Internet Survey Software Review Criteria
There are a lot of excellent internet web interviewing packages out there. Since it is unlikely that I will personally have time to review, compare and contrast every one of them, I’ve compiled some of the criteria I consider when evaluating internet survey software systems including questions I ask about basic capabilities, advanced survey related capabilities, design/development features, user experience related elements, response management capabilities, reporting capabilities, pricing, system requirements and available support and training. This list of questions is still growing and I will add to it as appropriate.
Basic Capabilities
- Does it offer all of the basic question types?
- Single selection (choose one — radio button, drop-down listbox)
- Multiple selection (choose many — check box, listbox)
- "Other: Specify" box for choose one, choose many
- Single checkbox (check if true)
- Rank order
- Multiple question tables
- Scale matrix (rating questions)
- Fill in the blank (text, number, date)
- Essay questions
- Does it offer any special/unique question types?
- Ranking questions?
- Clickable image questions
- Does it offer response validation?
- Does it offer integrated spell-check?
Advanced Survey Capabilities
- Does it support branching?
- Does it support dynamic branching? (same page hiding of responses)
- Does it support piping to questions?
- Does it support piping to responses?
- Can you pre-populate data?
- Is there a software development kit?
- Does it allow you to include you own question-based help?
- Does it allow you to randomize the order of questions in a matrix?
- Does it allow you to randomize the order of answers?
Design/Development
- How easy is it to create a survey?
- How long does it take?
- Can you import surveys from other sources like text files or word documents?
- Can you save and reuse design templates?
- To what degree can you include images?
- Will it allow multiple questions per page?
- Will it allow multiple pages?
- Can you change the font face, font size, color etc of questions & answers?
- Does the designer control how questions are broken up from page to page?
- Does it come with pre-written survey templates for specific situations?
- Does it come with pre-designed survey shells/styles?
- Does it offer a test/debug mode for surveys?
Advanced Design/Development
- Can you embed audio, video and Flash?
- Will it maintain a question library?
- Will it maintain a scale library?
User Experience (Look and Feel)
- Can respondents save or print their responses?
- Can users go back to earlier responses?
- Is there a progress indicator?
- Can surveys be saved and finished later?
Response Management
- Can you limit the start/date periods of the survey?
- Can you limit the total number of responses for each survey?
- Can you change/republish surveys?
- Will it send out e-mail invitations? HTML and/or text?
- How are respondents added to the system?
- Does it offer mail-merge functionality?
- Will it let you re-send out invitation to people who haven’t answered yet?
- What kind of respondent authentication is there?
- Can you edit/delete individual responses?
- Can you edit/delete multiple responses by criteria?
- Can the system ensure each respondent only answers once?
- Will the survey save (and report) on partial responses?
Reporting Capabilities
- Does it offer web/based reporting and analysis?
- Will it generate cross-tabs?
- Will it generate charts and graphs?
- To what degree can the reports be customized?
- Can you publish reports directly to the web?
- Will it re-publish report results at scheduled intervals?
- Can you filter the built-in reports by criteria of your choosing?
- Can you filter the reports by collection date range?
- Can you access the data directly from Microsoft Excel?
- In what formats can you export the data?
Account Management
- Can multiple users share the system/account?
- Can individuals have their own accounts? Is it possible to share data?
- Is it possible to require surveys to be approved before they are deployed?
- Can the survey management interface be re-branded?
Pricing/Cost
- How much does it cost (100 responses, 50,000 responses)?
- What add-ons are available?
- What is the annual maintenance cost?
- What does training cost?
- What kind of payment do they accept? Purchase orders?
System Requirements/Security
- What kind of hardware is needed for the software to run effectively?
- What operating system does the program run on?
- How much bandwidth is required?
- How many respondents can take the survey simultaneously?
- Are survey session encrypted (SSL)?
- Is collected survey data encrypted?
- How often is the data backed up?
Support/Help/Training
- What kind of support is available?
- Does it offer some kind of tutorial or learning center?
- Will they develop the surveys for you?
- What kind of training do they provide?
- What kind of custom development options are available?
Vendor Selection
- Where is the company based?
- How long have they been in business?
- Who are some of their other clients?
- Is there a demo of the software available?
- Do they have active samples you can look at?
- Will they do a live demo?
Related Categories & Tags
Evaluation Criteria, Internet Survey Software Tags: Evaluation Criteria, Internet Survey Software
