We’ve also updated our library of survey templates! Unlike survey themes, a survey template is a set of pre-built survey questions that center around one particular survey topic. All SurveyGizmo users have access to our library of templates – when you create a new survey, just select “Use a pre-built template” from the New Project screen, and you’re ready to go. You can then customize the template to your heart’s content. (If you’d like more info, you can read our tutorial on how to create a survey from a survey template).

Additionally, you can now preview most of our templates from the website without having to log into your account. Just head to our Survey Guides section and browse through the survey examples. A few popular survey templates include:

• IT Satisfaction Survey Template
• Employee Survey Template
• Customer Satisfaction Survey Template
• Web Form Template

…& more.

Our Survey Guides section offers access to all the templates we carry (which currently stands at more than 75!) – and more are being added each day. Keep checking back to see what new templates we add in the coming weeks!

Image courtesy of Will Scullin – Flickr, Creative Commons (Attribution)

• Logos: Add your logo into the header. (upload logos in the your Files & Templates area)
• Logo Alt text: Improve survey accessibility by adding alt text to your logos.
• Width: Change the width of the content area.
• Footer text: Modify the footer text to include your copyright, company help line, etc.
• Width: Change the width for different uses.
• Submit, Next and Back Button Text: Configure the text labels on buttons. Very useful for non-English surveys.

If you find any challenges using the survey templates or have requests for other templates that would improve your surveys please let us know in the comments.

• Modern Blue-Grey

  

• Cafe au lait

  

• Tuscan Red

  

• Green Tea

  

• Beige Boxes

  

• Smoke

  

• Forest Greens

  

• Gizmo Blue-Gold

  

• Sunburst Orange

  

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!

What I wasn’t expecting was to hear the word “survey” a hundred times during those two days. It’s true, many of our customers use our software to power lead generation forms and landing pages. But I didn’t anticipate such emphasis on re-focusing research into lead-nurturing content. In hindsight it makes sense — you survey and collect data all year as marketers, so why shouldn’t you use those numbers in white papers? My number one take-away point from the conference was the hidden value of survey data. How often do you run a survey with the sole intention of collecting leads or segmenting customers into personas? That’s more than just actionable knowledge. The summary information can also be used to drive demand for your services!

My second take-away is that everyone should be preparing their end-of-year customer surveys. Don’t wait until the last minute. Stay tuned to our web site next week. We are preparing customer satisfaction survey templates to get you started!

This is the first of two how-to articles on using SurveyGizmo to create Contact Forms, Lead Gen Forms, Support Requests, Newsletter Signups, or any kind of custom form. SurveyGizmo makes a great all-purpose web form tool for embedding data-collection forms on your website. We use the term “survey” frequently around here (duh!) but take it to mean any kind of data collection. The word “survey’ here can easily stand in for web form, and vice versa.

No need to get the IT department involved or set up custom processing code. Just add your questions and drop a small snippet of code on your website – done! Plus, you get some special features that you can’t get from a regular web form.

• Track complete vs. abandon stats
• Send email auto-responders (as with many forms), but also have a downloadable text file with contact info.
• Send your data to more than one place – i.e. accept newsletter subscriptions as part of a contact form and post the subscription back to your Email Service Provider’s API.

This week we have several new, related updates

• New Tutorial: Creating Contact, Lead Generation, Newsletter, and Support Forms
• New Question Templates: 4 new templates for quick form setup
  1. Contact Form – Simple
  2. Contact Form – Extended
  3. Support Form
  4. Newsletter Signup – Extended
• New Look & Feel Template: a Contact Form/Embedded design template with clean simplicity for embedding surveys into your website smoothly

You can see examples in use on our own SurveyGizmo contact form and Widgix contact form. We have reprinted the tutorial here for convenience, but you can find it and others on the SurveyGizmo Tutorial pages.

Creating a Single Step Contact Form

A single-step contact form means that users fill out a single page, and then they see a thank you after submitting.

Step 1: Create a new survey using one of our contact form templates

Create a new survey and choose one of the contact form templates that seems closest to your need.

• Contact Form – Simple
• Contact Form – Extended
• Support Form
• Newsletter Signup – Extended

You can and should edit the questions and layout, so just pick something similar. Read more about the basics of creating a new survey.

The templates all have examples of forms and email auto-responders.

Step 2: Edit the questions

Modify the questions to suit your needs. Clicking the notepad icon will allow you to modify many options. You can also add or reorder questions.

Step 3: Handling the submitted data

You have to decide what happens after the user clicks the submit button. Every data form or survey in SurveyGizmo always has at least two pages. The second page acts as a Thank You page, but it can also hold actions to act on the data collected. Use these actions to send email or push data.

Email auto-responders

All of the Contact forms contain examples of email auto-responders. You can modify these or add additional ones. You can read more about setting up Email Auto-responders here.

Pushing information out of SurveyGizmo

SurveyGizmo Pro and Enterprise accounts have access to an Action type called HTTP Post. This is used to push data to outside services like Email lists, newsletter signups, customer databases, etc. You can transmit information to other outside services such as SalesForce.com, Constant Contact, Campaign Monitor, etc.

Step 4: Modify your look and feel

When you are finished with your questions, it’s time to move on to modify your look and feel. If you used one of our Contact Form Templates, it already comes with a look and feel template that is well-suited to being embedded on a website.

You may, however, want to tweak the width of the form, the font size or font family, text color, the background color, or Submit Button text. You can change all those things on the Look & Feel tab. You can also select different templates or modify the HTML or CSS if desired.

You can click “Preview” to view the included Look & Feel or modifications. For you designers out there – it is also possible to modify the look of a survey by adding CSS to your site that acts on the survey form’s ID and Class names.

Step 5: Embed the form on your site

When you are happy with your preview, it’s time to “Launch” (publish) the Contact Form. Clicking Launch will take you to the Publishing tab. You’ll most likely want the Embed Option 2 – the Javascript Option. You can cut and paste this small snippet of Javascript code and place it on the page in your website where you want the form.

Usually you’ll create a blank Contact Us page on your own site using your own template/design. When the page is viewed, the form will fill in dynamically and be wrapped in your site’s design.

A Special note to WordPress or other CMS users like Drupal, etc.

You can create a page or a post and paste in the Javascript snippet. You need to make sure you paste the Javascript code into the HTML, so if you are using the Rich Text Editor click on the HTML button and paste the code in there. If you paste it in the Rich Text Editor directly it won’t work, because the code will be interpreted as copy text.

You’re done – go visit the page and test your form!

Email auto-responders will run immediately (unless you set a time delay). Stats will begin to show up in 10 – 20 minutes. It’s useful to think of the “Abandoned” data as “views” on your form where someone didn’t fill it in. This is natural on most web sites, but if you feel more people should be filling out the form, you might make changes and compare the data over time to achieve a more useful form.

If you create some forms, feel free to post links here to show them off.

Read Part 2 . Contact Forms: Increase conversions with multi-step web forms

What can you use the Email Auto-responders for?

• Notifying you of each survey taken and providing you a copy of the results
• Sending a name-customized confirmation to survey takers to thank them
• Providing a copy of answers back to respondents – good for tests or quizzes
• Confirming the opt-in to someone joining your newsletter list or submitting a customer service contact form
• Get fancy - Use our landing page template for a “Top Ten Tips on _______.” Then, send then one tip a day, automatically scheduled, over the next ten days.

Use the new Merge Helper to grab any value from a survey and insert it into your survey. You can read more about Auto-responders and the Merge Helper in this tutorial.

Survey Templates

Last week we released new survey templates, but this is the first chance we have had to blog about it. When creating a survey, now you can choose from blank, one of our templates, or a copy of one of your own surveys. Right now there are just three templates, but we’ll be bringing on more. We also encourage user-submitted templates as well!

Keep in mind the survey templates are sets of sample questions. They can be paired with any look & feel template. They can also easily be edited or adapted as you need. Remove, add or edit questions as desired.

You can also preview a template before choosing it.

You can check these survey templates out here

• Basic Questions template – Start here if you’re new to SurveyGizmo
• Customer Service Satisfaction Survey
• Landing Page Template

Don’t forget that your designer (or our team) can add customized templates for you easily. Email me if you’d like more information on having our team design for you.

On the new feature front: we have updated most question’s ‘advanced options’ to make them less obtrusive and easier to understand. If you have any suggestions on how to improve this furter, pass them along to me.

More coming next monday — and a grand welcome to the 34 new users from this week!

-Christian Vanek
Lead Developer