Tuesday
Nov252008
Very unscientific survey of online survey tools
Because of a couple of projects that I am working on, I thought I might be able to use some tool for an online survey. I have two particular requirements:
- respondents can be anonymous
- respondents are allowed to complete the survey in multiple sittings. In other words, they can go back to a form and continue where they left off.
- The three that seemed to come up in my web search are: Wufoo, SurveyMonkey and Zoomerang.
- All three have a free option that allows a basic survey to be done and some basic reports to be produced
- Wufoo is very pretty and fast. Sophisticated and easy to use interface. Elegant. My only problem was that my second requirement is not supported.
- Zoomerang is a bit slow and did not support my second requirement either
- SurveyMonkey was fast and flexible but not nearly as pretty and elegant and easy to use as WuFoo.
- In fact, of the three, only SurveyMonkey has an option that would allow a respondent to come back and continue where they left off (my requirement)
Tuesday, November 25, 2008 at 8:00AM 
Reader Comments (2)
Zoomerang is the choice for me. They allow more questions and respondents with the free account and is super easy to use. I do not find them slow at all. There templates are great and have actually saved me time since I only need to do a little bit of customization for each survey I do.
One important thing to remember is it is not a good idea for survey completion to be done in multiple sittings. If you find it necessary to offer that option, your survey is too long. Maybe you should consider splitting your survey it in two parts.
Check out Zoomerang's blog for survey tips and suggestions, very helpful for those just starting out.
Thanks for the thoughts... My requirement is more of a questionnaire than a survey and allowing the submitter a chance to tweak the information over more than one session is kind of a requirement.