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What online survey tools do you use to collect data?
For those of you that collected data online, I'm interested in knowing what type of survey tool you use. Have you tried multiple tools? Why was this the best one? What are pros and cons of the tool?
Best Answer
- Recommended by:
- Michael Schmier
I too, use the Professional (paid) version of SurveyMonkey and have been pleased with the solution overall. The responses above have covered them well. Over the past year there has been a new set of entries into the survey field that I am also having success with - email service providers like Constant Contact and RatePoint.
These services offer the benefit of already having an opt-in or registration process previously established, and you should already have a relationship with those on the list. Creating your survey with the same service as your email newsletters, announcements, etc. can increase your response rate because the recipients already know you and are familiar with the look and feel of your communication. It can also be easier to create a survey because you already know how to use the software.
It can also be a bit less expensive to just add-on the survey option to your email package as well. Just some additional web tools to consider. Good luck, and let us know which way you decide to go.
I have used both Constant Contact and Ratepoint for surveys and both have been effective.
Here are the direct links to both services for you to review:
www.constantcontact.com
www.ratepoint.com
My company has also used SurveyMonkey extensively and found it to be good and easy to use. If you are looking at getting responses from a targeted audience, you could also explore the poll option on Linked In. It gives you the option to set criteria for the audience such as geography, seniority, function, size of company etc. and you are charged accordingly. However, you can ask only one question at a time.
Online surveys and polls are very effective and efficient tools to use for gathering input quickly and at a low cost. People in all industries and sizes of companies use them.
As an employee of Zoomerang Online Surveys & Polls, I am, of course, a huge fan of Zoomerang. Zoomerang's Basic version is free to use and a great way to start experimenting with online surveys and polls. When you are ready to use more advanced features such as cross-tabulation for analytics & reporting, tag clouds to help you visualize your open-ended responses and customization to make your survey branded, then you can upgrade to the very affordable Pro ($199/yr) or Premium ($599/yr) versions. Check out our website to see a full list of features in all 3 versions (Free, Pro and Premium.)
The Zoomerang team is very committed to listening to our customers and would love to know what you think of our product and ways we can improve. We are constantly adding more features and have recently launched new social media integration with the ability to post your survey or poll to Facebook or Twitter. We also launched polls this summer allowing you to embed a poll directly on your website or blog. Stay tuned for more features to come in the next months.
Happy Surveying,
Laura Moon
Director of Marketing & Product Strategy for Zoomerang
a Division of MarketTools
I have never heard of Zoomerang but will take a look. I've used survey monkey and as others have stated; it is user friendly and works for my needs.
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Related Activity
The online survey tools have made it fast and easy to collect feedback from anyone including customers, partners, employees, target users. I currently use SurveyMonkey (Professional Subscription) and have previously used WebSurveyor (became part of Vovici in 2006). I have also investigated Zoomerang (from MarketTools) about 4 years ago.
I use SurveyMonkey because it is simple, flexible, and cost-effective. I can create a fairly complex new survey in less than an hour, and then spend at most another hour or two modifying it for format preferences so that it is easy to read and has some level of brand recognition for my client. I primarily send surveys to existing known lists of customers so the email tools for sending, tracking & reminding are quite important to me. SurveyMonkey does a great job of handling this often tedious task. I also often have a URL option that can be sent to customers outside of the SurveyMonkey email system and SurveyMonkey does a great job of integrating the results from different collection mechanisms, yet retaining the source of the contact.
On the reporting/analysis steps, I tend to use Excel and PPT -- creating various pivot tables and related charts. The export capabilities in SurveyMonkey are perfect for this task. Although SurveyMonkey does provide a summary report with basic filtering, I have not found it sufficient for my client's needs. It is, however, a great way to keep stakeholders in the loop during the survey. I no longer send out many "updates on feedback so far" since I can just send the password protected URL out to the executives who want frequent updates.
When I compared Zoomerang to SurveyMonkey four years ago, Zoomerang was missing some of the key features I needed, but most of them seem to have been added in recent years and the two products seem to have quite similar functionality and pricing, at least for the free and first tier functionality.
MarketTools (Zoomerang parent co) has many more sophisticated tools for Enterprise companies, as well as extensive services for executing surveys, finding appropriate panels of survey takers, and designing appropriate market tests. SurveyMonkey seems to target the "do it yourself" user -- or people who hire an independent consultant (like me) to help them execute their research. While SurveyMonkey does have some templates and starting points, MarketTools is more of a full service resource for information and best practices on market research.
Tools aside -- the other steps involved in creating an effective survey still have to be done. What key business questions are you trying to answer? Can you get those answers from an online survey? Who should you be asking? How will you motivate them to participate? Are you asking the questions in such a way that you will get the answers you need? How will you analyze and interpret the results? Who will use the results and will the results help them make better decisions? Who gets to give input into this process? These are the steps that take time -- and experience to get right.
So pick a good tool to make execution easy. Then spend your effort on asking the right questions in an effective way to the appropriate people as well as helping the organization react to the results productively.
Stephanie Kozinski Cipresse
Tobuka Consulting
steph@tobuka.com