Test-Drive FluidSurveys v3.0 Today & Important Notice

Posted in: Blog by admin on September 1, 2010 | No Comments

Hey Everyone,

FluidSurveys v3.0 is now ready for you to test! If you are a FluidSurveys user, you can access your v3.0 surveys on http://dev.fluidsurveys.com by using the same username/password as your regular FluidSurveys account. We have gone ahead and migrated any data/surveys that you may have had up until Saturday August 28th. This will give you the opportunity to use data from old surveys to test out some of our new reporting capabilities.

Everyone on FluidSurveys.com will be migrated over to v3.0 by default on Friday Sept. 17th. All of your existing surveys will continue to function as they always have and you won’t have to do anything extra. When you wake up on Saturday the 18th, the new software will be there waiting for you. In the meantime, we strongly recommend that you log into your FluidSurveys 3.0 account and give it a try so that you can get used to it before the official launch date. The software is still in beta so if you do find any bugs or have any suggestions, please do email us at info@fluidsurveys.com and we will address the outstanding issues immediately.

Two final important notes:

1) FS3.0 is not ready for prime time yet and http://dev.fluidsurveys.com has been set up for testing purposes only. In other words, please don’t run any live surveys on this site as you might encounter glitches and we intend to delete all of the data on http://dev.fluidsurveys.com on the 17th.

2) If you signed up to use FluidSurveys on or after Saturday August 28th, you currently won’t have access to v3.0. If you have a really good reason as to why we should give you access to check it out, send us an email and we will consider requests on a case by case basis.

What’s new in v3.0?

We’ll write a more lengthy blog post on this later… but, here is a very basic summary:

1) Brand new reporting tool – we threw out our old analytics interface and re-wrote the whole thing. The new interface is BEAUTIFUL and the exports into MS Word & PDF are even more gorgeous.

2) Brand new invite tool – we threw the old one out and built a new one. This invite tool allows you to import custom fields in addition to the standard name/email that was allowed before – it also makes everything else a lot easier!

3) Checkbox Grid Question Type – New

4) Improved 3d-Matrix & N-atrix questions (they now include the option to have checkbox columns)

5) Editor Enhancements: display questions side-by-side and add a comment box to any question type using the “append-to-previous” option.

6) Make as many of the variables in the “multiple choice” or “checkbox” question an “other, please specify” or “none of the above” type choice. In other words, you can add a textbox in front of any of the choices.

7) Export your survey into Word – MUCH improved. Your surveys will look gorgeous.

8- Brand new interface to the whole application – thanks to our designer Rafi

9) Brand new themer – we threw the old one out and re-wrote it.

10) Brand new bulk-add interface – we threw the old one out. This will allow you to add bulk items to multiple languages at the same time!

There are literally over 150 new features/enhancements to this version of the software. We dare say that this is our best work yet! We still need your help in testing the software though, so please put on your testing hats and give it a try!

Harness the Full Potential of Social Media with the help of Online Surveys!

Posted in: Blog by rafal on August 27, 2010 | No Comments

Social media is changing the way companies and organizations do business. Gone are the days of traditional media campaigns focusing on TV, radio and print; in are the days of Facebook, Twitter and Linked In. The reality is, if you can’t keep up online, you won’t be able to keep up at all. It’s now possible, and crucial, to maintain a two way dialogue with customers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Everyone is just a few keystrokes away.

Many companies and organizations are eager to jump into the social media world as quickly as possible, as they should be, but they often make the mistake of jumping in without really knowing what their audience wants. They just start tweeting, blogging and facebooking. But you wouldn’t create a TV ad campaign without first researching your target audience, and the same should go for social media.

Surveying your audience is an often overlooked, but crucial, part of creating an effective social media strategy. Not doing so puts you in danger of missing the mark when it comes to engaging and building relationships with your customers.

There are numerous benefits to taking time to learn about your audience. For one, you’ll find out what their interests are and be able to avoid spending time talking about things they don’t want to hear. You’ll learn about their communication style, and figure out the trigger words, phrases and questions that catch their attention. All of this will enable you to position yourself as their “go-to-source” for content that they’ve asked for. It’s invaluable in creating an effective social media strategy that appeals to your target.

The easiest way to find out all of these things out is with an online survey. They’re easy to make, take, and analyze. When creating your survey, the most important part is the questions themselves. Make sure you keep them concise and specific to the research goals. A short and sweet survey will invite many more responses.

You don’t have to directly ask your customers what they want you to talk about, although that is one possible route. Asking whether they’d be most interested in industry news, promotions or product information would give you some very useful information, for example. You can also, however, ask more general questions to gain a better understanding of your audience’s online personality and habits. For example, ask them to list their favourite blogs and websites, or how much time they spend a day surfing the internet. These questions won’t give you direct information about what they want from you, but they will give you valuable insights.

Gathering such insights will help you find out what you’re audience is interested in, and you can then use it to craft posts, tweets and other content that will grab their attention. You’ll be able to provide content that is highly valued and catapult your social media presence!

FluidSurveys Update on Server Upgrades

Posted in: Blog by admin on August 23, 2010 | No Comments

Hi Everyone,

As you noticed today, we had to take FluidSurveys down for an emergency upgrade. The upgrade to our servers was to ensure that we maintain maximum uptime for customers from all time-zones. Some customers in Australia and Europe had noticed that over the past few days there had been brief 15 minute periods where the site became inaccessible due to daily maintenance and backup scripts that were running. North American users would not have noticed this because most of them would have been asleep during this period. Today, we decided to take action on an emergency basis to ensure that no matter which time-zone you are in that you have equal uninterrupted access to FluidSurveys. We do apologize for the inconvenience for customers in the West that had to endure this down-time and we apologize for the short notice. The good news is that FluidSurveys is now better than ever.

We’re looking forward to launching FluidSurveys v3.0 soon and we’re sure that you’ll love it!

Stay tuned,

FluidSurveys Tech Team

Get the Most Out of Your Survey: Increasing Response Rates

Posted in: Blog by rafal on | No Comments

A survey without respondents is like a phone without service; useless. In order to conduct successful research, you need to convince enough of the right people to contribute information. Unfortunately, survey creators often subscribe to the “if you build it, they will come” theory, which in most cases is untrue. This belief dooms many well built surveys to poor response rates, bad data and wasted time.

Online surveys already have an inherent advantage over other data collection techniques when it comes to response rates as they’re relatively quick and easy to complete. Respondents can do it on their own time, only have to make a few clicks, and the results are tabulated instantaneously. However, this shouldn’t trick you into believing that publishing a successful survey will be easy. There’s still some work to do.

Here are some tips to assure that you get great response rates to your surveys!

Ask yourself, “How easy will this survey be to take?”

When creating your survey, don’t only think about your research goals. These are obviously crucial, however, they shouldn’t be the only consideration. It’s important to design your survey to be as easy to take as possible. Keep it brief, get right to the point with your questions, use simple language, allow users to save and continue at a later time, etc. The easier your survey is to take, the more people will complete it.

Make Your Survey Appealing

Chances are, a lot of people won’t complete a survey just because they received a link. There has to be more to it. Luckily, there are many ways to entice individuals to contribute their time and fill out your questionnaire:

The Invitation

The first thing to do is to send out email invitations for your survey, an extremely easy process using FluidSurveys’ Invite Tool. You can invite your entire contact list in a matter of seconds; however, it shouldn’t stop there. What you put in the invitation email, especially subject line, is key.

Many people  have adopted the policy of quickly scanning the subject lines in their inbox and immediately deleting those emails that appear to be spam, suspicious or unappealing. It’s therefore very important to grab an individual’s attention quickly. One way of doing this is to include your and their name in the subject (FluidSurveys can do this automatically), and something more than “has invited you to complete a survey”. Put the title of your survey in the invitation, for example, and use the words “I’d like your opinion on…” rather than generic terms. Make it as personal as possible.

The content of your email is also important. Remember that you are asking people to take time out of their day to help you, so it’s important to tell them why they should do so. Briefly explain what your survey is trying to accomplish and why their contribution would be valued.

Finally, be honest! Don’t say that the survey will only take 5 minutes when there’s 200 questions to go through. If that happens, the respondent will likely just leave after five minutes, leaving your results incomplete and damaging your credibility. Be up front about how long the survey will take to assure complete and truthful responses.

Incentives

It might not always be feasible to offer incentives for respondents, particularly monetary ones, however, it is an avenue worth exploring. Offering an incentive can have a very positive impact on your response rates. If people see that they’ll be compensated for their participation, they’re more likely to engage.

In fact, incentives don’t even always have to be monetary. You can be creative. Perhaps there’s some sort of discount or coupon that you can offer, or maybe a free trial of a product. While not always possible, incentives can be a great tool.

Other Tips

• Send out reminder emails… but not too many. Some people may have forgotten about your survey while others might have missed your original invite in their cluttered mailboxes, so sending reminders is a good idea. However, don’t send too many to the point where you become annoying. It’s usually a good idea to limit reminders at 2.
• Publish your results! Often times when a person completes a survey, it’s because they’re interested in the topic, and they’ll be more likely to participate if they can see the results afterwards.
• Social Media! With the explosion of Facebook and Twitter over the past couple of years, it’s easier than ever to reach a large group of potential respondents. With the click of a button you can share your survey link with your entire friend’s list and the whole Twitter world. Make sure to include a short, persuasive message with your link with a few descriptive keywords about your survey subject, and unleash it to the world! FluidSurveys has some options that make it easy to distribute your survey link on twitter and facebook.

Surveys can be an incredibly useful tool for organizations and individuals, but only if you get quality responses. Following these tips will make sure that you get a great response rate!

What is a Net Promoter Survey (NPS)? Why should you use one?

Posted in: Blog by admin on August 18, 2010 | No Comments

More and more, the concept of the Net Promoter Survey (NPS) is drawing attention in companies/organizations that want to ensure that they have a good pulse on what their customers & clients truly think about them. The concept of the Net Promoter Survey was created by Fred Reichheld, Bain & Company and Satmetrix – it is actually a registered trademark. The NPS was introduced by Fred in 2003 in his Harvard Business Review Article called “The One Number You Need to Grow”.

In practice, though, the NPS is pretty simple. Essentially, it is a survey question where the respondent will choose a ranking of between 0 and 10 for the following question: “How likely is it that you would recommend our company/service to a friend or colleague?”

Generally speaking, after asking that first question, the survey is followed up with some text response questions. You can ask about what you can do to improve if you don’t get a 9 or 10 ranking. You can also ask what customers like about you the most if you do get a 9 or 10 ranking.

The people that do give you a 9 or 10 are called “Promoters” while the ones who give you a 7 or 8 are “Passives” and the ones who give you a lower score than that are called “detractors”. No need to point out the obvious… but your job would be to have as little detractors and as many promoters as possible. The Net Promoter Score is then obtained by subtracting the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters. Anything above a 70% is generally good. Some companies such as Zappos have scores as high as 90%.

The NPS’s main advantage is that it offers an easy to monitor score that is also easily understandable. Creating a Net Promoter Survey using FluidSurveys is pretty simple and we’ll talk about this more in a future blog post.

FluidSurveys v3.0 is almost Here. We need Beta Testers.

Posted in: Blog by admin on August 17, 2010 | No Comments

Ladies and gents, we’ve got really exciting news! FluidSurveys v3.0 is almost ready. This is by far the most advanced and beautiful version of FluidSurveys yet. It’s mind-bogglingly great. Initial beta feedback has been tremendously positive. We’re still working out final details/enhancements but need help in testing the software and in finding those last little bugs. If you’re currently a customer or have been a customer in the past, please email info@fluidsurveys.com and we’ll give you early access to come check it out.

All the best,

FluidSurveys Dev Team

Get The Most Out of Your Survey: Tips for Writing Effective Questions

Posted in: Blog, Uncategorized by rafal on August 13, 2010 | No Comments

Perhaps the most important factor in carrying out a successful survey is the quality and structure of the questions you ask. At the end of the day, it’s what will determine whether you get back useful feedback or not. Poorly structured questions can result in incomplete, biased and/or unfocused responses, and ultimately lead your research to be ineffective. In this post we’ll take a look at some of the “Do’s” and “Do Not’s” of question creation to assure that you get the most out of your survey.

The “Do’s”

Each question should be focused on a single topic or issue: Questions need to be concise and specific while only asking respondents about one issue at a time. This will reduce uncertainty on the respondent’s part and assure that you receive the information you’re looking for.

Bad Question: How do you feel about Wal-Mart?

Good Question: Please rank each aspect of Wal-Mart on a scale of 1-5...

Questions should be brief: Long drawn out questions can increase confusion and the risk that a question is misinterpreted by the respondent. To guard against this, keep questions short and sweet.

Bad Question: When some appliance in your home breaks, do you call Sears repair service to come and fix it?

Good Question: When you need it, do you call Sears repair service?

Questions should be as grammatically simple as possible: Make questions easy to understand by keeping them simple in their wording and grammar.

Bad Question: If the Sears repair service schedule was not convenient for you, would you consider or not consider calling a competing repair organization to fix the problem you have?

Good Question: If you did not use Sears repair service, would you use another repair service?

Questions should be crystal clear: It should be obvious what the question is asking. Questions should be presented in their rawest form possible, without any unnecessary words and phrases.

Bad Question: How much do you think you would have to pay to have Sears fix something that needs to be repaired?

Good Question: How much do you think Sears charges for a repair service call?

The “Do Not’s” of Question Writing

Questions shouldn’t “lead” respondents to a particular answer: A leading question is one that suggests an answer. These should be avoided to prevent against biased responses.

Bad Question: Shouldn’t concerned parents use car seats?

Good Question: Do you think infant car seats are useful?

Questions shouldn’t have “loaded” wording or phrasing: Avoid using “loaded” language in questions, or words that might have an emotive implication. Questions should be neutral in language.

Bad Question: Should car seats be used for our loved ones?

Good Question: Do you think car seats are useful for family members?

Questions shouldn’t be “double barrelled”: Questions that could have two possible responses should not be asked. They should be split up into two parts and asked separately.

Bad Question: Do good parents and responsible citizens use car seats?

Good Question: Do you think parents who use car seats are responsible?

Questions shouldn’t use “dramatics” or words that overstate the condition: Questions should be worded as neutrally as possible. Descriptive words that could exaggerate the scenario should be avoided as these could coax the respondent towards a particular answer.

Bad Question: Do you believe infant car seats can protect riders from being maimed?

Good Question: Do you think child car seats are useful?

Avoid extreme absolutes: It is best to avoid words that suggest extreme absolutes. These place respondents in a situation where they must fully agree or disagree with the position in the question. Some of these words are: all, any, anybody, best, ever, every, never, etc.

Bad Question: Do you always observe traffic signs?

Good Question: Do you observe traffic signs?

The questions in a survey act like the meat in a hamburger. They really are the most important part. Take your time crafting each one to make sure you’re asking exactly what you want to be asking while following the rules above, and you’ll be sure to get some great feedback!

Credits – Image courtesy of: http://sixminutes.dlugan.com/leading-the-perfect-qa/

Is An Online Survey Right For You? Advantages and Disadvantages of Different Survey Formats

Posted in: Blog by rafal on August 3, 2010 | No Comments

Your organization is preparing to carry out a customer satisfaction survey, and the only question that remains is the type of survey that should be used. Will it be a person administered survey, with a clerk manually asking clients the questions in the store? Will it be a computer administered survey available online? Or perhaps you’ll leave surveys at the register and have customers take them and fill them out on their own time?

All of these techniques have their advantages and their drawbacks. In this post, we’ll take a look at the pros and cons of using each.

Person Administered Survey: In this survey, an interviewer reads questions to the respondent, either face to face or over the phone, and records his or her answers.

Advantages

• The easiest method for the respondent. All they have to do is answer the questions and no additional work is required.
• The interviewer can adapt the survey for each respondent. Additional clarification about the questions, if needed, can be offered.
• You get instant feedback from the respondent. There’s no waiting time for the results, they are delivered right away, and you can assure that every question is answered.

Disadvantages

• Slow speed. Individually asking respondents to answer the survey and recording their responses is a time consuming process.
• Costly. The labour and time costs to carry out the survey can be high.
• Potential for error. If a question in misread, misheard or improperly recorded, the results could be skewed.
• Interview evaluation apprehension. Certain respondents could be hesitant to be completely truthful when speaking to an interviewer in fear of being judged, and this could lead to biased results.

Self Administered Survey: In this method, the respondent completes the survey on his/her own.

Advantages

• Lower cost. No costs to administer the survey, as respondents do it themselves.
• Respondent freedom. Respondents have more time to complete the survey and control the pace at which they do so, making it easier and more convenient for them to respond.
• No interview evaluation apprehension.

Disadvantages

• Respondent controls the survey. They might not send it in on time or at all.
• Lack of monitoring. No one available to clarify questions or encourage respondent.

Online Surveys: The respondent completes the survey online and submits it electronically.

Advantages

• Speed and reach. A large amount of people can be reached in an extremely short period of time.
• Relatively low cost. Survey/person costs and time costs are reduced.
• Real-time capture of Data. Responses are received in real time and can be analyzed immediately.
• Ability to include videos and graphics in questions.
• No interview evaluation apprehension.

Disadvantages

• Technical know-how is required. Time will be required to learn survey software (We strive to make this as easy as possible with FluidSurveys).
• Technical glitches could occur in data collection or analysis – these can be avoided with a survey dry-run before deployment.

At the end of the day, the type of survey you choose has to be the right fit for the type of information you want to collect. Complicated questions and fewer desired respondents would be better suited with a person administered survey, while a large sample size would be a better fit with an online survey. Cost, time and resources also have to be taken into account. Carefully choosing your survey method is an important step in the research process, as important as designing your questionnaire and gathering responses.

The good news is that FluidSurveys supports multi-mode data collection and can be used in either of the 3 methods above. Customers frequently use the software to record responses during an in-person or telephone interview. For self-administered surveys, customers usually leave a laptop or tablet-pc on site to allow for respondents to fill in the answers on site. Finally, the software can obviously be used for online surveys administered via the web as well. Another great advantage of FluidSurveys is that one can easily distinguish between data gathered from each mode and can also see results in aggregate view.

Surveys: A Key Tool for Effective Decision Making

Posted in: Blog by rafal on July 28, 2010 | No Comments

What is often viewed as the least “sexy” and most tedious aspect of marketing and business has proved, time and time again, to be the most important. No matter how creative your ad campaign may be, or how many great innovative features your new product may have, it can all go to waste if you don’t base your decisions on thorough and dependable research.

Effective market research gives firms and organizations valuable insights into shareholder’s wants, needs, attitudes and perceptions while guiding them towards profitable decisions by uncovering potential market opportunities.

Examples of poor decisions rooted in incomplete research are everywhere. Take PepsiCo’s re-branding of Tropicana Orange Juice in 2009, which stripped the brand of it’s personality and only upset and confused customers. The uproar was so huge that Pepsi switched back to it’s old branding strategy a few months into the new campaign. What ended up being an extremely costly mistake could have been, in all likelihood, avoided if PepsiCo had placed a greater emphasis on brand research and found out in advance how consumers were going to perceive the new and old campaigns.

Before carrying out a decision that can impact your bottom line, it’s crucial to gather the information to support it. The ideal method is a mixture of quantitative and qualitative data collection techniques, be it focus groups, personal interviews, surveys, etc.

Using a survey, in particular, as part of the data collection process has multiple advantages:

1. Standardization: It’s possible to guarantee that every participant is asked the same question with identical wording and tone, removing a potential source of bias in responses. Standardization also allows similar data to be collected from groups and then compared against each other.
2. Easy to administrate: Surveys, particularly online surveys, are a relatively inexpensive and easy method of data collection. They can be sent out to large populations with the click of a button, completed anywhere on the planet, and results are accumulated in real time.
3. Able to tap the “Unseen”: Surveys can uncover information and patterns that would not have been visible with collection methods that are limited to smaller sample sizes (individual observation, focus groups, etc)
4. Flexible: Surveys can collect a wide variety of information, be it values, beliefs, past behaviors, demographics, attitudes, etc, in one document.

While a survey should not be the only method used to gather comprehensive data, it can be an extremely effective tool available to firms and organizations. Using it in tandem with other methods is imperative to gather market research when making important business decisions. At the end of the day, a gut feeling can only take you so far.

New Feature – Automatically get emailed when a branching condition is met!

Posted in: Blog by admin on July 21, 2010 | No Comments

One of our customers recently asked us to help them address a scenario that they were facing with a client satisfaction survey they had on the go. If any of their clients mentioned that they were very dissatisfied with any of the services the organization offered, they wanted to get an email notification so that they could contact the person and talk to him directly. They asked us to build in the feature, and a few days later we made it available!

So… how does it work? Well, we built this feature as part of the “Advanced Branching” menu. You can use advanced branching to check to see if a respondent responded to a question in a certain way – if they did, then you can have the system send you an email automatically. The email will essentially notify you that the branching condition that you specified as a trigger has been met!

As you can see in the image above, once the “email yourself” action is taken, you can still execute other actions such as skipping to another page.