Survey Creator

Create free online surveys with powerful, cost effective and easy to use software packed full of advanced features.

Free forever. No credit card required.

User-friendly survey software with advanced features

Whatever your reason for creating a survey, SmartSurvey is focused on delivering powerful features for creating, distributing and analysing online surveys. Try a survey creator that is simple to use and gets the answers you need.

Create

Use advanced design features to create and customise online surveys.

Collect

Deliver surveys across multiple platforms to engage with users anywhere.

Analyse

Perform in-depth data analysis to reveal real actionable insights.

Create a survey

Key features for survey creation

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Theme surveys to match brand guidelines

Bring your brand to life by customising the background, layout, images, logo, fonts, final re-direct page and even the URL of your surveys or web forms. You can also personalise your survey by using terminal pages to create Thank You pages with a bespoke call to action.

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Send surveys across multiple channels

Distribute your survey by email or SMS invitation, embed it on any page of your website or share it on social media. Being able to reach your audience at the time and place they are most likely to respond helps you achieve increased response rates and improved customer engagement.

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Design surveys to provide useful answers

Powerful question types such as Net Promoter Score® will identify promoters and detractors, helping you to define faults, issues or difficulties and, in turn, achieve long-term improvement and growth.

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Collect real-time data and act upon the results

You can filter results by a wide selection of segments and export reports on a daily, weekly or monthly basis to send to email addresses of your choice. You can also give others access by sending them a password-protected link so that you can share the results for further analysis.

Browse our Full Feature List

Frequently Asked Questions

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How do I create a survey?

To create a survey, you need to establish your goals and the audience you are targeting, create a list of questions that will provide relevant responses and then organise the distribution of the survey to your target audience.

There are three different ways to start making surveys:

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How do I score my survey questions?

Survey scoring allows you to set a numerical value for each answer and summarise the mean values of multiple responses. For example, when measuring satisfaction you can calculate the overall negative or positive ratings across the individual response as well as for all responses to that survey.

See the help guide: Scoring survey questions

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How can I send a survey?

There are several different ways you can distribute your survey to respondents. Including embeding on a website, bulk email, sms messages and in person via offline mode. Choosing the method of distribution is important, as audience response rates can vary considerably depending on the how and when they first encounter the survey.

See the help guide: Ways to send your survey

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How do I make a survey anonymous?

Surveys can be set to be anonymised within the interface. This will mean that the IP address (and email address, for surveys distributed via email) of the respondent will not be recorded. Reassuring your respondents their answers are anonymous when dealing the sensitive information can greatly improve response rates.

See the help guide: How to make your survey responses anonymous

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How do I use skip logic?

Adding skip Logic (sometimes referred to as “branching”) to survey questions allows you to take your respondents through a certain path, depending on the answers they give to a previous question. For example, you might want to ask the respondent if they own a car. If they answer ‘yes’, you could ask what type of car. If they answer ‘no’, you could skip to the next set of questions.

See the help guide: Adding skip logic to your survey

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What security measures are in place?

Access control: Respondents’ access to surveys can be controlled by password and username protection. This feature ensures only a certain group of individuals chosen by you, the Administrator, are able to take the survey.

Firewall: Our firewall is set up as a separate machine that acts as a gateway for access to all other servers in our system. This firewall is designed to prevent hackers from entering the system and searching files and information. The firewall acts as a barrier so that we only have a single point of entry to our system, which is through the web browser. All of our internal databases and applications are shielded from any access outside the firewall.

McAfee Secure: SmartSurvey is tested and certified daily to pass the McAfee Secure Security Scan. To help address concerns about hacker access to confidential data, the “live” McAfee Secure mark appears only when a website meets the McAfee Secure standards.

Data encryption: During transit from client to server, data is encrypted with TLS. We use Microsoft SQL Server Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) to encrypt data at rest using AES encryption algorithm.

How to create a survey

An online survey is an effective and economical tool for getting valuable inputs, feedback and insights that can help shape the direction of your business. How well a survey is designed and how much participation it gets decides the quality of the information that it provides. Knowing how to successfully create an online survey is, therefore, an essential requirement. Here are some tips that will help with making effective and useful surveys.

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Be clear about your objectives

Every survey is designed to solve a problem or answer a question. Here are some examples:

Why are sales declining or why are we not getting repeat orders?

Why is the feedback about our customer support unsatisfactory?

What is required to improve sales in a particular product range?

Having a clear objective will help you ask questions that will give you the answers or help you solve a problem. Without defined survey objectives, you are probably shooting in the dark.

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Define the target audience

Once the objective is defined, it becomes much easier to target the right audience. Your target, for example, could be the people who have bought a particular product or used a service recently.

It could be the people meeting certain demographic criteria, who are likely to use a particular product or service. It could also be your entire customer base.

The target audience is the group of people whose inputs are likely to answer the question or problem in the objective.

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Keep it short: ask only the right questions

Answering surveys is not something that all people love to do. The shorter the survey, the higher the chances that more people will complete it. The quality of the answers will also be better in shorter surveys.

It is important to focus on the core information that you need. If you want to include some peripheral questions, try to keep it to a minimum and towards the end. Skip questions that have been made irrelevant by previous answers. Asking irrelevant questions just makes your survey longer and irritates the respondents.

Avoid asking too many questions for which the user will have to type in answers. Questions where the users can select one or more answers are the best. Result of surveys that ask too many open-ended questions are generally more difficult to evaluate.

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Include validator questions for long surveys

It is unfortunate that some respondents randomly click the answers to get through the survey quickly. This is especially true for long surveys that offer an incentive to complete them. It is even more unfortunate if we allow those answers to distort our results.

Validator questions help weed out such respondents. These questions have only one correct answer which anyone who has read the question will be able to answer. Example: For this question, please select option C as the answer.

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Include the right information before the survey

Keep things user-friendly. A short introduction and an estimate of how long the survey will take is nice to have upfront. You can also explain how the results will be used. If you are collecting some personal information, it is better if you mention how the respondent’s privacy will be protected.

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Make an attractive and persuasive invitation

The quality of the invitation to a survey plays a great role in the response it elicits. Explain why you are conducting the survey and how it will eventually benefit the respondent.

You can also include the amount of time it might take. Try to personalise the invitation by addressing the respondents by their names rather than using general terms.

It is best to reward the respondents for their time by offering an incentive like a discount coupon. This is especially important if the survey takes more than a couple of minutes to complete.

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Give a gentle reminder

Just a few days before the survey is going to close, give a gentle reminder so that people who put it off for later will be alerted about it once again.

If you know how to create a successful online survey, you will be able to use this valuable tool effectively. You will be able to get answers to questions or get valuable insights that will help you solve problems or give a new direction to your organization.

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