When it comes to using SurveyMonkey, there are many bells and whistles within our design tools that you may not be aware of or just aren’t sure how to implement. Before becoming SurveyMonkey’s in-house trainer, I spent several years as a survey design specialist helping customers design their surveys. In that role, I picked up some great tips and tricks for fine-tuning our surveys to produce a polished look while also returning responses that are easy to analyze.
I use a 7-step checklist at the start of each survey to assess what I want to include in the survey and how it will affect the data. This post introduces the checklist, and in the coming weeks, I will focus on each item in list and provide additional ideas for how to make your survey a success.
- Introduction content – Include relevant contact details, intent of survey, privacy notification and instructions.
- Colors and logo – Brand the survey design to your company’s look and feel.
- Survey content – Create question types based on what you want the data to look like or do.
- Polish the design – Apply the Required Answer feature, use Text Validation (e.g. edit the error messages accordingly), adjust the question placement and spacing for a clean look (more/less white space) so it’s easy for your respondents to complete your survey.
- Thank You page – Include final information and thank the respondent.
- Survey completion option – Decide how do you want the survey to end. Do you want respondents to return to your site? Do you want the window to close?
- Distributing the survey – Decide if you want to send by email, embed it on your site or blog, or post to facebook or twitter. Figure out if you want to track responses or keep them anonymous and if you want to restrict responses to one per person.
Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey, the world’s leading questionnaire tool.
To see the results and what the data looks like, click here: Example Demo Results
Stay tuned for in-depth explorations of each step in the checklist!
Harjeet Kaur, May 25, 2011
I have an employee survey that I usually do every few years (on paper). I am thinking of using Survey Monkey to collect this data this year but I want it in the same format as what we have to be able to do a comparison.
Can you direct me to someone who can give me a hand with the survey and if Survey Monday can do what I need the survey to do.
Thanks
Harjeet
Anne R, May 26, 2011
Hi Harjeet–we would love to help. Check out our survey design services–you can send us your survey from the past and our team will put it into SurveyMonkey for you (and customize with your company logo, etc.) You can learn more here: http://help.surveymonkey.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/30/kw/survey%20design%20services
Joy Foster, May 30, 2011
Hi,
I’d like to follow your blog without having to come to the website all the time but I can’t find a link to subscribe via email. Am I missing something?
Joy
Anne R, May 31, 2011
Hi Joy–we currently don’t have an email subscription for just our blog, but appreciate the suggestion! We do send monthly newsletters to all of our customers (including those on our free plan), and include links to our blog articles there. Would RSS work for you in the meantime for the blog?
http://feeds.feedburner.com/SurveyMonkeyBlog
Joy Foster, May 30, 2011
I also tried to repost this blog for my followers but it wouldn’t let me… I help people with this kind of stuff and thought they might find this useful, not sure why you didn’t want this repressed.
Anne R, May 31, 2011
Hi Joy–thanks for wanting to share this content! You’re welcome to re-post. We’ll see if we can make it easier for you to do so, but in the meantime, please feel free to share out whatever content is most helpful to the people you work with.
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RhysEW, Aug 8, 2011
I’ve decided that if a respondent is willing to give up his/her time and complete my survey that I, as courtesy, email them thank-you note that includes a summary of the survey conclusions together with a link to the full report. It’s particulary easy to do if the respondents have provided an email address. However, if the survey was anonymous, I send the note, summary and links to all on the original mailing list.
RhysEW, Aug 8, 2011
Living in Wales, we create bilingual surveys. However, as far as I can see, Surveymonkey cannot merge and auto-report on the responses to a set of question posed in two languages.
So I use simple HTML Tags to separate Welsh and English Q&As. eg
Pa rai o’r canlynol wnaethoch chi fel canlyniad i’r gweithgareddau hyn?
Which of the following did you do as a result of these activities?
It works well although its tedious when the standard size of text boxes make it difficult to view the imputed text in its entirety.
The standard pdf reports produced are usually very acceptable.
RhysEW, Aug 9, 2011
To the Blog Administrator.
Re my “Living in Wales, we create bilingual surveys” contrubution. Unfortunately the HTML tags that I included in the text are not displaying on the blog, which makes my comment rather pointless.
Anne R, Aug 12, 2011
Hi Rhys–if you get a chance, will you try again? The tags never came through on our end either. Thanks so much!
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