WEB SURVEYS - ONLINE INTERVIEWING (CAWI) - PART III - Yann Gourvennec

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While parts I & II were focussed on the methodology, part III will be aimed at helping you set up your own Web survey.

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WEB SURVEYS - ONLINE INTERVIEWING (CAWI) - PART III

By Yann Gourvennec

A non comprehensive comparison of some Online Web-survey Services (Part III)

INTRODUCTION

While parts I & II were focussed on the methodology, part III will be aimed at helping you set up your own Web survey.

So now you are ready to proceed. You have designed banners and new ages for your Website which will link to your future survey. Your survey has been drafted along the lines described in part II. There is only one question left with you : how the hell do they do that ?

First of all, one should point out that some high-end professional solutions exist which are very reasonably priced : € 2400 (US$ 2000) is the ballpark figure for a fully-fledged online survey including design and hosting. Results will be sent to you every 3 months (other options available at a premium). Refer to http://spss.com for further details. SPSS and e-questionnaire.com for instance will make this offering available to you in two different options : Either you design the questionnaire all by yourself, decide when to publish it and analyse it or you opt for the 'service-bureau' option, which means that the Web-survey agency will adapt your draft to Web standards and host it for you. If you don't want to delve into the complexity of online surveying, the latter solution may be of interest to you. [See links at the bottom of this page].

For the most daring and impatient of my readers I have looked at a few online solutions which can be used and/or purchased direct from the Internet. Some of these solutions may also prove economical if not ... free. It's not always easy to make comparisons of all these solutions for their prices and functionality vary greatly mainly when it comes to the survey-design software/interface. I haven't tried to publish a comprehensive list of all the online solutions available on the market so far. All I am trying to do here is help my readers set up an online survey quickly, simply and with the required methodology. I have also selected two of these online tools to serve as examples and I have used my online experience with the faxfacile.com survey.

[Please note that I am in no way pushing my readers towards a particular service vendor. I invite them to test all the solutions described per below (demo versions are often available) for the thorough definition of their requirements will be easier to achieve with a little practice]

(A FEW) ONLINE SOLUTIONS

There are more and more of them coming onto the market and competition is fierce. Be careful with the solution you'll choose because there is no guarantee that some of the players on this market will not throw in the towel as was the case in 2000 with Surveyengine's mail.infotrieve.com. [Reminder : the following chart is not comprehensive. Send me feedback to include a vendor which cannot be found in the following table].

solution	functionality	prices	notes
Survey Writer (US) http://surveywriter.com	Design and layout of questionnaires, advanced branching capabilities. Solution inclusive of hosting and analysis	US$1.25 per answer (e.g. 500 respondents would cost you US$ 625 [Euro equivalent € 744 i.e. approx. € 1.50 per answer (exchange rate as of 12/2000)	Each question will be displayed on a separate html page but you may group several questions on one page too. Error messages will guide users who navigate through the survey 1 page at a a time. User-friendly but may also tire respondents in the end. You will then run the risk of gathering a high 'non-response' rate on your survey. Good references for this service which is used by Andersen Consulting & Federal Express. Image inclusion is easy which means packaging validation studies are easy to set up. User interface is straightforward but rather anaesthetic.
Websurveyor (US) http://websurveyor.com	Includes full-blown, impressive, easy-to-use desktop survey generator software (Windows 95/98+) to design your surveys off-line. A seamless integration with the Internet hosting service. Instant online/real-time publishing & retrieval of the results	Free online trial is available. Professional solutions available in a 3 tier service-plan. Average service for US$ 1200 yearly (€ 1430) covers 5 concurrent surveys online. Surveys can be activated and deactivated as you wish. Good value for money	Very comprehensive solution which comes with questions and responses libraries. Desktop tool is very sophisticated. Total html integration therefore allowing full customisation. Templates are provided but users can also create their own and add them to the library. Very reliable hosting platform. Filtering of responses is available and the analysis engine is straightforward, aesthetic and fast. I like the all-on-1-page format as it forces one to be concise, which guarantees the quality of the survey. 1 question per page format also available.
Questionbuilder (US) http://questionbuilder.com	Online survey design. Results can be accessed online.	Free	Free solution. The user interface for designing questions is weird but the price/performance ratio is unbeatable ;-)) Instant set-up of your survey and images can be easily included
Surveymonkey.com (US) http://www.surveymonkey.com	Creation, publication and hosting + online analysis. Very user-friendly solution	Free for all questionnaires that stay online for less than 30 days. Beyond that, it will cost you US$ 9.95 / mo & US$ 0.10 per respondent (i.e. € 11.85 / mo & € 0.12 per respondent. May end up being more expensive than other solutions if your surveys concern huge audiences	This new service was released early in 2000. Its user-interface is astonishingly good and enables you to generate very attractive questionnaires in the twinkling of an eye. All functionality not yet present but more is being added as you read this page. E-mail notifications are supported
Netsurvey by Softconcept (FR) http://soft-concept.com	quick survey design and direct html output. Instant results gathered online and sophisticated analysis available through the Ethnos software format	Prices range from approx. US$ 850 (€ 1010) to US$ 9300 (€ 11130) before VAT (19.6%) according to the options selected. Free test is available (see box to the right-hand side)	Their main strength lies in their data analysis format named 'Ethnos'. This data output format enables you to generate a great number of different charts. For More info click here !. Solution available in French, English, Spanish and German
e-questionnaire.com (FR) http://www.e-questionnaire.com	Creation, publication and hosting + online analysis. E-mail notifications and English version available	Contact Free Demo available	French & English versions available. Software can be self-operated but it's possible to subcontract your whole survey to them. Covers all the phases of a market survey campaign from design to analysis
SPSS (US & Int'l) SPSSMR	All options are available. SSPS is the global leader in market surveying software off-line and online. Their service range is comprehensive	Contact	The off-line market leader. Wide range of solutions available, including a service-bureau option entitled 'Web-bureau' which can be helpful to those who are favourable to subcontracting their surveys

LEARNING BY EXAMPLE

I have taken two sample tools from the above listing in order to build 2 examples which will show you how to set up your own online questionnaire. Although not the most comprehensive of available solutions, Surveymonkey is so pleasant in its interface that I have selected it to show you the basics of creating, administering and analysing an online questionnaire on the web.

THE BASIC PRINCIPLES WITH SURVEYMONKEY

Above all, please make sure that you have your draft questionnaire ready at hand. Ideally, you should have worked on this draft in anticipation (see part II for details).

You may now connect to http://www.surveymonkey.com [Note : Click all thumbnails below to see enlargements]

	1. Log in to the system with your e-mail address (Surveymonkey guarantee that your e-mail address will not be sold) and password.
2. Click on the "new survey" tab in order to create a new marketing campaign. In the following step, you will be able to select a special look-and-feel for your future survey page. Your window will be automatically refreshed in order to reflect your changes. All backgrounds are identical but the result is quite neat and elegant.
	3. The third stage consists in adding your questions to your page. As the questionnaire builds up, the "preview" button will help you visualise the result online at all times. Please note that the "horizontal layout" option may help you improve the readability of your questionnaire while avoiding unnecessary and tiring vertical scrolls.
4. You will then have to enter a redirection URL, i.e. the page which will be displayed once the survey has been completed. You may load/edit and copy the following html example for your own use : http://visionarymarketing.com/thanks.html.
	5. Install your online survey either through a direct link which is provided by the system (e.g. http://www.surveymonkey.com/SurveyProxy.asp? SID=1320& C=70588607&U=3691320) or through a pop-up menu such as the one shown in figure 5 [left]. You may also use e-mail notifications [Collect tab] if you have already collected your future respondents' e-mail addresses or if you have rented/bought a list of e-mails from third party.
6. Lastly, you may then analyse your results online. One of the biggest advantages of Internet surveys is the ability to check upon the results as the survey is still being administered. As a consequence, one does not have to wait until the survey is closed let alone deactivate it to view the preliminary results.

We will now move on to a more sophisticated tool called Websurveyor

LEARNING BY EXAMPLE WITH WEBSURVEYOR

Let's describe the stages of a real-time questionnaire such as the one I have set up for France Telecom's faxfacile.com. These stages are not specific to Websurveyor and they are shown here for learning purposes. I insist that other online services are available and you are kindly invited to check our list of Web-survey solutions. Please note that a free demo account can be obtained from Websurveyor at : http://www.websurveyor.com/quick_intro.asp

	1. Websurveyor comes with a free downloadable PC-desktop software. Firstly, this survey generator will make a few survey background templates (.wsg) available to you. They can be directly edited with a standard html editor. You will then be able to customise the introduction message. All html codes are supported, which means that you may tailor each questionnaire to your needs, provided you have a bit of html knowledge of course. The questionnaire is ultimately coded in html and Websurveyor will allow you to change this code at all times. You will be able to reuse some of this code for instance if you want to duplicate an existing survey. This is only an option of course, but it's very useful because it puts you in charge of how your survey looks like. Anyway, you don't need to be an experienced programmer to use this software. All you have to do is type the text in an html editor like Dreamweaver or Netscape composer and copy/paste the html code
2. You may now add your questions. In order to do that, you will have to pick from a list in the library provided by Websurveyor. This library may be updated with your own items. You may even gather inspiration from somebody else's questionnaire like this one (faxfacile.wsb). This functionality is particularly useful if you want to design a survey on a particular workstation and import it on another. You may then use a similar template on different products/services in order to compare results. (Zipped file for quicker download)
	3. Edit your questions and change the order of appearance of these questions depending on your pre-test. Also refer to Websurveyor's online advice regarding biases surrounding surveys
4. Once you are happy with the shape and contents of your questionnaire you may publish it. Above all, you might have to build a distribution list in order to send e-mail notifications to the interviewees you have already identified. The latter will be tracked by their e-mail address in the survey so that you will be able to tell which ones have already responded and which ones need to be reminded that they still have to. Duplicates will be easily eliminated either trough their IP address or e-mail address. At last, this tool will enable you to send the survey via e-mail so that your respondents will answer from within their e-mail software directly, without having to browse your pages
	5. The launch of your survey may now take place. You will have the opportunity either to launch a new campaign or to overwrite an existing one. IP or e-mail de-duplication is available. Sometimes, modem or dhcp lan users might still be able to respond twice if they have reconnected and a different IP address has been served to them. Websurveyor will let you edit these answers one by one in order to eliminate unwanted duplicates
6. With stage 6, an update of your PC results database will be performed by depressing the update button. All results (deduplicated according to your options) will then be downloaded and the analysis will now be possible
	7. The survey analysis is entirely available through a variety of 5 different graphic charts
8. Here comes the time for publishing the results on the corporate Intranet or even on the public Internet if you wish to use them for communicating with third party. Various versions of the results can be frozen and kept at intervals. Results are shown in fully compatible Internet format. Pie and bar charts can also be inserted in a powerpoint presentation (or even better : imported with Adobe's Acrobat writer which will rebuild the links)
9. In case you find this analysis is not sufficient, you may contact individually each respondent when they have voiced claims or requests. An Excel export function is also available for users who want to display all comments in tabular format. Do not overlook your respondents' comments as they will expect a response even though this is a questionnaire and not a forum. This is due to the high level of expectancy regarding interactivity on the Web
10. Raw results editing is also available. You may find it useful to eliminate a duplicate response which has gone through the net of your IP/e-mail filters. This may also prove worthy to blend freeform comments into homogeneous responses that can improve the readability of your results charts.

Final result on faxfacile.com

Some Online Web survey turnkey Solutions and contact details

SPSS (contact) : The off-line leader is also present on the Web
Motivaction (contact) : Regular panel of the French Internet scene. Offer includes studies aiming at facilitating Website design/creation. (European network)
Opinion Way (contact) : Opinion Way is very 'dot-com' centered. Their aim is to produce cheaper and faster Internet surveys
2team (contact) : 2team gathers a panel of 5000 highly qualified Internet surfers. (B2C surveys). User-interface quality surveys are covered
Multiscope (contact) : Dutch/Belgian survey team. Prices based on number of respondents
E-questionnaire.com : (contact) French Websurvey agency. Includes hosting. English version available
Sphinxonline.com : (contact) Very sophisticated solution with a powerful analysis online system . Free trial available here.

- Back to part I
- Back to part II

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