subject: Choosing Free Online Survey Software Wisely [print this page] Gathering customer reviews is the best way to analyze the effectiveness of business strategies in the market; it helps understanding what consumers perceive of your company and products and also successful your programs are and that too without hampering the research and development budget. Free online survey software and tools are great cost-effective ways for collecting and analyzing results, through a single centralized format. It does hold true that not all research analysis can be conducted through online surveys, though their biggest benefit is that it saves time, money and energy.
There are innumerable options available to create online surveys through a simple software installation. This way market research becomes much faster and simpler with questionnaire templates and instant generation of charts and graphs. However, there are few things that need to be considered before choosing online survey software.
Functions of an online survey software
There are quite a number of things that free online survey software can do that would easily define survey questions as well as the probable responses. A couple of features that is pretty handy in these online surveys.
Skipping logic- More complex surveys allow you to design the format such that respondents can skip a whole set of questions that are irrelevant to them.
Flexibility- you can update colors, required links, headers and fonts as well as graphics
Randomization of questions
Piping- that allows the creator to pull out answers from one questionnaire to the other.
Data analysis is one of the prime differences between a simple survey and complex survey. Generally basic packages provide simple reports, while other software permits the results to be downloaded into the Excel format and other tools for further analysis.
Choose the software right
It is extremely vital to first prioritize the needs and requirements of the research and development department before finalizing free online survey software. If the company requires a quick customer report, basic low cost software can be opted. However, if the consumer data is required to support your rigorous research and can add to the existing business-marketing strategies, opting for advanced software would be wise. You could opt to run a free trial initially and with satisfaction from that, appropriate software packages can be purchased.
There are some other factors also that you might want to consider such as the number and type of responses you are likely to get, the ability to customize your survey template, the ability to run appropriate analysis on the data, the piping and branching facilities as well as application of the advanced survey logic.
A number of different online survey software options available. It is suggested to prioritize business requirements first and then purchase one.
