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How To Choose A Survey Software© Web Based Survey Software (http://www.web-based-survey-software.org) 2004
Wading through all the information that websites throw at you and choosing the survey software that's right for you can be quite a task. The key steps in choosing a survey software are:
- Identify your needs
- Decide whether to go for Hosted or Product
- Find the survey softwares that meet your needs
- Try 'em out
- Make your final decision
Identify your needs
There are two aspects to identifying your needs, identifying the features you need and identifying how often you will do surveys.
Identifying the features
To identify the features you need, ask yourself "What kind of surveys will I be conducting?" and maybe even create a couple of sample surveys. That will help you identify the features you need. Alternatively, you can understand the important survey software features and decide which ones you need. In addition, we have created these three user profiles to help you better understand your needs.
| Type | Description | Features |
| Basic | - Small-mid sized companies
- Simple surveys
- Simple customer satisfaction surveys, website evaluation surveys
| - Images, sounds, video
- Question library, response library, sample surveys
- Basic respondent validation
- Email notification upon response submission
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| Intermediate |
- Small-mid sized companies, small universities
- Slightly more advanced surveys that need skip logic and data piping
- Customer satisfaction surveys, website evaluation surveys, employee satisfaction surveys, course evaluation surveys, instructor evaluation surveys.
| - Images, sounds, video
- Question library, response library, sample surveys
- Skip logic
- Data piping
- Branding
- Password protected surveys
- Save and continue later
- Response validation
- Response uniqueness control
- Graphical reports
- Export data
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| Advanced | - Large sized companies, large universities, market research companies
- Advanced surveys that could require all kinds of features
- Advanced customer satisfaction surveys, website evaluation surveys, employee satisfaction surveys, course evaluation surveys, instructor evaluation surveys, market research surveys
| - Images, sounds, video
- Question library, response library, sample surveys
- Skip logic
- Data piping
- Branding
- Advanced survey creation features
- Advanced survey presentation features
- Handheld device
- Track respondents
- Password protected surveys
- Save and continue later
- Response validation
- Response uniqueness control
- Graphical reports
- Advanced analysis features (cross-tabulation, sub-set analysis, 360 degree feedback)
- Export data
- Save report in PDF, Word, Excel, Powerpoint
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Identifying how often
To identify how often you will be doing surveys, ask yourself "How often will I be conducting surveys?" and "How many respondents will I have?". These questions will help you understand your use-case scenario. Even if you don't know the answers exactly, how still have to ask them and make an educated guess. Different vendors have pricing plans that are "optimal" if you do a certain number of surveys with a certain number of responses, but wasteful if your usage doesn't match their target. Also, your requirements may change in the future. But that is true irrespective of whether the product is a survey software or some other software. You can only make decisions based on what you know now!
| Type | Description |
| Light | - Infrequent surveys
- 1-5 surveys per year, 500 total respondents
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| Intermediate | - Fairly regular surveys
- 15-20 surveys per year, 5000 total respondents
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| Heavy | - Regular surveys
- 5+ surveys per month, 10000+ total respondents
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Decide whether to go for Hosted or Product
The next thing to decide is whether to go for the hosted or the product version,
and that can be a tough call. Read this article to understand the advantages and
disadvantages of both the methods.
Find the survey software that meets your needs
Once you have identified your needs and decided whether to go for hosted or the product version, you have to find the survey softwares that meet your needs. Our Survey Software Finder can help you do that. If you do fit one of our user profiles for features as well as usage, just select them and the Survey Software Finder will find all survey softwares that match the profile. If you don't fit one of our profiles, enter your custom needs and the Survey Software Finder will still find survey softwares for you.
Try 'em out
Once you have narrowed down your choice to say 5 or 10 products, you should try them out. All vendors say that their product is "easy" and "usable". (We still have to find one that says theirs isn't usable. :-)) But if you can't use it, then it isn't usable! So always try out the products, and make sure that they indeed meet your needs. And if you can do that without committing any dollars, even
better.
Make your final decision
After having looked at the products, make your final decision based not only on price, but also on how well the product matches your needs and usability. Price is of course important, but the other factors are important as well. If the product meets your needs well, then you won't pay for features you don't need and responses you don't use up. So you save money. The other way of looking at it is that you get more of what you need for the same amount of money, or more bang for your buck! And the same with usability. If you choose a product that's really usable for your use-case scenario, you will spend more time conducting surveys than training your staff on how to use the product. So you will save time, and time is money!
Credits
This article has been copyrighted and has been printed with the permission of Web Based Survey Software If you want to reprint this article, please send us an email (mailto:webmaster@web-based-survey-software.org) to inform us and we will grant you the permission. But please ensure that this message appears at the end of the article and proper credits are given to Web Based Survey Software.
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