What is Online Survey Software?

Introduction

Online survey software enables you to effortlessly create web-based surveys, polls, quizzes, and other online forms. They are distributed to a firm’s customers and users to solicit opinions and feedback or conduct market research. Survey tools give businesses insight into what consumers think about their customer service, projects, events, or other business aspects. These applications function as add-ons to amplify the initiatives of the customer success and marketing units and help companies to understand what their consumers want. You can deliver surveys as pop-ups on your company’s website or through email blasts.

Online survey software differs from enterprise feedback management (EFM) platforms as the latter systems are utilized for specific business uses and offer pertinent functionalities like integration with CRM and similar programs as well as Net Promoter Score (NPS) calculation. Survey applications are more basic while EFM products provide more advanced functions.

In short, online survey software permits you to create and customize questions, collect, archive, and report on response data, and produce distributable and shareable surveys.

Features of Online Survey Software

Survey Builder

Typical survey software leverages a drag-n-drop interface and presents tools for design and layout, preview, question morphing, and versioning. The survey builder produces the front-end function and look of the survey, but it depends on the conditions feature to set the survey’s behavior. Conditions have two perspectives which are questions and answers, that we will look at later.

Email Invitation

A survey system may offer a mailer to send invites to the questionnaire or it can integrate it with a third-party tool to achieve this purpose. Mailers usually include test responses, which assists you to refine the questions.

Survey Templates

Most platforms present templates to assist you to get started. Templates can accommodate regular questionnaire features such as bipolar questions, dichotomous questions, leading questions, and rating scales. Forms and polls are standard templates, while advanced solutions can provide mobile themes.

Question Conditions

To create a survey, you need to add conditions for questions and answers. Further, question conditions include features to generate x/y options, randomize questions, and for style formatting. The software can present a timer and allow you to add videos and images to create interactive questionnaires. Plus, it may provide a question library where you can archive recyclable questions.

Answer Conditions

These include randomized choices, option to hide/show questions, and looping or piping dynamics. You can preset answers with conditional triggers that individualize the survey. A quality application offers custom scripting that permits you to produce specific behavior and process flows.

Scoring

For all question-answer conditions, online survey programs use a scoring algorithm that is based on rules or can be set as default. The software automates scoring and tallying, while accelerates the process of capturing feedback and producing insights.

Benefits of Online Survey Software

Design Professional-looking Surveys

Sophisticated online survey products offer predictive analytics that indicates how your survey will perform. The feature analyzes metrics such as the questionnaire’s length, your historical survey performance, and relevance to the audience. Leading survey tools also present a knowledge base of trade best practices. They even allow you to white label the interface.  You can brand the user interface with your colors and logo to produce a customized thank-you page with your important messaging.

Engage Your Audience

Many programs proffer respondent networks classified by a range of categories like interest, profession, industry, and demographics. If you don’t have a ready respondent pool, this feature is a great method to start your online survey. Plus, the software can deliver your survey via social, web, or email as per your choice.

Flexibility

You can alter the entire questionnaire or only parts of it with minimal expenses or reuse the same questions for a new audience. Plus, you can optimize your surveys in multiple ways.

Centralized Data Capture

With online survey software, you can make your data gathering more systematic by storing all feedback in a single database. The platform performs this task in real time and instantly saves the information in a server as soon as answers are provided by respondents. This eliminates the risk of tainting or losing raw data and this automated procedure is faster and simpler compared to manually administering surveys.

Decreased Costs

Online surveys help you save material and labor expenses. Manual surveys need money and time for printing, sharing, and data gathering. Survey software is especially ideal for huge surveys as you can replicate and repeatedly distribute questionnaires at minimal cost and need to hire only a small squad to manage the process.