Top 7 Most Helpful Online Customer Survey Resources

One of the key factors in a successful business is to know what your customers or clients are thinking - about your business, your products, your services. As a business owner, you'll get feedback from your current customers just in the course of day-to-day business. But the results can be skewed by the interaction itself, and so most business owners find it useful to allow their customers to answer questions anonymously. And that's where surveys come in.

Some businesses hire market research firms to survey their customers or target customers. For new or smaller businesses, this can be an expensive proposition, and it's helpful to have a set of resources in your tool box that offer the option of conducting your own surveys. Here are some great online resources you can use for surveys.

They range from the simplest polls which you can create and place on your web site to much more elaborate options. Many of them allow the survey respondents to see the results from themselves and others as soon as they complete the survey. Some of these companies offer a set of services for free as well as more powerful paid services; others offer free 30-day trials of their most robust services. Some are geared towards smaller businesses, other towards large enterprises with thousands of employees. There's also a wide range of continuum between letting you design and add your own surveys to your web site, versus having them create a survey, find your target market, query them, and report back the results.

1. SurveyMonkey - If you have a large mailing list or want
   to send a lot of surveys, the best deal here is the
   professional subscription. For $19.95 month, you can send an
   unlimited number of surveys and receive up to 1000 responses
   per month.
   
   
2. Zoomerang - I love their slogan, "Easiest way to ask,
   fastest way to know." Offers a basic product (free) plus
   paid packages geared to education, non-profit, and a
   professional version, which can send surveys in several
   languages, and has no limit on the number of responses you
   can receive.
   
   
3. SnapPoll - Simple site which offers you an easy way to
   put a one-question survey on your web site and receive
   results. Requires no sign-up, allows you to customize colors
   for the form, and prevent multiple "votes" from the same
   person. Free - supported by what they call "non-obtrusive
   advertising."
   
   
4. PHP Form Generator - This is a free survey generator that
   is written as open source code. You can choose as many
   questions as you'd like - in any format - check, text,
   drop-downs, etc.) You do have to create your own stats, but
   it's a fairly simple procedure for small surveys.
   
   
5. OneMinutePoll - Software - available at a yearly
   subscription price - that teaches you how to write surveys
   correctly to find out what your customers want, so you can
   provide it to them! Software automates your polls, generates
   code for your web page, and allows you to see results in
   real-time.
   
   
6. Advanced Survey - Free and paid services that offer both
   web page surveys and email surveys (where you invite
   participants - via email - to take a survey). You can ask
   multiple questions in one survey, and can ask yes/no
   questions, open-ended text questions, customizable number
   scales (Pick a number from 1 to 10 with 10 being best, for
   example), and multiple choice.
   
   
7. Question Pro - Very sophisticated system for surveying
   customers. Has predesigned templates for common surveys:
   Customer Satisfaction, New Product/Concept Testing, Product
   Surveys, Conference Feedback, and more. These surveys can
   also be designed with "branching," where the answer to one
   question is used in a subsequent question. No free options
   here, but there is a 30-day free trial.

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