How to Create a Survey for a Website

If you own and operate a website, interacting with your visitors is imperative to creating the best user experience. By interacting with them, you can get a better understanding of who they are and what they hope to get from your site. One of the fastest, easiest ways to do this is by putting a user survey on your website. There are plenty of sites that will help you build free surveys, and provide you with the code to put the survey on your site. Here are some helpful guidelines for creating a survey using the site PollDaddy.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

1. Go to the PollDaddy website. Register for your new free user account. Your free PollDaddy account will allow you to create an unlimited number of surveys each month, with a maximum of 10 questions per survey. See the Resources section for a link.

2. Click on the link in the right column of the PollDaddy website, which will help you create your first survey. This will open up a new window, in which you'll create the survey for your readers.

3. Choose a name for your survey. This title is internal, and will be seen and used by you. Your readers will not see this title. Choose something that will be helpful and meaningful to you. For instance, if you'll be creating a survey each month, you might want to incorporate the month and year into the survey title.

4. Create a survey title. This is what will be seen by your readers. Choose something that will communicate the subject of the survey.

5. Choose a start message. By default, all of PollDaddy's surveys have a start message that says, "Welcome to our survey. Please click on the button below to begin." You can click the box indicating that you prefer to create your own start message. This will open up the start message field, allowing you to enter your own words.

6. Choose a finish message. This is the message that will appear when your reader has finished taking the survey. By default, PollDaddy closes all surveys with a message saying, "Thank you for completing this survey." You can change this by deleting those words and entering your own.

7. Scroll down to the bottom and choose a style for your survey. PollDaddy offers six different styles, in various shades of white, gray, blue and black. Choose one that best fits with the theme of your website. After choosing your style, click "Save and Continue."

8. Create your survey with the simple drag and drop interface. In the left hand column, there are a number of fields you can choose to include in your survey. Single line text, for instance, allows you to enter a single line question, and provides a field for your user to answer with their own words. On the other hand, multiple choice allows you to ask your question, and allows the user to answer only with options that you provide. When you are satisfied with the look of your survey, scroll back to the top and click "Save and Continue."

9. You will then be given a snippet of html code to use as you wish. You can either email this survey link to your users or embed it within your website. To embed this within your site, you would use the html code as follows: <a href="http://www.polldaddy.com/s/E358460626292ED0/">Click here to take our survey<a>.

10. Visit PollDaddy to read your user's responses.

Resources

• PollDaddy.com