ThemeGrill AuthorWant to know how to create a survey form in WordPress? Looks like you’ve landed on the right place.
Creating an online survey is a great way to learn more about the people who visit your website, read your blogs, or buy your services. And to do that, you’ll need WordPress survey plugins.
So, how do you use them to make an online survey? No doubt that’s the question that landed you here in the first place.
But before we jump into the how-to’s, here’s a brief introduction to survey forms.
What is a Survey Form? Why Create a Survey Form in WordPress?
A survey form is a type of form used to collect information about a particular demographic of people. This information is then evaluated to come to a conclusion which helps in providing more insight into the demographic being surveyed.
It’s a good idea to create a survey form in WordPress for your business as well. Let us explain why:
1. Quick and easy information gathering
Approaching every single client or visitor in person and interrogating them for feedback doesn’t really sound appealing. Online surveys and polls are much more time and cost-efficient alternatives.
You’ll be able to collect important data with just a simple survey form. And, how do you make sure these forms reach your target audience?
- Email your surveys to your email lists.
- Place them as pop-ups across your website.
- Embed the surveys into relevant blog posts.
- Share the survey form link on social media platforms.
2. Valuable Feedback
Survey forms help you receive valuable feedback from the survey respondents.
- What kind of blogs do they prefer?
- What do they think of your products?
With survey forms in WordPress, you can add a detailed questionnaire or simple polls to your website and get answers to the most important questions.
3. Actionable insights
As mentioned before, survey forms equip you with a clearer insight into your target demographic. This insight helps you grow and succeed in your venture.
Take customer satisfaction surveys for example. The data about happy and unhappy customers tell you what you’re doing right or wrong in your business. With this knowledge, you’ll be able to come up with ways to improve their customer experience.
4. Brand loyalty
You’re giving your audience a voice through surveys. So, when you listen to them, understand their needs, and implement them into your brand, you’re able to inspire stronger and more loyal relations.
How to Choose the Right Survey Tool for Your Site?
Now, recall how we said you need to use WordPress plugins to create a survey form in WordPress. Popular WordPress forms plugins like Everest Forms and WPForms are some best options.
However, they are not your only options. SaaS (Software as a Service) platforms like SurveyMonkey and TypeForm enable you to make online survey forms that you can export and embed into your WordPress site.
The drawback of using these free or paid survey creation sites is that you’ll have to store all survey data on third-party servers.
Yes, you may be able to send the files to your servers or disable the storage completely in some cases. But why go through that hassle when you could just make a survey right on your website?
That’s why creating a survey on WordPress is the best option available. And WordPress survey plugins are the best survey tools you have!
How to Create a Survey Form in WordPress? (Step-by-Step)
1. Choose the Best WordPress Survey Plugin
First of all, you should choose a great WordPress plugin for survey forms.
In WordPress, you’ll find tons of survey plugins that do the job. One of them is Everest Forms.
It’s a powerful WordPress form builder plugin with the capacity for designing online contact forms, surveys, polls, and quizzes. It offers a user-friendly form builder with plenty of incredible features.
We recommend you to use this plugin mainly for 3 reasons. First, it’s super simple to use this plugin. It’s a simple interface and also provides pre-built form templates to start with.
Second, it’ll fulfill all your form needs. With this one plugin, you can make unlimited forms, for contact, donation form, payment form, survey, and more.
Third, you’ll get excellent support from the makers of this plugin. Go to the support page on their official website, and browse through documentation, FAQs, then you’ll find most of your answers. If you need further help, you can always contact them.
Now, let’s go ahead and check out how to create online survey forms using Everest Forms plugin.
2. Download and install the Everest Forms plugin
First of all, log into your WordPress Dashboard. Go to Plugins and click on Add New.
On the Add New page, search for Everest Forms. When you find it, Install and Activate it.
That’s it! You successfully installed the Everest Forms free plugin.
3. Install the Survey, Polls, and Quiz addon
With the free Everest Forms, you’re ready to create simple contact forms. But, to create a survey form in WordPress, you’ll need the Survey, Polls, and Quiz addon. This is only available for premium users with the Plus plan and above.
So first, buy any paid plan among Plus, Professional, and Agency from here. Once you complete the purchase and create a new account, log in to this account. After which you’ll be taken to your Account Dashboard.
From the Downloads section, Download the Everest Forms Pro addon.
This is important because you need to enter the license key you received with your premium account. Without it, you won’t be able to proceed to the next steps.
Back in your WordPress Dashboard, Install and Activate the Pro addon using the same method as detailed above.
Note: You need to install and activate the free version of Everest Forms first as Everest Forms Pro cannot function without it.
On the Plugins page, you’ll see a message telling you to enter your license key. You can do so in the field below the Everest Forms Pro addon.
Repeat the download process for the Survey, Polls, and Quiz addon from your Everest Forms account Dashboard.
Then, Install and Activate it on your WordPress.
On the Plugins page, there are 3 new items now. The core Everest Forms plugin, the Everest Forms Pro addon, and the Survey, Poll, and Quiz addon.
With this, you’re fully equipped to create your first survey form in WordPress.
4. Create a New Survey Form
Now, go to Everest Forms and click on Add New.
There are multiple ready-made form templates for you to customize if you’re short on time. In this article, we’ll be teaching you how to create an online survey form from scratch.
Now, go ahead and give your first survey form a name and Continue.
This takes you to the Everest Forms form builder which looks like this:
Add Fields displays all the field types you can use to create forms while Field Options lets you customize all these fields.
As you scroll down the Fields panel, you’ll find 3 fields designed especially for survey forms: Rating, Likert, and Scale Rating.
- Rating: This field lets your audience rate a product or their experience by clicking on the star rating. The higher the number of stars they choose, the more satisfied they are.
- Likert: The Likert field is similar to a multiple-choice question where the choices are extreme, moderate, and neutral emotions towards something. So using this, you can easily assess your audience’s opinions towards your service.
- Scale Rating: This field is also a type of rating but with a numbered scale starting from 0 and extendable up to 100. Your audience chooses a number based on how happy they are with your service.
Besides them, you’re free to use any field you require like Multiple Choice and Range Slider.
So, let’s start building.
We’ll use the Rating field first as an example. Then, you can add the Likert and Scale Rating fields as you build your survey form.
The form building is a pretty simple process. You just drag and drop the field from the left panel into your form on the right.
If you want the whole column for a single field, hover over the row and click on the Edit button. You can select the layout of the row you prefer.
5. Customize your survey form
Now, we’ll walk you through the customization options for each of these 3 fields.
First, go to Field Options of the field you want to customize by clicking on said form field on the right. Here reside all the elements of the field you can customize.
i) Rating:
You can change the Label and Number of Icons for the Rating field. Usually, 5 stars are the norm. But you can add any number of stars as you please.
The Meta Key is a unique value automatically assigned to a field which is used to retrieve its data from the database. Keep it as it is.
Next, Advanced Options allows you to change the type of icon and its color. Moreover, you can Hide Label of the field and even add your own CSS Classes.
ii) Likert:
For this field, you’ll find plenty of options besides Label. You decide whether you want radio buttons, dropdown, or checkbox as the Input Type.
You can also add or reduce the questions in Rows and the answers in Columns.
In the Advanced Options, you get to Hide Label and add CSS Classes.
iii) Scale Rating:
The field options for Scale Rating include editing the Highest Rating Text and Lowest Rating Text. You can also set the Highest Rating Point and Lowest Rating Point to any number you please from 0 to 100.
Additionally, you get to Hide Label and add CSS Classes in the Advanced Options.
For all 3 fields, you can also make use of the Conditional Logic for a dynamic form that displays survey fields according to the user’s previous responses.
We’ll talk about the Survey and Quiz Options in the next step.
After you complete building your form and customizing it, press the Save button on the top left. You can also check the Preview to see how your survey form looks like.
6. Enable Survey Reporting for Your Form
After your online survey form is ready, it must be able to store the responses for reporting later. For this, go to Survey, Polls, and Quiz under form Settings. Then, check the Enable Survey Reporting option.
However, if you want to enable reporting for only certain fields of the form, there’s a way to do that as well.
Go to the Field Options of the field you want to disable reporting for. Click on the Survey and Quiz Options we came across before. The survey reporting is on by default. So, disable it by unchecking the box.
7. Configure Survey Form Settings
Let’s talk about the configuration of your survey form settings now.
From the General settings, you can change your form’s name, description, message, and customize the submit button
Moreover, it enables you to use anti-spam for your survey form. You can also disable storing data collected from your users who filled the form.
The next setting is Email from where you can turn on email alerts. This means you’ll receive notifications on the email address you’ve entered in To Address, every time a user submits the survey form.
Oh, and don’t forget to Save everything after you’re done.
8. Add the Survey Form to your WordPress Page
Your survey form template is now ready to be used on your WordPress website. To do this, navigate to the Pages or Posts section and open the file you want to include this form in.
Then, add a new Everest Forms block in the editor.
From the dropdown, select the survey form you just created.
After that, save the changes and click on Preview to see how it looks on your web page or post.
Finally, publish the finalized survey form on your website.
9. Generate Survey Reports
The whole purpose of making an online survey is to collect information and evaluate them. You should be able to do the same once people start filling up your survey form.
For that, go to Entries under Everest Forms. You’ll be able to view the complete reports of your survey form here.
You can either view the reports or each survey field separately or View All Summary.
You’ll see that for each field, the report displays the total number of responses. It also shows how many completed filling the form and how many dismissed it.
Besides that, there are graphical interpretations of data like bar graphs and pie charts for Rating and Scale Rating fields. On the right side, the summary of the reports is displayed.
Contrary to that, the Likert field reports present the result in percentage.
To generate reports for another survey, click on Survey Form at the top and choose the form from the dropdown.
Wrapping Up
That wraps up our step-by-step guide on how to create a survey form in WordPress. As you can see, making an online survey form is simple enough. Using a good plugin with features like drag and drop form building will make the process even more convenient for you.
Start a discussion, get feedback from users, work on criticisms, and grow your business. It’s all up to you from here on out. We hope this article will answer all your queries and help you create an amazing survey form.
Also, check out our articles on how to create a donation form and a multi-step form.
If you run into any problems, don’t hesitate to share in the comments below.
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