Think carefully about the questions you ask and the information they will give you. Try them out on a few visitors before you do the main survey to check that they can be answered easily. And remember there’s no point collecting information about something that you can’t do anything about – like the weather! However you can do something about making sure you’ve got seats for less mobile visitors or the right kind of gate, rather than a stile, for people with pushchairs and buggies.

You’ll need about 100 completed survey forms for your results to begin to form a valid cross section.  And the survey should be done over a series of days rather than just one day such as the village fete.

It’s helpful to know what visitors like about your area, site or feature and what interests them. Is there any other information they want or any other activities they want to do in your area?  It’s also useful to find out what they don’t like about your site or feature – you may be able to improve some aspects of your site, such as the parking arrangements or the opening times, even if you can’t sort out everything people dislike.