Let your customers have their say
The opinion of your customers is crucial for your business. We’ve already reviewed several services which let you organise online surveys. Here’s a newcomer: Pollcode.
Remember?
Let’s start with a short update: SurveyMonkey (http://www.surveymonkey.com) and Survs (http://www.survs.com) are two excellent web-based tools for organising online surveys. They allow you to formulate specific questions, define the possible answers (for instance “open” answers or multiple choice), customise the layout, etc. You can integrate the resulting survey as HTML code into your website or send it to your customers via e-mail. You can monitor their answers online, filter them, turn them into charts and export them. Both services offer a free version, in which the number of questions per survey is limited to ten. All in all, we believe that Survs is the best service as it offers the most options.
The subscription versions obviously contain many extra options. At SurveyMonkey (from £12.50/month) you can, for instance, upload your company logo and submit and process an unlimited number of questions and answers. The paid-for Survs (from £12/month) also lets you integrate your logo and collaborate with your colleagues, both for compiling the list of questions and for analysing the feedback.
Newcomer
And now there’s a completely free newcomer: Pollcode (http://www.pollcode.com). The idea behind Pollcode is slightly different than with the two previous services. You can create an unlimited number of online surveys at Pollcode, but you can only ask one question per survey. However, for this one question you can suggest up to 30 different answers. You can specify that one or multiple answers are allowed, or the period during which voting is possible (for example daily or weekly), and you can customise your poll with your own colours, font and settings. Any changes you make are shown immediately. You can integrate this result (via its HTML code) into your site, but it’s also saved under a specific Pollcode URL.
Tip. To give your survey a wider impact, you can also publish it via social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, TypePad or WordPress, using the Quick Post buttons. If you don’t see the desired network, click on the arrow to the right.
Pollcode doesn’t even require you to sign up in order to create a poll. However, if you register (free), you’re given more options, such as viewing the results, resetting the poll or suspending it temporarily. That’s about all you can expect of this free service, but that’s probably enough for most purposes.
UserVoice, unrestricted
Remember UserVoice (http://www.uservoice.com)? This web-based service lets you create an online survey along the principles of the Digg newssystem (http://www.digg.com). It allows your customers to vote for ideas (for instance for new products); the best-rated proposals are pushed to the top of the list.
The good news is that UserVoice recently removed all user restrictions - in the past, only 100 customers were allowed to have their say in the free version of the service. Moreover, new and cheaper formulas have become available too. You can find all the pricing plans and their corresponding options at http://uservoice.com/signup.
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