SurveyGizmo Blog
Disqualification Pages using Browser Redirect
January 5 2009 by Mario LurigSurveyGizmo affords multiple ways to do logic when building your survey, and disqualifying respondents is no exception. There are two primary methods for disqualifying a respondent, depending on the goal:
Advanced Page Jumping & Logic - Setup at the bottom of each page with a disqualification question, choose the ‘Disqualify Respondent’ option and provide a message [...]
Ed Haltemann: A Sampling Attitude
January 2 2009 by Ed Halteman - A SurveyGizmo Survey Expert“Attitude is everything” has significance for more than just football or other sports! Cultivating a sampling attitude can help you “win” improvements to your survey process.
We have already seen the power of sampling in predicting election results in my prior post on election sampling and intuition tells us that sampling should save time and money. [...]
Ask Tech Support: Paste from Word
December 31 2008 by Mario LurigScenario #1:
You created your survey, tested it in both Firefox and Internet Explorer web browsers, and found a strange occurrence. When viewing a particular page in Firefox, it displays completely and works perfectly. However, when looking at it in Internet Explorer, it seems to be ‘cut-off’ and not displayed properly.
Scenario #2:
Some of your survey [...]
Save On Your 2008 Taxes!
December 23 2008 by Cheri WalshDid you know you can reduce your 2008 tax bill this year by squeezing in some business expenses you’ll need next year? If you’ll be surveying next year, purchase or extend your annual subscription by December 31st.
In addition, save an additional 10% on SurveyGizmo with a prepaid Annual Account. Instead of a monthly subscription, you [...]
New survey features: New Style Ranking Question
December 17 2008 by Cheri WalshNew survey features added to SurveyGizmo this week
Table based ranking question. There are now two styles for ranking questions. This new style has been requested by many customers. It is now accessible to screen readers and keyboard navigation.
Bug fix. Survey editor page navigation bug fixed for IE6.
“None of the above” text mutual exclusivity in [...]
Ask Tech Support: Ranking Questions
December 1 2008 by Mario LurigRanking questions provide the order of preference of select items from the survey respondent. Manipulating the Ranking questions is easy using the arrows to the right of each option, but there are a few considerations that are important to note about the behaviour of Ranking questions:
If no options are changed/moved, the question is considered unanswered [...]
Bill Johnston: Exploring Quantitative Data
November 21 2008 by Brittany HeidtkeSo you’ve completed your survey and now you wonder what you can learn from your data.
That’s easy, isn’t it? Three months ago, your survey began with a set of questions. Now you’ve got your data. Look up the answers!! Oh - and don’t forget the PowerPoint slides. Make them pretty.
But there must be more to [...]
Ask Tech Support: Email Invitation Reminders
November 20 2008 by Mario LurigFor Pro and Enterprise level accounts, the email invitation system has the ability to send out Reminder and Thank You emails to the contacts on the email invitation list. Within these, you have a few default options that help determine which respondents on your contact list will receive these emails. First and foremost, let’s discuss [...]
Building Accessible Forms: Conference & Slides
November 13 2008 by Brittany HeidtkeThe Accessing Higher Ground Conference has officially started, and Scott McDaniel (SurveyGizmo’s CEO) will be speaking later on today about Accessible Online Forms. The conference is specially tailored for those in the Higher Education community and focuses on how to create a more accessible environment for those who have physical, sensory, and learning disabilities. [...]
Ask Tech Support: None of the Above
November 12 2008 by Mario LurigNothing says tricky like an undocumented hidden feature. As some have found, there is an additional feature for checkbox questions in SurveyGizmo called ‘None of the Above’. This has been mentioned in our forums since this original post. Since this is an undocumented feature, there are some assumptions and confusion about its [...]
Ed Halteman: Election Day: A Big Day for Sampling
November 11 2008 by Ed Halteman - A SurveyGizmo Survey ExpertElection season is the time for lots of polls, which makes it a good time to highlight what they can teach us about our surveys! Basically a poll is just a type of survey and so the principles that make polling powerful apply to surveys.
Can the results of polls be trusted? I just read an [...]
New Advanced Rule Writing Tutorial
November 10 2008 by Brittany HeidtkeHave you ever wondered how to write one of our advanced show/when or show/hide rules? Or have you needed to make a rule based off of the answers to two or more questions and you weren’t sure how? Well, you’re in luck! We now have a full tutorial on advanced rule writing that will [...]
SurveyGizmo CEO Speaking at 11th Annual Accessing Higher Ground Conference
November 7 2008 by Brittany HeidtkeSurveyGizmo CEO, Scott McDaniel, has the honor of speaking at the 11th Annual, Accessing Higher Ground Conference on Thursday, November 13, 2008.
The conference is all about creating an accessible environment for those who may have physical, sensory, or learning disabilities in an Higher Education setting. It is hosted by the University of Colorado- Boulder and [...]
Audio Review of Online Survey Tools
November 6 2008 by Cheri WalshDr. Glen Livingston is a psychiatrist turned market researcher who teaches a highly effective method of market research using surveys to pre-test niche markets for profitability.
One of his students recently did some research looking for online survey tools that best meet the needs of those who use the Livingston Method of market research.
The three most [...]
Ask Tech Support: Javascript Embedded Surveys
November 3 2008 by Mario LurigThe ability to embed a survey into a webpage using a simple cut and paste of JavaScript code provided by SurveyGizmo is one of the favorite features of SurveyGizmo users. However, sometimes there is a bit of a confusion on the way the JavaScript embed will interact with your visitors. So for this Ask [...]
SurveyGizmo CEO to Speak at University of Colorado
October 31 2008 by Brittany HeidtkeSurveyGizmo’s CEO, Scott McDaniel, has been asked to speak at University of Colorado’s Leeds School of Business MBA Marketing Club next week.
He has been asked to speak on a wide variety of topics including his real life success in becoming an entrepreneur, marketer, and developer. If you’re part of CU’s Leeds School of Business MBA [...]
Best Practices in Survey Design - Webinar Slides
October 30 2008 by Scott McDanielWe had a great turn out and lots of excellent discussion at last week’s Best Practices in Survey Design webinar. Bill Johnston of JWB Research co-hosted it with me. Many people asked if they could have a copy of the slides so here they are for downloading in PDF format.
We hope you find these [...]
SurveyGizmo Staff Carpool - Going Green
October 24 2008 by Mario LurigAt SurveyGizmo we value the environment (heck- our offices are based in Boulder, CO) and that’s why a few of us have gotten together and started carpooling.
Yes, we do realize that we could single-handedly take out a good portion of SurveyGizmo if we were to get into an accident (knock on wood), but we have [...]
Survey Expert Bill Johnston Would Like Your Input
October 20 2008 by Brittany HeidtkeAs you may have noticed, we have added Bill Johnston to our survey expert team. Right now he is compiling a list of topics he wants to cover in the coming months and would really appreciate your input. Please fill out the following survey so we can make sure to address the topics that [...]
Ask Tech Support: ‘Other’ Checkboxes and Radio Buttons
October 15 2008 by Mario LurigWith this post we start a new series called Ask Tech Support, where we go over a question or topic that has come up recently while helping our customers. There is a collective consciousness with SurveyGizmo customers, because a single question seems to arrive all at once from multiple customers, and this becomes perfect content [...]
Political Polling & Small Sample Sizes
October 14 2008 by Bill Johnston- A SurveyGizmo Survey ExpertA type of survey in which there is much interest this month is the political poll. Questions I hear a lot are, “Can the polls be trusted?” and “How can they get away with polling so few people?”
We can increase our understanding of polls by answering two questions:
How can polls [...]
SurveyGizmo and Rails Rumble
October 13 2008 by Brittany HeidtkeOne of our newest SurveyGizmo users, Pauli Price, recently came to us because she wanted to use our survey API for the Rails Rumble 2008 contest that she is involved in.
Pauli gave us a quick run-down interview of the contest as well as how her group is integrating SurveyGizmo into their, hopefully award-winning, project.
It’s always [...]
Feature Requests- Final Call!
October 10 2008 by Brittany HeidtkeAs some of you may or may not have heard, our developers have been hard at work creating a new and improved version of SurveyGizmo.
Right now we’re in the Seventh Inning stretch and want to know if there are any last-minute feature requests you’d like to sneak into Version 2.0. We’ve already collected a ton [...]
SurveyGizmo Scales Up to Keep Pace with Thousands of New Customers
October 9 2008 by Christian VanekThousands of new customers are flocking to SurveyGizmo every month and some of them are really big. Really, really big.
That’s fantastic and we are all very happy. Though, in order to handle the increased traffic from all the new users we decided to make some changes. Some big changes actually…
Last [...]
New Survey Features: Quiz Scores, Piping, Exporting Large Response Sets and Change Password
October 8 2008 by Cheri WalshNew survey features added to SurveyGizmo this week.
Quiz scores can now be reported on, even if on the Thank You page.
New Feature. Can now pipe from a single answer question (e.g.radio button, dropdown) to another question.
Speed of exporting large response sets (50,000+) to csv improved.
Non administrators now have the ability to change their own passwords [...]
SurveyGizmo Nominated as a Top Marketing Technology Company
October 8 2008 by Brittany HeidtkeWe have some exciting news!
SurveyGizmo has been nominated as one of Upshot Institute’s top 50 marketing technology companies! We have been put there along side a few other online survey companies as well as some other really cool up and coming companies focused on marketing tools and technology.
Here is a little blurb from the Upshot [...]
New Duplicate Response Protection Tutorial
October 2 2008 by Brittany HeidtkeMario has been hard at work trying to keep up with the demand for new tutorials, and he has recently rolled out a new one on Duplicate Response Protection, what it is and how to use it. He hits on the three options we now have- Cookie based protection, IP based protection, plus our newest [...]
Email Invite Critique: Boost Response Rates with Email Marketing Know-How
October 1 2008 by Christian VanekYesterday, we ran across a very interesting and valuable blog for anyone conducting surveys with email invitations.
It was written by Alex Leverington, a consumer aghast at the bad email practices he’s found recently in several survey invitations. His blog post provides an insight into the mind of the folks receiving your emails and answering [...]
How to Create a Survey with Informed Consent
September 29 2008 by Brittany HeidtkeWe know that getting the consent of survey participants to take a survey can be vital to some of our customers, so we thought we would share a few quick tricks on how to do this.
Easy Option #1
On the first page of your survey, include only one question asking for your survey taker’s consent. For [...]
Ed Halteman: Value Added Surveys
September 25 2008 by Ed Halteman - A SurveyGizmo Survey ExpertIt’s been awhile and 2008 has been a busy year. It has also been a year where people have been looking to get more out of their surveys. I have had a steady stream of people coming to me with questions like:
I have all this data, but I’m not sure what it is telling me?
How [...]
New Survey Features: Custom Scripting API Functions, SPSS Exports and Duplicate Vote Protection
September 24 2008 by Cheri WalshNew survey features added to SurveyGizmo this week.
Bug fix on Report exports. Table of dropdowns improved in the Excel, Word and PDF export.
Validation added to SPSS export wizard for variable names.
Greek characters now export to SPSS correctly.
Improved ranking question export.
Custom scripting API functions added. sgapiGetResponseBySGUID. sgapiTrimStr (improved to trim spaces on right [...]
How to Restrict Access to Your Survey
September 22 2008 by Brittany HeidtkeEvery so often we are asked how to insure that only people invited to take a survey by email can access it. This can be helpful when you want to survey your list and don’t want people outside that list skewing your results.
Restricting access in this way can be done with one simple checkbox and [...]
How to Survey a Percentage of your Website Visitors
September 19 2008 by Brittany HeidtkeHere is a great tip for anyone that uses our embedded surveys in their website and wants to survey only a portion of their visitors.
Yesterday a customer asked how to use this feature and we thought it would make a great mini-tutorial. This customer wanted to survey a small percentage of this visitors, 10%, [...]
New Tutorial Series: URL Data Passing
September 15 2008 by Mario LurigWe get quite a few calls and emails asking how to pass tracking/pre-population data into SurveyGizmo through the survey link. So many calls in fact that we set out on an epic struggle to create three in-depth tutorials on the use of URL strings (a.k.a. query strings) and SurveyGizmo Links.
If you are not familiar [...]
Building Better Surveys - Effective Scales
September 12 2008 by Bill Johnston- A SurveyGizmo Survey ExpertA question I have been asked from time-to-time is, “How many choices should I give respondents when I’m asking them how much they agree or disagree with something?” – as in . . .
Which is correct? Does it matter?
Yes, it matters.
Use an odd-numbered scale and, if you expect your results to be fully distributed from [...]
Business Cards Are So 1990…
September 11 2008 by Brittany HeidtkeA Customer’s Kiosk Dilemma Easily Fixed With SurveyGizmo
A customer called in today and said she was setting up a laptop as a kiosk and wanted people to take a survey, but she needed to have a fresh survey to appear every time a new person came to the laptop and she could not figure out [...]
New Survey Features: Email Invitations Improved, New Search Features, Better Character Handling
September 10 2008 by Cheri WalshNew survey features added to SurveyGizmo this week.
New Feature: Reminders and Thank You’s are now copied when you copy an Email Invitation.
New Feature: You can now search abandoned and deleted responses.
New Feature: You can now search by IP or referrer URL.
Several bug fixes for SPSS
Bug fix. You can now copy an Email Invitation while [...]
Make SurveyGizmo 50x Faster–Use Firefox!
September 8 2008 by Cheri Walsh“Thank you, thank you, thank you!” wrote one of our customers after we recommended he use the Firefox browser for his survey work this week.
At over 200 pages and growing, his survey is one of the longest surveys ever created in SurveyGizmo.
Using Internet Explorer 6 on a 4-year-old computer, he had to wait more than 5 minutes-that’s [...]
TechSoup Compares Online Survey Tools
September 5 2008 by Brittany HeidtkeToday we stumbled upon a really cool comparison chart of survey providers that the folks over at TechSoup made up. The chart goes through various online survey providers’ features and benefits and is a pretty complete list (including SurveyGizmo, of course!). It looks like they held a webinar too (unfortunately we missed out on it, [...]
Database Improvements Made
September 3 2008 by Brittany Heidtke Update: We are now on a new and improved primary database cluster and everything is running smoothly.
In an effort to keep you informed, we’d like you to know our application server went down for 17 minutes and 30 seconds today, starting at approximately 5:30 EST. Within 60 seconds our development team was addressing the [...]
The tutorials just keep coming!
August 29 2008 by Mario LurigSomewhere between improving SurveyGizmo for everyone and assisting our customers, someone found the time to add a few more quick tips for the Look & Feel of your survey. They may not be big issues, and they definitely don’t effect everyone, but sometimes it’s the little things that make your survey that much cooler. So [...]
We’re hiring… again! Web Designer and PHP Engineer
August 27 2008 by Scott McDanielSurveyGizmo has open positions for a person who straddles web designer/developer, as well as a spot for another PHP Software Engineer. If you’re interested or know someone who might be please check out http://www.surveygizmo.com/jobs
Thanks!
Quick Tips for Survey Design
August 25 2008 by Brittany HeidtkeHave you ever wanted to get rid of the red asterisk on a required question? Or wanted to remove the bold question titles in your survey? Or have you ever wanted to make the page titles you create visible?
Well, we have been working very hard to bring you some much needed How-To Quick Tips. So [...]
New Survey Features: Survey Question Editor and SPSS Exports Improvements
August 21 2008 by Cheri WalshNew survey features added to SurveyGizmo this week.
Feature improvement. SurveyGizmo interface images improved.
Survey Question Editor. Design of survey Question Editor improved.
Survey Question Editor. Ability to change question types on the fly.
Major overhaul of SPSS export wizard: Ability to assign SPSS variable names. Ability to assign SPSS labels. Ability to change SPSS variable types during [...]
Check Out What Users are Doing with SurveyGizmo!
August 20 2008 by Brittany HeidtkeWe thought it would be fun to show some real life examples of the cool things our customers are doing with SurveyGizmo. Today we are going to feature user Majed Ghadhban’s Arabic survey and user Jeremy Feinstein and his very professional Excel-esque Employee Compensation Online Survey.
So what’s so cool about Majed’s survey? Well, he is [...]
SurveyGizmo on Startup Story Radio
August 19 2008 by Brittany HeidtkeCheck out SurveyGizmo Co-Founder, Scott McDaniel’s interview with Rob McNealy from “Startup Story Radio”. Scott talks about how to use SurveyGizmo as a cost effective marketing tool for entrepreneurs in all stages of the start-up process.
Rob McNealy, an entrepreneur enthusiast, hosts Startup Story Radio a daily small business and startup podcast. Rob interviews various start-ups [...]
New Survey Features: Reporting Upgrades and Feature Improvements
August 14 2008 by Cheri WalshNew survey features added to SurveyGizmo this week.
Bug fix. Bug in Report question numbering fixed.
Bug fix. No more erroneous security warnings in Reports.
Bug fix. Copying of Custom Matrix questions now works properly.
New feature. Ability to search Email Invite contacts.
Improvement. Greek characters now supported in csv exports.
Feature improvement. Improvements to survey Word export.
New feature. Can [...]
New Feature: Save and Continue Online Surveys
August 8 2008 by Christian VanekIt’s now easier to save and restart long online surveys. Today we launched a feature to all Pro and Enterprise users to add a Save and Continue link to their online surveys. We’ve been busy over here in Boulder and Cambridge testing and building the next version of SurveyGizmo (more on that later). While [...]
New Reporting Option, Time It Took to Answer Survey, Question Editor Improvements
August 8 2008 by Cheri WalshNew survey features added to SurveyGizmo this week.
New reporting option: You can now enable/disable the grouping of insignificant categories into an ‘other’ group for pie chart and bar charts
SPSS: Open text ‘number’ fields now import into SPSS as numbers
SPSS: Essay questions now export as a 3000 length character fields in SPSS
SPSS: Image [...]
Email Invitation Deliverability, Response Time, Cross-Tab Reporting
July 30 2008 by Christian VanekThis Week’s Service Updates: a short list this week as we concentrate on SurveyGizmo 2.0!
Improved Response Time ‘Partial’ and ‘In Progress’ survey responses are no longer delayed, you can quite literally watch someone progress through a survey from the your browse response screens.
Survey Email Invitation deliverability improved (even more) We have upgraded the transmission rate [...]
SalesForce Integration, Email Invitation Deliverability, Survey Printing, Custom Messages
July 23 2008 by Cheri WalshA Short List This Week While We Work on SurveyGizmo Version 2.0!
SalesForce integration. Long SalesForce actions now load faster and are easier to edit.
Survey Email Invitation deliverability improved. Changed configuration that will assist in getting email through some corporate and academic firewalls.
Better survey printing. A new and improved print style sheet for much better printing [...]
New Survey Features: SPSS Export, Internet Explorer Bugs Squashed, Survey Auto Close, SalesForce Integration
July 9 2008 by Cheri WalshNew survey features added to SurveyGizmo this week.
SPSS export Internet Explorer 7 bug fix
Internet Explorer 6 Javascript embedded survey bug fix
Better performance on PDF export. Better foreign character support and table handling.
Internet Explorer 6 bug fix. Security warning no longer irritates you when navigating survey editor.
Small bug fix in reporting. Improved [...]
Brittany Heidtke joins SurveyGizmo
July 8 2008 by Scott McDanielWe’re thrilled to announce that Brittany Heidtke is the new online marketing manager for SurveyGizmo. She’ll be a bit of a jack-of-all-trades here spreading the word about SurveyGizmo, improving SEO, running our campaigns, monitoring analytics, and some blogging too we hope.
She lives in a world of landing pages, long-tail keywords, A/B split testing, and [...]
Webinar at EASI: Making Surveys Accessible
July 7 2008 by Scott McDanielSurveyGizmo has been invited to speak about making surveys accessible and building accessible forms for EASI, Equal Access to Software and Information. EASI hosts weekly webinars on a variety of online accessibility topics. You can read more about their Accessibility Webinar schedule here or go directly to the sign-up for “Making Accessible Online Surveys”.
EASI’s [...]
Create a Mascot, Win a Pro Survey Account!
July 3 2008 by Mario LurigWe are holding a contest with a year Pro subscription to SurveyGizmo up for grabs. SurveyGizmo wants you to create a mascot for us with the Spore™ Creature Creator, and in return 1 winner will be chosen to receive a 1 year Pro account at no charge! The best part is that there is [...]
New Survey Features: Publishing Page Improved, Survey Links Optimized, Poll Charts Improved, Survey User Permissions Increased
July 2 2008 by Cheri WalshNew survey features added to SurveyGizmo this week.
New, easier to understand Publishing Page
New optimized survey links. Faster load times, better response times, more scaleability.
Poll charts. Better wrapping of labels on poll charts
Poll charts. Poll charts now support international characters
www.surveygizmo.com speed improvements loading overall site and survey support forums.
Survey User Permissions. Increased number [...]
SurveyGizmo Boulder Goes Green - Bike To Work Day
June 25 2008 by Scott McDaniel Today is the Denver region’s Bike to Work Day. Last year they had 20,000 participants!
Today, four of us from the Boulder SurveyGizmo made the trip into the office on two wheels. We do what we can at SurveyGizmo to be green and keep our carbon footprint as low as possible for a survey [...]
Picking a Random Contest or Survey Winner in SurveyGizmo
June 22 2008 by Scott McDanielI saw a great thread in our survey forum this morning and thought I’d share a couple ideas brought out by our users “Leibiniz” and “donna d.” Donna wanted an anonymous survey to collect data but with a free offer contest to increase the submission rate.
Obviously you need to keep the survey results anonymous, but [...]
Tops in Online Survey Accessibility
June 16 2008 by Derek ScruggsRecently were pleased to learn that Ohio State University recently conducted a study of accessibility in online survey tools. We pride ourselves on standards-compliant web design, and we have a strong focus on usability. OSU picked up on this:
The administrator interfaces in SurveyGizmo are a model of usability. Interfaces are clean, navigation elements are [...]
New Survey Features: Create Forms Easier, API, Accessibility
June 3 2008 by Brittany HeidtkeNew survey features added to SurveyGizmo this week.
Bug Fix: URL filtering now works again in all reports
Bug Fix: Continous Sum questions now properly use Min and Max values
New Feature:Create ‘Form’ button has been added to the dashboard to simplify the creation of web forms through SurveyGizmo
Misc Fixes: some long standing spelling errors have been fixed… [...]
New Survey Features: Better Survey Exports to PDF and Excel, Bulk Organizing of Surveys
May 30 2008 by Brittany HeidtkeNew survey features added to SurveyGizmo this week.
WordPress plugin updates. Survey WordPress plugin has been fixed with contributions from the WordPress community.
Better Browse Responses. Ability to choose which questions to display in columns on the Overview Page and Browse Responses page.
PDF improvement. Custom Matrix now appear correctly in PDF print documents
PDF improvement. Question [...]