What is SurveyMonkey?
Adam Ramshaw
Adam Ramshaw has been helping companies to improve their Net Promoter® and Customer
Feedback systems for more than 15 years. He is on a mission to stamp out ineffective
processes and bad surveys.
SurveyMonkey is online survey software that helps you to create and run professional online
surveys. It is very powerful and a well-known online application.
Why Would You Use It?
Surveys are important to collect feedback, opinions, criticism and suggestions from the
general public and customers.
In the past surveys were normally printed and passed on to people to complete. With the
introduction of online surveys collecting feedback became very easy as the manual element
of the collation process was eliminated.
There are a number of competitors in the online survey space but SurveyMonkey is perhaps
the best known and most widely used. SurveyMonkey is on par with the industry standards,
but adds a lot of other features that makes collection and analysis of data extremely simple.
Features
SurveyMonkey presents all the tools necessary for you to create strong, professional surveys
easily.
The exact feature is dependent on which of the four pricing plans you choose. However, if
you’re just starting up with online survey tools and you are trying to figure out the best one,
you can opt for the free pricing plan that gives you access to the basic tools needed to create
great surveys.
Design Options
The basic plan allows you to have only 10 questions per survey with a maximum of 100
responses per survey (you can have unlimited questions and responses per survey in the
premium plans).
Using the web interface, you can choose from 31 survey templates (or 51 in premium) and 15
types of questions.
The questions you can add to your survey span three categories – close-ended, open-ended,
and descriptive.
You can have single answer, multiple choice with multiple answers, rating scale, and 3
matrix type questions in the close-ended category. Single textbox, multiple textboxes, essay
box, numerical textboxes, demographic details, and date/time box options can be chosen from
the open-ended questions. This is more than sufficient to create high-quality professional
surveys for your users.
The tool also allows you to set answer choice randomization, present a survey completion
bar, add auto numbered pages, provide options to make questions require answers to proceed
and control data input by validation (users cannot enter text in a numbers only box).
Premium plans also give you more customization options like adding a custom “Thank You”
page and generating a printable PDF version.
Collection and Analysis
Without proper collection and analysis functionality survey software is worthless.
SurveyMonkey performs well on both counts.
The survey can be administered/sent to users via a number of ways – e-mail, web link,
Facebook, embed link on web page, link via Twitter, and website pop-ups. Enhanced security
is possible with premium plans.
Analysis happens in real time. Results are viewed as respondents complete their surveys.
However, if you would like to download and keep a copy of the survey and the results, an
upgrade to premium will be necessary. A premium account gives you access to multiple
custom reports, response download, custom chart creation and download functionality, and
options to share responses.
The basic plan has all the features you need, including 24×7 customer support. It’s fast, easy
to use, and reliable. You can always try, and only upgrade when the need arises.