Creating a product your customers love is a challenge for anyone. When you’re a survey software company (hey, that’s us!) there’s an extra wrinkle.
Yes, we need to make our customers happy (hey, that’s you!) because they’re the ones making the surveys. But we’ve also got to make sure that the people TAKING the surveys are having a great experience.
After all, what’s a survey without respondents?
That’s why all our new features are aimed at making the experience of taking a survey with SurveyMonkey an easier and more enjoyable.
Want to see what we’ve been working on? Read on, then try the features for yourself.
Build surveys people will want to take
Good surveys mean happy respondents.
Want your survey to be a pleasure for your respondents to take? Nothing is more important than building a solid survey that you’ve vetted thoroughly.
That’s why we’ve focused a ton of our efforts on making the tools you use to actually create surveys that are stronger and useful in more situations.
Make sure your survey looks good on any device. Everyone knows it’s smart—crucial, even—to check how your survey looks before you send it. But do you check how it looks on other devices? It’s important! In the U.S., 3 out of every 10 respondents take their surveys on mobile devices. Outside the U.S. it’s even higher. Whether it’s too long, complex, or wordy—sometimes you only realize your survey looks scrunched up when you view it in a mobile format.
That’s why we’ve added functionality to our Preview & Test mode so that you can preview how your survey looks on any device—mobile, tablet, or desktop.
No matter where your respondents take their surveys, now you can be assured that your respondents are seeing your survey in the best possible light, no matter which device they’re on.
Get a quick start using copy and paste. Sometimes you just can’t create a survey from inside SurveyMonkey. Maybe you have you already written your survey, and you now want to import it into SurveyMonkey. Or maybe you’re offline or working with someone else who doesn’t have an account (sign them up!).
Whatever the reason, now you can copy your survey questions from any document—Google Docs and Word Docs work just fine—and paste them into your SurveyMonkey survey in one single swoop. From there you can massage your survey so it looks just right on any device.
Quit manually copying your questions from your document into your survey one-by-one. Get a quick start on your survey using the new copy and paste functionality and make it easier to deliver solid, thoughtful surveys to your respondents.
Expand your survey’s uses with file upload questions. Sometimes the information you want your respondents to provide can’t be written in or selected. Want them to upload a pdf of their resume? Send you a screenshot of an issue they’re having with your website? Now you can.
The new file upload question type allows your respondents to add files to your surveys so you can collect them as efficiently as possible. Whether you use it for work, in the classroom, or just for fun, you can provide your survey respondents with even more options for giving you information in the most relevant format. It’s a win-win!
Use engaging, mobile-friendly slider and star rating questions. Hey, we’ll admit it. Not every survey is going to be a thrill to take. Some are a downright chore.
With question types that are intuitive, and engaging, like the new slider and star rating question types, your survey is sure to stand out. They’re fun to use and are already the standard rating questions to use on mobile devices.
Now you can use either (or both!) on SurveyMonkey so that you can give your respondents a mobile-friendly survey that’s fun to take.
Get inspiration from our updated question bank. Not sure how to ask a question? Our Question Bank of pre-written survey questions and templates just got a lot more powerful. With improved search functions you can find a question or template in the Question Bank that’s just right for your respondents. Remember, when you ask the good question, you get a good answer.
Meet your respondents where they are
No matter how well designed your survey is, there’s always going to be a thousand other tasks competing for your respondents’ attention.
It pays to find alternate ways to get your survey in front of them and make it easier for them to get started.
We’ve devoted time to making tools for you that do just that.
Embed survey questions into emails to boost completion rates. Emailing someone an invitation to take your survey isn’t always the best way to get them interested. But when you include a taste of your survey in that invitation, you’ll entice people to take your survey.
It’s true! SurveyMonkey’s own survey scientists studied it and found that embedding a question from your survey into an email invitation boosted the number of people who start a survey by 22% and the number of people who finished it by 19%.
See for yourself. Now you’ll get the option to embed the first question of your survey into your email invitation whenever you send a survey.
Transform mobile devices into survey-taking “kiosks.” When we think of delivering surveys, usually what comes to mind is sending it by email or sharing a link on social media. But those aren’t the only ways.
Now when you download the SurveyMonkey mobile app and connect to WiFi, you can turn your mobile device into a survey-taking “kiosk.” Kiosk mode makes it easy for multiple people to take the same survey on the same device. Need to quickly register a group of people for an event? This feature is perfect for you.
Hear your respondents more clearly
What’s the point of surveys? To hear from your respondents, right? The reason you’re going through all this trouble is to hear their thoughts, opinions, and reactions.
When you’re interpreting survey results from hundreds, sometimes thousands, of respondents, you’ve got to make sure you really understand them.
We’ve cooked up a few new tools that will help you keep up to date on your survey results and interpret them correctly.
Stay on top of your results with push notifications. Itching to hear from your respondents? We know the feeling.
Now when you download the SurveyMonkey app, you can receive notifications about people responding to your survey. Don’t worry, we’ll make sure they’re manageable. You’ll get a notification when you get your first survey response and one daily summary of the results of all your active surveys, that’s it.
When you’ve had a busy day and forgot to check your survey results, these notifications can be a handy gateway to take a look—especially when you’re on the go.
Show off word clouds of your open-ended responses. Open-ended questions can be tough to deal with. On one hand, they let your respondents answer your questions in their own words. On the other, it’s difficult to “show” those responses to others since you can’t exactly make a graph from a bunch of open-ended responses.
Word clouds are a handy answer to this dilemma. They’ll show a selection of only the most important words your respondents use and give them corresponding importance based on how often they were used. Now you can export your word clouds into a PNG file so that you can share it however you’d like.
Get deeper context with updated Benchmarks data. Sometimes the context of your results is as important as the results themselves. For example, say you’ve done a customer satisfaction survey and you find out your Net Promoter Score is 30. Is that good? The answer depends a lot on your industry, company size and geography. The only way you can know for sure is to compare yourself to others in those areas.
SurveyMonkey Benchmarks does just that. By first making your results anonymous and then aggregating them, you can see where you stand compared your competitors.
We keep our Benchmarks data sharp and update it quarterly, which means you’ll always know exactly how to interpret your respondents’ results. Even if you deployed your survey a while ago, it’s not too late. You can still use our most recent Benchmarks data to see where you stay up against your competition.
No matter what stage of the survey experience you’re in, it pays to make sure it’s geared toward your respondents. You’ll increase your response rates, get better data, and make your respondents happy to take your surveys again.
While you’re working on your next survey, we’ll be working to build tools that are sure to make it a success.
