How to Create an Online Survey

Learn everything about features in Survio that make your survey creation easy and fast. Find out ways of sharing your survey and details about Survio automatical result analysis.

This article is useful for:

  • marketers,
  • HR specialists,
  • public institutions.

Create a survey for free

  • Choose from 19 question types
  • Customize the design of your questionnaire
  • Share your survey in multiple channels
  • Observe results in real time analysis

Whether you are a marketer, HR specialist, entrepreneur or you work in sales, health care, public administration or virtually any industry, collecting feedback and analyzing results are must-do activities to run your business successfully. Get an insight into how to create surveys effortlessly. Discover multiple ways of collecting answers. Find out options of effective result evaluation. As a result, you will be able to make accurate, data-driven decisions. Let’s dive into it.

Feedback doesn’t come to you by itself

Surveys have become an indispensable part of corporate processes. The reason is an ability to keep in touch with customers, employees and other business related entities and respond to their needs, expectations, preferences, or even criticism. Collecting such data has a great value in terms of:

Getting to know what’s on your customers’ or employees’ minds is only one side of the coin. The biggest asset comes with a skill to analyze the output and take proper action. Surveys in general do not substitute for a crystal bowl to tell you how a certain issue is to be solved. They are priceless in showing you that there is a pain point, which requires your attention, otherwise your business will suffer from more or less serious consequences.

In order to avoid such a scenario, let’s take a look at what the journey from creating a questionnaire up to analyzing collected data looks like. You won’t be left alone to do everything just by yourself. Survio will be your trustworthy companion.

Find out why our customers choose Survio as a reliable feedback solution for their business.

Read the case studies

No need to study survey methodology, use your common sense

Before you open the survey editor, the functions of which will be described further in this article, take a pen and paper and think about the purpose of your survey. What trouble you face and need to set right or how you can utilize acquired data to the greatest benefit.

Also consider frequency and time line. Are you going to carry out regular surveys and in a long-term run or will it be only a one-off activity. Do you have an idea who will comprise your target audience? Write that down. In order to ensure the highest possible response rate, it is useful to know what form your questionnaire is going to get - electronic or printed. Having this figured out, you will be able to make use of the most effective ways of survey distribution.

The notes you have put together will serve as a basis for the survey structure, which will lead you to the logical order of questions. Remember, the clearer and more engaging your survey is, the less likely your respondents are to drop off before completing the survey. Having a good notion of the survey structure also prevents you from missing out on important questions.

Tip: Get in the shoes of your respondents and view your survey from their perspective. Give a second thought to any section or question in particular that feels confusing. It is crucial that respondents know exactly what to do. Therefore, pay attention to the instructions you attach your survey with and simple, straightforward wording within each question. Any “what’s-that-supposed-to-mean” moment is a stumbling block that should be eliminated.

Start from scratch or get inspired by ready-made templates

Survio enables a twofold approach to creating a questionnaire - start from scratch or browse through a catalog of survey templates with over a hundred items at your disposal. All templates have professional design and are available in ready-made format, which makes them immediately utilizable, regardless of distribution channel you are about to use (online or offline). Choose the ones that meet your purpose at the best. The templates are organized in 9 categories by various subject groups. Each template is fully editable and allows:

Selection from 19 question types

Appropriate question type in combination with clear formulation represent a prerequisite for obtaining relevant responses. Such data can be easily evaluated and will guide you to accurate conclusions to set up a basis for subsequent decision making.

If you have a complex survey focusing on different target groups, you don’t need to create several separate questionnaires. Simply, apply a question skip logic rule to the initial question. Survio will display a set of follow-up questions depending on how respondents answer the segmentation question at the very beginning. Let’s set a brief example here:

You require evaluation on a new coffee flavor that you would like to start importing from Brazil. You’ve served a number of samples at your café and now it’s time to ask for feedback. The first question, therefore, should be constructed like this:

Those who answer “yes” will be forwarded to the next set of questions related to further details. Respondents who reply “no” will automatically get to the exit page (also thank-you page) because they wouldn’t give you relevant information.

Question skip logic is premium-only. Check our price list with an overview of subscription plans and related feature overview.

Design customization

Adding a logo, applying pre-built color themes, or changing background properties in accordance with your brand identity will make your surveys recognizable to respondents, which adds to the increase in response rate.

Insertion of images and videos

If an image is worth a thousand words, a video must be worth millions. Using images and videos makes surveys attractive and engaging. Don’t bother with elaborated phrases when displaying a picture or playing a video will achieve the same effect for a fraction of time.

Custom survey language

Address respondents in multiple countries and set a survey language that your audience is familiar with.

Customization of welcome page / thank-you page

Create your own introduction, give detailed instructions, explain reasons of why you ask for feedback, as this is what the welcome page is for. Right after respondents finish the last question and submit the survey, you can redirect respondents to your e-shop, website or any landing page of your choice.

If we get back to the Brazilian coffee illustration, let’s say that you will offer respondents a reward for their time and willingness to share their opinions. Provide discount codes they can utilize when purchasing your coffee products via the e-shop. And the thank-you page containing the e-shop URL will redirect them there. This is a so-called double strike. Not only will you get useful information having a direct connection to your business, but also you have applied a nifty revenue driver. Create your survey and see for yourself how nicely this works.

One survey, multiple distribution options

Choose from a variety of channels to share surveys with your target audience. Whether you pick only some, choose all of them or combine the preferred ones is up to you. Strive for maximum response rate. Survio is mobile-friendly, so the questionnaires can be filled out on tablets and smartphones.

E-mail invitations

If you prepare a customer loyalty survey meant for current customers of yours, it can be assumed that their contact details are already in your CRM database. Import their e-mail addresses to Survio and create a bulk e-mail invitation. The main body of the message is fully editable and contains the survey link. You can also set a particular time to send invitations.

You have the entire process under control in Survio as it can also send reminders to those who haven’t already filled out the survey. E-mail invitations fall under the category of premium features. Check our price list with more details.

Embed the survey in your page

In Survio, you can make use of three ways to embed a survey directly in your website content. Depending on where and how you want to get attention of the visitors, you can choose from the following:

Sharing surveys via URL address

A URL address - is technically a direct link to the survey, which you can insert in an e-mail or send as a text message. By clicking it, respondents display a web page with a respective questionnaire to fill their answers in.

Sharing surveys via QR code

A QR code - represents an array of black and white squares that can be read by cell phone cameras and other imaging devices. The QR code stores a URL address which displays the content in the same way as if you click a standard link. The advantage is that it can be printed out and left at publicly exposed places, eg. shop windows, entry doors, restaurants, shopping malls, etc. This way it can collect data from a large audience at relatively low costs.

Social media

You don’t need to forward the URL of a survey separately in Messenger, WhatsApp, Twitter and other platforms for instant messaging. It is possible to create a post, customize the looks, attach a survey's URL and share it with all relevant audiences and social groups directly from Survio. As simple as that.

Printed form

If necessary, you can download the survey in a PDF format to your harddrive, print it out and distribute it in an old-fashioned way. Printed questionnaires, however, cannot be evaluated in Survio, unless you take the time and type answers from the questionnaires in Survio yourself.

Tip: When using e-mail invitations as a survey distribution channel, Survio can send you new response notifications directly to your e-mail, so that you don’t have to check all the time how many surveys have already been submitted. If you decide to turn this feature on, consider the size of the respondent sample, so that the notifications don’t flood your mailbox.

Response evaluation and interpretation of results

Survio is equipped with a powerful built-in analytics, which processes collected data in summary resultsand individual responses . From survey creation, across response collection, up to data evaluation , there’s no point in implementing another software tool. You can also watch survey summary stats to get an insight into how well your survey has done in terms of collecting responses.

Summary results as well as individual answers can be filtered according to a number of variables. The outputs are projected in well-arranged charts and tables, based on which Survio generates professional reports in multiple formats. All of it happens automatically and in real time. You only define what you need to see and the online results will display it. You can also utilize contingency tables directly in Survio, comparing several values in a single view.

Generating and downloading reports is a premium feature. Subscribe to Survio to get your hands on report experience. Customize its design, so that it corresponds to your brand identity (upload logo, change color themes). Share the results in the most efficient way with your colleagues or business partners to make prompt decisions.

Choose from a variety of formats:

Store your data in the cloud. The reports can be shared online (Google Drive, Dropbox, MS OneDrive) owing to integration options. Use API to connect Survio and your CRM or any other system and have a functional ecosystem to collect, exchange, and evaluate data. Survio can adapt to any software.

Respondents can view results via a share page. It is useful in corporations with lots of employees. Picture a situation, when an HR announces a new set of company benefits and the employees are supposed to pick those, they would be interested in the most. Using a share page means that each employee will see current results after they complete the survey.

Tip: Use a GET parameter function to pass your data into the survey results. What you need to do is create custom variables and add them to the survey’s URL in Survio. You can add as many custom variables as possible. When viewing and evaluating the output, Survio allows you to filter results in a table, displaying columns with the variables you have created. To access GET parameter function, you need to purchase one of our subscription plans.

Summary, or why to spend time thinking about a survey software

Surveys are a means of getting valuable feedback from your customers, employees and other people whose opinion matters to you. Decisions made on a gut feeling might be a little risky. It is always useful to have this hypothesis supported by raw data. You should not rely on surveys in terms of finding answers to how to fix things. Surveys will discover weak points. To some extent, they might also draw your attention towards where to start applying the remedy. However, the solution itself, its focus and intensity is entirely under your baton.

Nothing happens overnight and neither Rome was built in a day. It always takes time. This is why it is recommended that surveys be used on a regular basis, followed by evaluation and comparison of the results. Collected answers may be a great source of new, fresh ideas and impulses, which you can take into consideration to

A single survey gives you a notion of what could or should be done differently (and better). However, it’s systematic surveying and periodical evaluation you get to really change things.

The purpose of this article was to introduce a world of surveys to you and explain where the added value is. Creating a survey doesn’t have to be a tricky task, quite the contrary. Once you master the main gimmicks, you will find it getting even easier with each subsequent survey.

Surveys can help you in a variety of aspects. Browse through use cases on the following and other topics to get a deeper insight into:

And when you come to a conclusion that surveys can bring a desired value to your company or organization, make sure that Survio, as a professional software solution for collecting and evaluating feedback that everyone can work with, gets the subsequent attention of yours.

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  • Build a survey Easy-to-use survey editor, 100+ ready-made survey templates
  • Collect responses Mobile friendly, omnichannel collection, identity tracking
  • Analyze results Fast and comprehensive analytics, one-click reports
  • Engage with Survio PRO User management, custom dashboards, integrations, API
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