in terms of response rate, at 48%. But sentiment was in the bottom half, at just under 66% positive.  

Brand consideration is a much tougher objective than helpfulness or a broader perception objective. When users are asked to commit or evaluate a product decision, they are more critical. These questions can still be valuable but should be paired with context or persuasive content to support the ask.

Custom Questions Underperform When Not Anchored to Content

Custom questions—ones asking whether the reader understood something specific from the content or open-ended discovery questions—had weaker results with 63% average positive sentiment and under 37% response rates.

These questions often lacked clear intent or were too narrowly tied to campaign specifics, making them feel disconnected from the broader content experience.

For content and brand marketers, this category is a useful reminder: feedback prompts work best when they feel like a natural extension of the story being told. When questions are too disconnected from the page or too niche to resonate, users are more likely to skip them.

Custom doesn't have to mean complicated; what matters most is that the ask feels clear, relevant, and connected to what the user just experienced.

What User Behaviors Signal Strong Sentiment

We identified four behaviors that consistently showed up on pages with high positive sentiment:

• Higher response rate per page view
• Longer average time on page
• Deeper scroll depth
• More video completions

Conversely, broad traffic without clear value often led to more critical feedback, highlighting the importance of aligning high-volume pages with clear expectations.

Efficiency May Be a Stronger Signal than Volume

One of the clearest patterns in our data: relevance, not reach, drives stronger sentiment and response. Pages with smaller audiences but clearer CTAs and well-matched question prompts often outperformed broader, high-traffic pages.

For marketers, this reinforces the value of precision. Niche content with tightly aligned messaging and thoughtful feedback design can generate higher-quality insights, without needing scale. Consider doubling down on pages that already show signs of strong engagement, and treat high-volume pages as a testbed for refining clarity and alignment.

Final Thoughts

The questions we ask are often the last impression we leave. Our data shows that thoughtful question design influences not only how many people respond, but how they feel about the experience.

Ultimately, sentiment—whether positive, negative, or mixed—offers a window into how content lands with real audiences. The goal is to surface those reactions to guide better content clarity, relevance, and emotional resonance.

^{Published May 12, 2025}