Adding a Matrix Field is easy. In the form builder click the “Add a Field” button and select “Matrix”

You can use the Matrix Field to quickly create customer feedback forms, perfect for gathering information after completing online orders, support requests or calls or other customer service related transactions. You can select a scale of responses from a pre-defined list or create your own.

You can also create more complex online surveys to measure responses for things like market research, reader/viewer response, industry research and more.  This is where the Likert Scale comes into play. With the new Matrix Field you can quickly add Likert items like:

If you have questions about more ways to incorporate the new Matrix Field in your online surveys or feedback forms please contact us, and remember these important items when creating your survey.

Recent Posts:

• New Multilingual Support Text On Forms
• Pre-Populating Embedded Form Fields From The Query String
• FormSpring Form Makes Fox 59 News

Other Related Posts

• Online Surveys That Convert
• New Field Types
• “Online Forms That Convert”: Five Day Blog Series Kicks off Monday!

Creating an effective online survey is a difficult proposition. Most people on the Internet are already saturated with information and requests to interact. Getting a sufficient number of quality responses requires some forethought. Here are ten things to keep in mind when constructing a web survey.

1. Know why you need a survey
Surveys offer a number of advantages—such as scalability, reuse, and flexible scheduling—but there are also drawbacks. Surveys tend to be biased toward those who self-select to take them, so getting a true random sampling is nearly impossible. They are usually anonymous with little oversight, which can lead to incorrect information being collected. Surveys often involve self-report, which means participants will respond in a way they perceive is right even if their actual behavior is quite different.

There are a lot of ways to get feedback. Not all of them involve a web form asking people to remotely answer a series of questions. Semi-structured interviews, focus groups, web site analytics, card sorting, and “crowdsourced” activities (such as open design or copywriting contests) are just a few of the alternatives to surveys. Make certain you are choosing to do a survey for the right reasons.

2. Respect your participants
The people who agree to fill out your survey probably have little obligation or investment in your work. Keep that in mind when writing invitations to participate and the wording for the questions you want to ask. Be courteous and grateful.

Respect should also extend to the data you keep. If you ask for anything that could identify an individual, let them know what you plan to do (or not do) with that information, as well as when you are going to get rid of it. Trust can be a barrier to participation. Being transparent can help lower that barrier.

3. Find the right question format
Questions come in many shapes and sizes. If you are looking for a single answer (such as an age group), don’t confuse matters by asking a multiple-choice question. Most online web form services will give you several kinds of formats for a given question. Try them out and see which one fits for the information you are interested in collecting. Similarly, standardized responses make it easier for the participant to understand the survey and give you useful data.

4. Keep it short
Because your survey is fighting for attention with web sites, videos, email, and a host of offline distractions, it is advisable to keep your surveys as short as possible … while still being useful to you. Don’t cut all of your questions down to a page for the sake of length if you need multiple pages to get the feedback you need. Trim the fat to streamline your questioning and take up the least amount of your participant’s time that you can.

Inevitably, some people will start your survey but not finish. This happens for many reasons, some of which you can’t control (i.e. network connectivity problems, family emergencies, etc.). Keeping this in mind, place your most important questions near the front of the survey, allowing you to collect as many of those answers as possible. Make use of “Save and Return Later” options, if they exist on your survey provider, but realize that the chance of someone actually coming back is low.

5. Organize to minimize confusion
Don’t cram all of your questions on to one page and call it a “short survey.” Long pages can be as intimidating as long surveys. It is much better to compose several small, simple pages with 1-2 related questions than to cut a 20-question survey into a few equal-sized chunks. Every new page requires some re-orientation, and the more coherent the content, the easier it is to get one’s bearings.

Measure length in terms of time spent. If you have more than one page on your survey, it is good practice to let people know how much more they have to do to reach the end. Progress bars or updated questions counts (i.e. “You have completed 9 of 20 questions.”) are a great way to give people an idea how much more time they have to spend to help you out.

6. Use conditional logic meaningfully
Conditional logic allows you to present (or hide) questions based on the responses your participant provides. At its best, it prevents your participants from answering questions that have no relevance. For example, you may want to ask how people use a particular social network in some detail. For those who don’t even have an account with that service, your questions could be meaningless. Putting a condition that automatically skips those participants to a later part of the survey—or asks a different series of questions to discover why they didn’t join—is a good use of conditional logic. If this doesn’t happen seamlessly, however, it puts some burden on the participant to navigate your survey in an odd way. Rewriting your survey questions or prescreening participants may be more effective.

7. Test your Survey
Be sure to put a few eyeballs on your initial survey draft to see if it makes sense. This can be done using a draft of the online survey, of course, but it might be quickest to use a text editor or sketch out the questions by hand. You want to find out if the wording you have chosen or the kinds of questions you are asking are confusing. Get feedback on the flow of the survey as well as its length. Make appropriate adjustments before sending it out into the world.

Keep in mind that changing your draft is easy. It has no consequence on any data because you haven’t collected any. The moment participants begin to contribute real data, any changes to the survey may invalidate all of the early submissions and force you to throw out data. It’s like carpentry: measure twice, cut once.

8. Timing is Important
Crafting a good survey takes some work, and you may be anxious to send it out quickly to start collecting responses. However, if you do that at 5pm on a Friday, odds are not good you will be happy with the results. Know when your target audience is most likely to be available and respond to your request. Make this decision based on participant input or other supporting evidence, whenever possible.

It is equally important to be able to follow-up on responses after the survey is released, to answer questions or help your network spread the word. If you aren’t available to respond, few people will want to invest the time to help you.

9. Incentivize through empowerment
For some kinds of surveys—particularly those that have to be long to get the data you need—payment is going to be a prerequisite to getting results. Paying people, whether with cash or discounts, can buy some obligation from your participants to complete the survey. Long-term, however, that can be a costly strategy with very little implicit incentive to participate.

Involving other people in your process gives them skin in your game. Advisory councils, focus groups, and development forums encourage people to become involved with your project, to the point they feel it is their project. They feel invested in the success of your survey and may take additional steps to help beyond simply completing the form.

10. Do Something
Surveys are part of a culture of ongoing customer relationships. Don’t treat your participants as disposable. They will want to get some ROI on the time they spent answering your questions. Whenever possible, share the outcomes of your data gathering with a report or blog, allowing your participants to learn something about themselves. Listen to what the survey results suggest, and apply the findings to some improvement. If you didn’t intend to do something with the information you got, why did you take the time to create a survey in the first place? (see #1 above)

Kevin Makice is a current Ph.D. student at the Indiana University School of Informatics and has authored a book, Twitter API: Up and Running. His research interests center around local use of technology and the application of relational psychology to complexity and design. Kevin is also the Director of Emerging Technologies for Hanapin Marketing, a Search Engine Marketing/Web Development firm based in Bloomington, Indiana.Recent Posts:

• New Multilingual Support Text On Forms
• Pre-Populating Embedded Form Fields From The Query String
• FormSpring Form Makes Fox 59 News

Other Related Posts

• “Online Forms That Convert”: Five Day Blog Series Kicks off Monday!
• Online Surveys With New Matrix Field
• Using Surveys In Your Organization

Surveys & Signups

Of course, when you think “online forms,” surveys and signups quickly come to mind. On the web, though, these things don’t travel well. Sure, people can visit your site and fill out the survey or sign up for an event, but what do you do if you want to capture this information when they’re away from their computer?

The FormSpring iPhone app makes that so easy. Simply create your survey or signup with our form builder, then load it up in the iPhone app. Submissions are sent back to the server as you collect them, so your data is up-to-the-minute accurate.

In the iPhone app, we added the ability to capture audio or images on the fly and add them to your submissions. A signup form, for example, might need you to get an image of the person you signed up. Take their photo, type in their name, and send that off to the server!

Even better, arm a team of people with iPhones, and you could canvas an area or take multiple signups and not be anywhere near a computer!

Sales

Sales forms, too, are a big focus of FormSpring customers. With the FormSpring iPhone app, you can take sales orders out in the field with no computer necessary. Many of our customers have been able to stop carrying laptops because the forms they need just load up in their iPhone instead.

In some cases, you may even need audio verification that someone agrees to a sale. In that case, the audio recording feature is an amazing way to capture that verification right there. Just have the customer speak into the phone and agree to the sale, and you’re set!

Order Fulfillment

The second part of sales, of course, is fulfilling the order. One of the great things about the iPhone app is that it allows you to both submit data as well as view data already submitted. It’s so incredibly easy to fetch the sales data with the iPhone app and get to work. No need to waste paper printing a list of items that need boxed and sent out, no need to lug a laptop to your order fulfillment area. The phone and FormSpring is all you need!

A Million Other Uses

These are just the top three uses, but there are a million others. Inventory, repair reports, and supply requisitioning come instantly to mind, but the possibilities truly are endless. If you have an iPhone, I definitely recommend you give the FormSpring app a try. And if you want to share how you’re using the iPhone app or just FormSpring in general, drop us a line, we’d love to hear from you!Recent Posts:

• New Multilingual Support Text On Forms
• Pre-Populating Embedded Form Fields From The Query String
• FormSpring Form Makes Fox 59 News

Other Related Posts

• New FormSpring Features
• FormSpring Launches Live Chat Support
• Google Checkout and Nonprofits

The More the Merrier

To maximize a survey’s reach use it in multiple formats (website, email, micro sites, etc). For instance, if your company sends out newsletters or email communications, quickly add the link to your survey in your email.  You can also use our JavaScript embed method to host the form on your website, allowing you to drive traffic, via a blog or other online communications, to the survey that resides right on your website. You can also embed the form on a specific landing page that you are sending customers to – for instance after they complete an online order.

Be Smart

Conditional Logic and Smart Routing are two perfect ways to make your forms “smart”. Use Conditional Logic to show or hide questions based on how a user responds to a question. This allows you to create a survey that only shows questions that pertain to that particular user – no “skip ahead if this does not apply”!

Smart Routing allows you to route the form to individuals in your organization based on how users respond to questions. A great example of this is if you have a feedback form for customer service inquiries. If someone responds to a “How satisfied were you” question with “Extremely dissatisfied” you can route any of those submissions to a manager or superior so they can take quick action.

Save for Later

We recently launched a “Save and Resume” feature that allows users to save a form that they are filling out and a receive a link back to the form to fill out at a later time. This is perfect for long surveys where people may fill it out in more than one sitting. This feature can only be used in multi-page forms so it is best to break your form up.

If you have questions about how your company or organization can use online surveys,  contact us – or – chat live – and learn more.  Do you have other tips or tricks that your organization uses? Let us know in the comments below!

Recent Posts:

• New Multilingual Support Text On Forms
• Pre-Populating Embedded Form Fields From The Query String
• FormSpring Form Makes Fox 59 News

Other Related Posts

• “Online Forms That Convert”: Five Day Blog Series Kicks off Monday!
• FormSpring MailChimp Integration
• Online Surveys With New Matrix Field