Survs

Sometimes people are so excited about launching their first survey that they just keep adding questions until they can’t remember what else to ask.

This kind of approach is perfectly normal when someone doesn’t know the “rules of the game”, but leads to low response rates, filling errors and too many questions which ultimately will just be ignored - either because they don’t contribute to the survey goals or because there was no time to analyze them.

To help avoid these problems, we have prepared 8 quick tips that will significantly improve your surveys without much effort. Our goal is to provide all Survs’s users with a quick guide to start building successful surveys right away.

1. Plan it!

Before you start designing your survey, ask yourself: Why am I doing this survey? What are my goals? What do I want to know?

2. Short is beautiful

Keep in mind that the shorter the survey is, the greater are the chances of having high response rates.

3. Introduce “yourself”

Start by explaining the survey’s purpose, how the results will be used and how long it will take.

4. Divide and conquer

Present your questions in logical groups, leaving the personal identification questions to the end of the survey.

5. Be clear and to the point

Speak the language of your audience and pay attention to the size and clarity of your questions: if the respondents have to read a question more than once, it means that it is too confusing.

6. Let it flow!

To avoid breaking the flow of the survey, try not to use many different types of questions. If you force your respondents to learn a different scale for every question your survey completion rate will surely decrease.

7. Protect yourself!

Be cautious about using open-ended questions (questions where the respondent answers in their own words) because they are much harder to analyze than closed-ended questions (questions where the respondent chooses between one or more answer options).

One of the must usual errors in online surveys (well, in all kind of surveys) is asking questions that end up never being analyzed. Remember that in online surveys short is beautiful ;-).

8. Test, test and test a little more!

Before launching your survey don’t forget to test it several times until it is finely tuned.

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Hey there! Missing us?

We have been rolling up our sleeves and are working like maniacs to deliver you the next version of Survs. We promise it’ll be worth the wait!

In the meanwhile we can show you a bit more of what we have been working on ;-).

Edit Survey

Share Survey Results

Filters

Invites

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Just to let you guys know that xSort (our other product) is now a free product.

xSort is a free card sorting application for Mac OS X aimed at user experience professionals and social scientists.

So jump to xSort web site and grab your copy!

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From now on you can invite unregistered users to your Survs’s accounts!

Survs was built with collaborative work in mind, and inviting your teammates to join your account is just the first step towards working together with them.

Soon we will write about other collaborative features, but for now let’s focus on the account concept.

Picture this: you have an account shared with some of your colleagues at work and, at the same time, you have another account where you create surveys for the parent-teacher association you belong to. With Survs you can have a different account for different projects and still use the same credentials to login.

To allow for some control over who can do what inside an account, you can assign one or more roles to each account member.

There are 6 different roles:

• Viewer (the voyeur, can watch but can’t play)
• Editor (the builder, can create and edit surveys)
• Distributor (the bridge with your respondents, can create and open channels to collect responses)
• Analyzer (the analytics guy, can analyze, share, export and print results)
• Manager (the master helper, can do management tasks)
• Owner (the master of all roles, can do everything)

We think these roles contemplate the majority of usage scenarios, but we are expecting your feedback to let us know if we are on the right track.

Have fun using Survs!

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By now, some of you guys are already having fun using Survs and wanting to know more about its future.

Well, we’re happy to share a bit of what’s coming up.

Pricing model

The pricing model will be based on monthly plans that should be between $20 and $60, with special prices for annual subscriptions.

All accounts will be subscribed to a plan, each of them with different features and level of service. We are currently tuning these so that our audience can find a plan that suits them nicely.

However, we can tell you already that the main difference between the various plans will be the number of users allowed in the account and the maximum number of responses per month.

Finally, there will also be a free plan, enough for everyone to try out Survs and conduct small surveys without compromise.

Types of questions

We get asked a lot about the question types currently available.

Survs currently has the types of questions we thought would be essential and serve most of our users’ needs. We will, however, be adding more types based on your feedback. So be sure to tell us what you need!

New design

After lots of feedback from our users (thank you guys!) and some user research, we are working on a new design that we think will significantly improve Survs’s user experience.

You can take a sneak peak below:

Soon all of you will be able to play with it ;-).

Want to try out Survs?

By now we are sending invites almost every day, so what are you waiting for? We are asking for you…

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We’re finally here! Survs is now officially blogging. And this being the inaugural post, introductions are in order.

What is Survs?

Survs is a collaborative tool that allows you to build, deploy and analyze online surveys.

It is collaborative in the sense that you can cooperate with your teammates through the journey of building, deploying and analyzing your surveys. You can even share your surveys results, templates and themes online.

Being a web application, no special software is needed. As long as you have an Internet connection and a web browser you can access Survs wherever you are.

How is Survs different from other similar online survey applications?

• Survs was developed in a user-centric fashion, with the goal of providing you a great user experience
• It is a collaborative application, meaning that you can share your account with others and assign them different usage profiles
• It will have a very competitive pricing

Who is Survs’s audience?

• All sorts of organizations / companies
  (customer satisfaction surveys, employee surveys, product evaluation surveys, performance surveys, etc.)
• Advertisement, marketing, and market research companies
  (market studies in general, surveys on brand awareness, opinion surveys, surveys for web site visitors, etc.)
• Universities, R&D centers, schools, professors and students from all academic levels
  (student surveys, surveys for teachers and staff, course appraisal surveys, etc.)
• Companies and professionals in user experience and related areas
  (design, user research, usability, information architecture, etc.)
• Everyone else
  (surveys for event preparations, surveys about hobbies or sports, surveys for your family and friends, surveys for wedding plans, etc.)

Want to try out Survs?

If you want to give Survs a try, jump over to our beta registration page and soon you’ll be receiving news from us.

From now on, this will be the place where you can keep in touch with all that is happening with Survs and have an active part on shaping the future of the application. We’re counting on you!

You can also follow our twitter page where you can get all the news first hand.

Stay tuned!

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