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Web Surveys

Author: TechShortcut Staff | Article updated: July 29, 2008

1. Overview

You can always mail or email survey forms, wait for them to come back and then enter them into a spreadsheet to analyze. But wouldn't you rather bypass mail, minimize foot-dragging by participants, leave spreadsheet entry behind and move right to the analysis? You can with web surveys.

Considerations

Below are some factors to think about to help you choose the right solution:

Do You Need a Survey or a Poll?
Surveys usually consist of multiple questions and are focused on providing quality feedback. In contrast, a poll is quick, may only be include one question and may not require any identification from the user. Polls are frequently used on websites to take the pulse of visitors.
Frequency
Will the survey be a permanent fixture on your website or will it be used periodically?
Number of Participants
How many participants or respondents will you be including.
Anonymity
Do you need to know who submitted the questionnaire or will respondents be anonymous?
Survey Complexity
How many questions and selection options will be included?

If you simply want to get occasional feedback from visitors to your website then you may not need the web survey solutions listed here. With simple surveys and low volumes of survey responses, you could opt for a web page form that will email the results to you.

Features

Email Invitation
Invite participants by email.
Templates
Choose from pre-built survey templates or create your own.
Reporting and Analysis
Review results, download results.

Implementation Options

1. In-House Survey Software	2. Internet Survey Service
Survey software is installed on your web server.	Rather than add survey software to your web server, you can use an Internet service that will host the survey web page and help you send invitations and analyze responses.

2. Option Comparison

	1. In-House Survey Software	2. Internet Survey Service
Requirements	Internet connectivity	none
Cost Factors	Hardware
	A web server with database software	none
	Software
	Survey software	na
	Labor
	Installation, configuration and maintenance.	Configuration
	Services (approximate costs)
	na	Service costs may be per month or per surveys sent

3. Next Steps

If you don't plan on doing surveys often and a simple web form will not suffice, an Internet survey service can be a good choice since it eliminates software installation and maintenance. But, you will still need to compare the features you need and the costs.

	1. In-House Survey Software	2. Internet Survey Service
General Advice	Can be a good fit if you are tech savvy and plan to perform surveys regularly.	Can be a good fit if you will only do surveys periodically and you are not tech savvy.
Find Local Tech Specialists Search TechShortcut's tech profiles for specialists in your area	Survey Software
Find More Information Use Research Helper to find related web articles	Application Software "Online Survey" "Web Survey"	"Online Survey" "Web Survey"
Examples of Products and Services These are not endorsements, simply some product or service names we encountered in our research to get you started finding your best fit.	Golden Hills Software SurveyGold ¹ LimeSurvey ² phpESP ² ¹ Also offers an option to host on their website ² Open source and free	Constant Contact EZquestionnaire QuestionPro RatePoint SurveyMonkey Zoomerang Note: Most services offer a limited free or trial version