Introduction

To help analyse the recent Twitter problems with Eastlink, we ran a survey using Survey Monkey.    The resulting visits to the survey showed that there was a lot of interest from twitter followers in taking part in online surveys.

The next logical step was to look at integrating a survey into the Scotia Systems site.

As the Scotia Systems blog is running on WordPress, a quick Google search showed up SurveyGizmo as a likely candidate

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The first hurdle however was downloading the WordPress plug-in as the file available from the website appeared corrupt.   We contacted SurveyGizmo via Twitter and this was quickly resolved with a new plug-in sent via email.    @SurveyGizmo are quite active on Twitter and are quick to respond.   Way to go for support FTW!   

It’s a miserable rainy Sunday afternoon outside so I thought I’d have a go at integrating SurveyGizmo into our site.

Impressions of SurveyGizmo

SurveyGizmo is an exceptional tool in terms of customization, integration and features.  As mentioned above, most of the features are available across all account levels, with only the number of responses per month restricted.   

For seamlessly integrating a survey within a website I can’t find any other product close to SurveyGizmo – especially at the price (free)!

The array of available questions, formatting and reporting should cover all your online survey requirements.

WordPress Installation Overview

Here’s a quick overview of the steps needed to integrate SurveyGizmo with your own website:

Step 1 – Create An Account

There are several levels of accounts with SurveyGizmo – ranging from Free, to Enterprise.

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Surprisingly – the free account has a lot of the features of the higher end enterprise model, with only a restriction on the number of responses per month (250).

Here’s a breakdown of the features by account type.

Step 2 – Request API key

To connect to the SurveyGizmo API you’ll need to request an API key which is used when you install the plug-in in your WordPress installation.   This is easily done by going into your newly created account and clicking on the API tab.

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Step 3 – Install Plug-in

Once you have the plug-in downloaded – install it as you would any other WordPress plug-in.   This will add a SurveyGizmo option to your Dashboard where you can now go and add the API key you obtained in step 2.

Step 4 – Create The Survey

Now you’re ready to create a survey, it really is a simple drag and drop process.     The online wizard takes you through adding different question types and possible answers.

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It only takes a moment to generate a complete survey with many different question types available.

Step 5 – Customize The Look

I have to say that once I got to the point of trying to customise the survey – I was blown away by just how far you can modify the themes to match your website.    The online wizard provides all the CSS tuning you should need to make the survey fit right in with your website design.   

You can see at the end of this tutorial just how well the finished result matches the style of the Scotia Systems website.

Step 6 – Embed HTML and Publish

Once you’re survey is complete – you come to the publishing stage.    At this point, SuveyGizmo gives you five (six for paid accounts) ways of publishing your survey.

1) Web Link
2) Javascript Embed
3) Static HTML Embed
4) iFrame Embed
6) MailChimp Campaign
6) Email Campaign (Paid versions)

We’ve used the Javascript Embed on Scotia Systems and it works perfectly.    Simply embed the provided code into your HTML formatted blog post and you’re done!

Step 7 – Analyse The Results

The first statistics to greet you when you view your dashboard is a report on the surveys you have running and a geographical breakdown of responses.

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From here you can then drill down into individual surveys and questions, with automatic formatting into pie-charts or bar-graphs.    You also have the capability export to CSV/Excel for further processing.

Summary

Quite simple this one!   If you want to integrate a fully featured online survey into your existing website – SurveyGizmo is the way to go.

Simple, fully featured, cost effective and easy to integrate.