Here we'll explain how to find the right trigger time, but also how to notice when you've chose the wrong time.
The trigger time is more than a survey setting. It will also affect how the respondents answer your survey, as the trigger time determines when during the visit you ask your questions. If you ask the questions at the beginning of the visit, the visitors will not have had enough time to do what they wanted, and are therefore unsure about the website and their experience, but you will also get a lower find score. If you ask too late, the successful visitors will already have left the website, and your respondents will be those that struggle. They won't be happy, nor will your results be representative.
What you want is to find the time it takes most of the visitors to succeed but not yet have left the website. That way, you'll get the best and most representative answers.
Finding the right trigger time
For a general survey, the default trigger time is 2 minutes, and that is the trigger time that is appropriate for most website. However, the trigger time for your survey will depend on what the visitors do on your website. If they come to read articles or other information, they will stay longer and the survey will therefore need a longer trigger time. If your visitors can do what they want in a short time, you will need a short trigger time.
Besides considering what the visitors do on your website, you can also use the average session time for your visitors to find an appropriate trigger time. You can also think about how long time it should take for your visitors to do what they want. Because that is what the find question will answer: Could the visitors do what they wanted in 2 minutes? Or however long trigger time you choose.
If you are unsure about the trigger time, it's generally better to go with the shorter one. It will be easier to tell when you need to increase the trigger time than when you need to decrease it.
How do you know if you have the wrong trigger time?
The trigger time can be too short or too long. Although opposite problems, they have similar symptoms: the respondents are less satisfied. But there is a difference in how you notice that the trigger time is wrong.
Too short trigger time
It's easy to tell when your trigger time is too short, because the respondents will tell you so. For the follow-up question to the find question, the respondents will tell you that they didn't have enough time to find what they were looking for. For the question about improvement suggestions, the respondents will also tell you that the survey appears too quickly. If they do, you should increase the trigger time.
However, even when you have the right trigger time there may be some respondents that thought that the survey appeared too soon. Before changing your trigger time you should also consider how many answers you get telling you that the survey is triggered too quickly, and also how many that is of the total number of responses. Don't change your trigger time just because one or two respondents are unhappy, because then you'll have the opposite problem.
Too long trigger time
Unfortunately, the respondents won't tell you when the trigger time is too long. Instead they will leave before the survey is triggered. The respondents that remain are the ones that struggle or that need more time to do what they wanted. These respondents will give you lower KPIs, because you have singled out those that struggle. You will also get fewer responses as the respondents that were successful have left the website.
As it's harder to tell when you have a trigger time that is too long, you need to consider if the results seem reasonable. Should your survey have more responses? (Use how many times the survey has been triggered instead of the response rate, as the response rate is dependent on other things too.) Do your results seem lower than they should be? If so, you may need to decrease the trigger time.
However, don't change the trigger time just because you want to improve your KPIs. They will only improve if you had the wrong trigger time to start with.