Online Survey Builder

With the proliferation of of internet based surveys and software solutions and relatively low cost, it has become very easy for marketers and academic survey professionals to leverage the online survey tools in their day to day work. It takes a few minutes to create a survey, publish the survey online, email survey invitations and start collecting results from targeted survey audience.

Here is a mini guide for using online survey and questionnaire design, if you are new to online surveys. Though these guidelines are written from using LeadPro247 online survey solution, the concepts can be applied to any online survey software tool available in the marketplace.

Online Survey Software Basics

1. Fully web based; no need to install any hardware or special software
2. Simple to use; get going in minutes
3. No long term commitments; generally monthly subscription fees
4. Very cheap, compared to traditional methods
5. Can be controlled accurately, depending on the survey objectives

Survey Types and Applications

1. Customer Satisfaction surveys
2. Employee Feedback surveys
3. Prospect surveys
4. Product Research surveys
5. Market Research surveys
6. Marketing Research surveys
7. Nonprofit surveys
8. Academic surveys
9. Higher Education Research surveys
10. Patient Satisfaction surveys
11. Website analysis and feedback surveys
12. Online shopping / ecommerce experience surveys
13. Incident Response surveys
14. Service Satisfaction surveys
15. New product requirement surveys
16. Software feature surveys
17. Webinar feedback surveys
18. Event Satisfaction surveys
19. Behavioral Research surveys
20. Quality surveys
21. Product Recall surveys
22. Social surveys

Key Features

1. Support for multiple Question Types to meet all survey requirements (including open ended question types, ranking, multiple choice, matrix type, geographic info, etc.)
2. Customizable look and feel with simple Themes
3. Fully brand-able to reflect your corporate / nonprofit / academic requirements
4. Use of header and footer across survey pages
5. Include Introduction / Welcome page
6. Include Closing / Thanks You page
7. Include Survey Closed page
8. Redirect to your website after Survey Completion
9. Embed Video links (to YouTube, Google, or any other video channels)
10. Embed Document links
11. Display Images with description

Deployment and Data Collection Options

1. Multiple deployment modes
2. Email survey invitations
3. Deployment as Website links (one or more)
4. Deployment as pop-up window on web sites
5. Support for Kiosk mode (without IP restriction)
6. Manual Entry of survey results (based on paper surveys and telephone surveys)
7. Stop / Pause options for individual deployment modes as well as full survey

Advanced Options

1. Survey Template samples
2. Create and store survey templates
3. Page Skip logic based on answers for multiple choice questions
4. Piping feature to pass on the answer to a survey question to another question
5. Password protection for surveys
6. Sharing survey results with audience
7. Consumer Survey panel management
8. Survey Subscriber Email List management
9. Unsubscribe / Opt-out management

Reporting and Survey Analytics

1. Individual survey response
2. Summary of survey results
3. Drill down to view granular details
4. Graphic representation for easy interpretation
5. Cross Tab analysis report
6. TURF (Total Unduplicated Reach Frequency) analysis and simulation
7. Download / Export data for further analysis

In future posts, let us look at application of surveys in business and academic settings, best practices, and expand on the above subjects.

An online survey is an efficient and easy method of generating feedback from prospects, customers and employees or researching potential areas for expansion or improvement. The creation of a survey however requires some ground work. You can not expect the customer to answer a whole lot of questions about every little detail! So you need to design your online survey in such a way that you get the maximum amount of relevant information from a few questions.

Before you design a survey, however, you need to ascertain if a survey is the best option to find out what you want to know. If you just want to find out the overall customer satisfaction for your business, you could just create a small poll on Linkedin perhaps. A survey facilitates a small amount of research at least; even if it has only 5 questions.

Here are couple of important factors to keep in mind about what you need to do while developing an online survey  questionnaire. Of course, the basic principles can be used for designing off-line surveys too.

WHY are you conducting a survey? The Objective

You need to know what you would like to accomplish with the survey. For example,an insurance company may survey its customers to find out the types of surgeries undertaken by senior citizens. The results may be used to fine tune their insurance policy based on the most prevalent conditions. This type of survey is a research survey and is a proactive step by the company to enhance their product or create a new product altogether. Customer satisfaction surveys, on the other hand, are feedback surveys. These are mainly used to discover and correct faults in existing products and services.

Yet another purpose of a survey is academic research, and as the name suggests is used to assist academic studies. You need to keep the objective a survey in mind, at all times during the survey design process. The survey should be designed in order to achieve its objective.

WHAT are the characteristics of the target audience? Characterize Target

Selecting the right target audience for a survey is crucial to its effectiveness. For example,if a shopping experience survey is sent to someone who has not purchased anything but only signed up to receive offers, it is not going to reflect an actual “shopping experience”. It needs to be sent to frequent and heavy shoppers to be most effective.

You need to select a set of people who will be affected by your survey objective or who possess the most knowledge to satisfactorily complete the survey.

WHO are the target audience? The Survey Sample

After you identify the characteristics of the target audience, You need to identity the people who would may be part of our survey. You need to survey a large section of the target population in order to be able to generalize the results of the survey.

HOW do you design the survey? Survey Design Skills and Subject Matter Knowledge

With the advent of internet based survey software solutions such as LeadPro247 integrated survey tool, creating, distributing and collecting survey responses has become very easy for marketer and survey research professionals. Surveys can be created and deployed in a matter of minutes. Designing a survey requires the following two essential qualities:

1. Survey Design Skills – You need to possess a basic knowledge of statistical analysis and mathematical probabilities. These are essential in survey design and interpretation. These may also come in handy for choosing the target audience.

2. Subject Matter Knowledge – This is an absolute MUST HAVE! You need to know what information is needed to make a particular analysis. This depends on the subject of the survey and hence an in-depth knowledge of the domain can lead to better and focused surveys.

Distributing a Survey – The Channel

A survey needs to be sent ot or seen by the target audience. This may be done in a variety of ways. For example, you may use email based, web based, or a website based survey. You may also ask for surveys at events such as product launches, trade shows etc. The distribution channel depends on the subject of the survey and the target audience.

The survey must be present where it is visible to the target audience. The most efficient channels in today’s web-centric world are definitely Email-based surveys and Web-site based surveys. These methods provide a feature for tracking the survey better and faster. They also significantly reduce the cost of a survey.

But remember, the channel must be the one most likely used by the target audience!

Survey Response Analysis – Observation and Conclusion

Once you have the survey responses from your target audience, the critical step is to analyze the survey results and interpret the results. Online Survey software tools provide easy reporting and analytics for interpreting the survey responses. Key reports include TURF analysis (Total Unduplicated Reach and Frequency analysis) and Cross Tab analysis reports. You can also use the individual response and summary results reports in real time. The survey response can be downloaded from the online survey system for further analysis and research. If you have used the email as a survey invitation method, you can analyze the invitation delivery, clicks, responses and abandonment rate using the Survey Invitation Analysis report.

Welcome to the SurveyBuilderPlus online survey management application blog. Thanks for stopping by. Please let me know your comments and suggestions on this site content as well as subject matter – online surveys – of this blog.

Hope to see you again soon!

Administrator
SurveyBuilderPlus.Com