SurveyGizmo iGoogle Gadget

We received our first notice of a 3rd party application created with our API. Anyone who uses iGoogle dashboards to organize their lives is going to love this.

Bryan Richards, Editorial Director of Linux Magazine, developed a Google gadget for SurveyGizmo! Just like our Apple Widget and WordPress Plug-in, the gadget displays your surveys and number of responses and allows you to access the advanced features for those surveys by clicking on the row. Excellent job, Bryan!

How to Setup and Use the Google Widget

From your iGoogle home page click on the “add stuff” link (usually at the upper right corner of the screen).

Then choose the “add from URL” option and type (or copy and paste) this URL into the box:

http://bryanjrichard.googlepages.com/sgizmo.xml

Now the SurveyGizmo widget will be added to your iGoogle Home page. You’ll have to enter your API key into the space provided, then you are ready to roll (get your API key from your Account Settings page).

We love to see our customers using our API for cool things. If you’ve created a project without API (or want to) let us know about it. We will rave about your nifty invention.

Thanks Bryan — and great work!!

The Most Accessible and Usable Survey Tool

We have seen a lot of interest recently in SurveyGizmo’s accessibility features and how our surveys meet current accessibility and usability standards, such as Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act or the British version the DDA (Disability Discrimination Act). We are happy to report we meet Section 508 (and likely the DDA as well). Customers reviewing survey tools tell us SurveyGizmo is the most accessible survey tool on the market.

An accessibility study group at UC Berkley did an accessibility comparison of online survey tools this spring and found that SurveyGimzo came out on top. Around the same time, the Usability Professionals’ Association ran a recent article comparing SurveyGizmo and one of our competitors, SurveyMonkey.

“Because we found an accessible tool, we stopped our search and deployed a survey with SurveyGizmo. Survey creation and activation was simple, and the results were easy to gather. But most importantly for us, our users with disabilities reported no difficulties in accessing, completing, and submitting the survey.”

Seeking an Accessible and Usable Survey Tool
By Karen Mardahl and Lisa Pappas

Why should you care if your surveys are accessible?

First, being accessible means meeting a variety of requirements in the HTML that make your survey easier to use by people who may be attempting to access them under non-traditional circumstances. For instance:

• A blind user reading and navigating with a screen reader
• A user with a broken hand trying to navigate solely with the keyboard
• Anyone with reduced motor controls who has trouble clicking precisely
• Anyone with vision issues who desires larger type or higher contrast colors (think aging baby-boomers)

Offering better accessibility in your surveys means a larger and more satisfied audience. Many of our competitors’ surveys rely solely on JavaScript and mouse interactions, making it impossible to navigate a survey and answers questions using only a keyboard.

I’ve pushed for accessible, Web Standards based design for years and have thrown my hat in the ring to promote it in the past. When I designed our web survey templates over a year ago, accessibility issues were top of mind, and we are currently working on some enhancements to improve things still further.

We will also feature an in-depth article on Building Accessible Surveys in the near future. In the meantime, let us know if we can answer any of your questions on accessible survey design.

SurveyGizmo VPAT

You can download our our VPAT here.

New Feature: User Permissions

This is a great example of how everyone’s feedback is making SurveyGizmo better. So many of you asked for user-based permissions that we bumped it to the top of our list. Among other things, this feature allows you to create separate logins with restricted access to surveys and features in SurveyGizmo. You can create reporting-only users and survey-testing users. Heck, you can even lock a user down to a specific survey. Here is how it works:

Setting User Permissions in SurveyGizmo

User permissions are available for all Pro and Enterprise Accounts. (These are our two account levels that allow more than a one user.)

To create a new user, click on your account management link in the upper right side of your screen. It will take you to a brand new page that looks like this:

Click on the User Management & Permissions option (circled above). This is how you access all of your users for resetting passwords, changing email addresses, etc.

Now, you’ll see a screen like this:

This is works like an excel sheet. Simply edit the information you need to change. You can select the “delete” option to remove a user.

By default, all users have full account access (except new users are not given administrative access). To change this, click the “change” permissions link next to the user. This brings up a detail screen shown below:

This screen is very simple. Select as many permissions as you want; the options are:

Can Edit/Create Surveys
This option allows the user to create/copy/delete surveys. It also allows the user to upload images & files to the file library. It includes the ability to test surveys — obviously!).

Can Preview/Test Surveys
This option allows the user to preview/test surveys, but they cannot access data collected or modify the survey in any way. They do not have permission to launch a survey.

Can Launch/Close Surveys
This option allows the user to launch a survey and schedule it in a feed. It also allows the user to close the survey (stop taking responses) manually.

Can Create, Edit & Launch Email Invites
This option allows the user to upload a list of email addresses and invite people to take a survey. It does not include access to reporting by default, but they can see which people responded to the invite and send follow-ups.

Can Create & Edit Reports
This option allows the user to create, modify and run reports. They can export data and create filter sets. These users can also edit & delete responses (in order to clean up data for reporting).

Can View & Re-Run Reports
This provides very limited access to surveys. It allows the user to login and view reports created by other users — but they cannot create new reports themselves. This access level cannot export data.

Is an Administrator
This does not give access to everything as it might imply. Instead, it gives the user access to the account management page. There they can reset passwords (and permissions) and update account management “stuff,” like 3rd party software integration and API keys.

Limit access to the following survey:
This is a nifty permission. Setting this will limit the user’s access to just a single survey — now matter what other permissions they have. They will not see other surveys at all — even on the main survey list.

Keep giving use feedback and suggestions to make SurveyGizmo better. Happy Surveying!

What is a Successful Survey Project? (Hint: It’s not just the data)

Very few people create surveys out of boredom or simply for fun. Those few that do (such as myself) should seek professional help (I recommend my therapist).

No, when we create surveys, it is for a specific reason – to gain knowledge about a topic or issue so that we can make important decisions, publish reports or gain new customer leads.

From that perspective the success of a survey campaign should be measured not in terms of the data collected, but what you are able to *do* with the knowledge you gain.

The most important factor in a successful survey project is having a plan (and the intent) to follow through with the data.

Here is a guide to help you create a better survey and an effective, efficient post-survey action plan:

A PARTING NOTE: after your project, mark a time in your calendar (not too distant) to begin analyzing the changes made based on your proposal and planning a follow-up project to ascertain if it had the intended effect.

Good luck with your survey projects — let us know if we can help you.

The Pareto Principle (80:20 Rule) in Survey Research

The Pareto principle (which you may know as the 80-20 rule) states that, for many phenomena, 80% of consequences stem from 20% of the causes. It is a common rule of thumb in business; e.g., “80% of your sales come from 20% of your clients.”

The Pareto principle also applies to survey research. When planning your survey project, plan on expending 20% of your resources on the survey execution (data collection) and 80% of your resources acting of the information gathered (follow-up actions).

Let me explain using an example:

I recently completed a survey project for the Taos Municipal School District (TMSD) in Taos, New Mexico. A year ago the school board formed a subcommittee with a charter to make recommendations for improving communication within the district.

The committee quickly decided they needed to do a survey in order to learn what problems existed and what solutions may work best. The need to do a survey project led them to me. My first task was to set expectations on two fronts:

1. The scope of communication within a school district is huge.
2. The survey project is not an end. Early in the design the focus needs to be on what is going to be done once the survey is complete.

After nearly a year with the “volunteer” committee meeting once a week, we had completed three surveys (one each to parents, staff and the community) and collected over 1,000 responses.

TMSD spent $12,500 and the volunteer time on the data collection and analysis. Does it seem reasonable that they might spend $50,000 and many many committee hours to implement solutions and improve communications? Let me help with some more information. The results showed that the problems and solutions were different for different schools within the district. It was clear communication was not going to improve unless changes were enacted; website upgrading, school improvement teams (high school, middle school and elementary schools), a district liaison to the community and a stronger relationship with the town’s newspaper were just some of the recommendations.

Will the information be used and changes enacted? There was a glimmer of hope right at the start: The study results were presented at a School Board meeting in the city council chambers. After seeing the results and hearing the recommendations, the board took action on one recommendation right there on the spot. The board voted on and passed a resolution to make “progress on improving communications” a standing agenda item for their monthly meetings. (In this case, the cycle time from results presentation to specific ACTION broke my old record!)

Do yourself and your customers a favor. Plan at the start to expend time and money on the implementation side of your next survey research project.

New Question Type: Image Chooser

Now that we let people upload images, we thought we should give you a fun way to use them!

The new Image Chooser question type displays several images and allows your respondents to pick an image of their choice by clicking on it. Here’s what it looks like:

We can see some great uses for this, particularly for those of you who are testing logos and brand identity! And the good news is that it’s available for all accounts, even Free ones.

How to use add this question type to your survey:

All you need to do to use this question type is upload some images to your account (see our earlier post about uploading images) then go to your survey and click “add question.” The Image Chooser option is located with other multiple choice question types (as shown in the image below).

Just click on “Image Choice” and you’ll see a scrolling box with thumbnails of all your images. Choose the ones that you’d like to use for this question and then click the “Add this question” button. There! You now have a working image chooser.

As with all our questions, there are advanced options (like triggering other questions, etc) that can be accessed from the advanced question editor. You can also re-style the question using a little CSS magic.

Want to see a real-life example? From now until Weds, June 13th Big Fish Games (http://www.bigfishgames.com) is running a poll using this new image type. The poll is to determine a background option for their massive online community. Here it is: http://s-xi3q2-9564.sgizmo.com

New Features: SurveyGizmo is Going Mobile!

We recently discovered that SurveyGizmo surveys work quite well on mobile phones. Go figure! So this week’s big new feature is the ability to trigger & schedule mobile text messages from a survey. In addition, we have added a new survey template for designing mobile surveys called the “Mobile Survey Template.” Take a look:

Sending Mobile Messages from a Survey

Many of our users have sent email auto-responders in response to a survey. They have notified sales people, sent thank you emails and informed teachers about evaluation scores powered by SurveyGizmo. Now our users can trigger text messages the same way!

Here is a real-world example: Your sales team is running an informative session at a busy expo. Two weeks prior, you send out an email to all your customers urging them to pre-register for this information session. The registration page is powered by SurveyGizmo — which not only captures lead information for the sales team, but it also schedules a mobile reminder for that prospect!

At the expo (two weeks later) your prospects all receive text messages on their mobile phones telling them the session will begin in 1 hour! That will drive traffic to your sales team remotely!

Mobile Surveys

Here’s a template survey for you to create your own mobile quizzes, surveys and polls. Just click on “Create Survey,” and then choose “Mobile Survey Template” from the drop down. This will create a survey setup to be a mobile opinion poll. If you have a mobile phone (with a web browser), you can test it for yourself below or send it to a friend:

This form will send you a Text Message with an invite to take the mobile survey.

We look forward to seeing what everyone does with this new survey channel! If you have comments or suggestions please let us know. (There is a comment form right under this post). As always, your requests drive most of the improvements to SurveyGizmo!

Cheers!