Many businesses use survey managers to get the opinions of their users on a variety of subjects. In many cases the simplest and best option is to use an online survey manager since they are designed to be easy to use, have good assessment tools, and do to familiarity with the common ones most people are more likely to fill out a survey than from somewhere they are unfamiliar.
SurveyMoneky’s blog notes that the top 7 questions asked are:
- What changes would most improve <our new service | specify new service>?
- What do you like <most | least> about <our new service | specify new service>?
- What changes would most improve <our new product | specify new product>?
- What do you like <most | least> about <our new product | specify new product>?
- Overall, are you satisfied with your experience using <our new product | specify new product>, neither satisfied or dissatisfied with it, or dissatisfied with it?
- Which category below includes your age?
- Are you male or female?
SurveyMoneky’s “top 7” makes sense since the primary purpose of a survey for most businesses is to get a better understanding of what their visitors what. Yet that being said I have had clients use surveys in a number of ways which include political policy polling, meeting follow-up, voting for a favorite recipe, etc.
If you do a bit of reading most will note that it is important to ask open-ended questions to reduce bias and influence survey completion success.
Note that the better survey managers will allows the web site owners to display surveys online, send surveys, and view results with Analytic features. As a rule Surveys are generally designed to allow one to ask basic intent and site usability questions, and then rate the importance of certain factors. The goal being that by collecting direct customer feedback, the company is able to evaluate and make changes to provide the best user experience.
There are different types of survey managers – from the full-featured Industry level options to smaller pop-up types. Of the many options I have chosen those which are hosted online and which offer a “free” version. Of course the “fee” options are never as full featured as the for pay options, yet for many smaller businesses and institutions the free choice will meet their needs fine. There are software and open-source options such as Moodle (education) and LimeSurvey though both will take considerable time to configure.
iPerceptions 4Q Survey
iPerceptions has a free option up to 100 respondents per month. The way it works is that web site owners place a 4Q survey on their site and visitors are then invited (upon arrival) to participate in a short website survey once their visit is complete. The 4Q Survey tool offers complete Google Analytics integration, which is great if you are tracking your pages.
SurveyMonkey
Survey Monkey is one of the most well-known and popular of the online survey tools. It provides free surveys, polls, questionnaires, customer feedback and market research. The free version is useful for small and informal surveys, but allows very little customization of the look of the survey, no downloads of reports or data, and can only collect 10 questions and 100 responses per survey. What’s especially nice though is that SurveyMonkey partners with many popular online tools to make integrating surveys simpler. Its partners include Eventbrite, MailChimp, ActiveCampaign, GroSocial and CleverReach. For example, its partnership with GroSocial allows marketers to place surveys on their company’s Facebook page and share the results with its fan base.
Zoomerang
Zoomerang is similar to SurveyMonkey in many respects. Like SurveyMonkey, there’s a very limited free package; the more useful Pro package is offered to nonprofits for $149/year for unlimited surveys, questions and respondents,. The survey building tools are not quite as intuitive as SurveyMonkey’s, and it can be more difficult to learn. However, Zoomerang offers more extensive reporting.
PollDaddy
PollDaddy offers surveys and polls that can be easily embedded into external websites and applications. The free package offers a maximum of 10 questions per survey and 100 responses per month, plus basic reporting. Survey features are more limited than some of the other options but survey administrators have a lot of flexibility over the look of the survey. Surveys can be delivered in pop-up windows.
FormSite
FormSite offers a limited free account option, and although their focus is forms for feedback and test-taking, FormSite offers a basic set of survey features, and may be useful to those looking to collect a lot of different types of information via web-forms. Features include multiple page surveys, question randomization, and surveys can be customized to match your website.
QuestionPro
QuestionPro offers a limited free package that lets you re-use questions from one survey to the next, or pull questions from a standard survey template library. The more advanced packages offer unlimited surveys, questions and responses.
If you have questions about Survey integration, or have other questions please feel free to contact me.
https://www.ecurtisdesigns.com
