Social Surveys
POS:
very good interfaceNEG:
some templates are to 'busy'Today Im doing a review of the new Social Surveys software: As you can probably tell by the name of the software Social Surveys is a web based app that allows you to create surveys. You can then embed these surveys on your fan page, on your website, or in a pop up on your […]
Today Im doing a review of the new Social Surveys software:
As you can probably tell by the name of the software Social Surveys is a web based app that allows you to create surveys. You can then embed these surveys on your fan page, on your website, or in a pop up on your website.
Here is a real survey example that I made with this software (feel free to complete it to get the real gift Im giving away)
So why exactly would you want to create a survey in the first place? Well there are a number of reasons.
First if your a website owner getting feedback from your site visitors is invaluable. You need to ensure that your providing content that will not only get your existing traffic to keep coming back but that will also get others to want to visit your site. A survey will let you get feedback on if your site visitors are happy and how you can improve.
Second if you work with any kind of offline clients surveys are a service you can sell to them. A lot of chain restaurants for example will have a link to a survey on the back of your check or receipt. They normally give a coupon or freebie for anyone who completes the survey. The reason for this is two fold. First they want to know if the customer was happy with their experience at their establishment and second by giving a coupon it makes it more likely that the customer will come back and patronize them again.
Finally because you can set your survey up to require an email address to complete and to give a free gift away at the end your survey is in essence a squeeze page. But unlike a squeeze page you can segment your list based on the answers that people provide in the survey. This will allow you to create highly targeted list’s which will lead to more effective marketing campaigns.
While this software is very well designed there where three things that I did not particularly like about it.
First where the templates. Some of the templates have some really nice photo backgrounds. While these look good they are not that practical. The reason being that its difficult to read the text of the survey over the ‘busy’ photo background. Because of this I would suggest people use one of the templates with a more simple gradient background.
Second is the text to speech. This has a text to speech option where you can set the system to read the question to the person taking the survey. This sounds interesting but when I tested it the computer generated voice that this used was very unpleasant to listen to. Because of this I would highly advise that people keep this option off. Also to be frank, its just a gimmick anyway.
Finally is something that I did not like but Im pleased to say was corrected. When I was testing last night I noticed that there was no way to reset the stats and survey results. This was no good because after I set up my survey I tested it to make sure it was just the way I wanted. Because I was testing it I was answering the questions. This meant my fake answers where mixed in with the real answers from actual people taking the survey. That would have skewed the results of my survey, so I needed a way to reset the stats. However there was none.
So I messaged Karthik on Skype at around 1am EST last night and let him know that I felt that there should be a button or option to reset the survey stats and reports. Well this morning I woke up to a message from him saying he agreed and that a reset button had been added.
This is something that I have noticed in general with software produced by Karthik and his team. They are not opposed to taking feedback and suggestions from their users and they are more than willing to update the system based on this feedback (provided of course its a good suggestion).
The concept for Social Surveys is nothing new. People have been using surveys for a long time. Long before the internet even. and ever since the internet was ‘born’ there are been scores of systems, software, and apps to let you create surveys. What sets Social Surveys apart though is its flexibility and ease of use. This platform is quite powerful with a lot of customization options. It will let you create simple / fast surveys or very complex ones with custom logic / user flow. Yet it uses a easy drag and drop interface that makes setting up your survey a snap.
For anyone looking to do surveys, either to get visitor feedback on their own site, for offline clients, or to build targeted email lists, Social Surveys is going to be an excellent platform that is being sold at a very reasonable cost.
BONUS: When you pick up Social Survey you will also get access (in the members area) the all of these very cool bonuses (and more)
Click here to get Social Survey and instant access to these bonuses.A quick note about the reviews I do on this site. The product vendors give me access to their products for free in order for me to do my review. However I make no promises to them regarding the results of my tests or what I will write in my review. Should you click a link that takes you to a sales page for a paid product for sale this link will be an affiliate link and I will be paid a percentage of the sales price should you decide to invest in it.
About the Author
Thank you Brett for another honest review with pros and cons.
I think you got the developer upgrade to review not the base product which is another $67 at the time of this posting. Base product comes with 10 question types and has no ratings etc.
I normally try to review the FE product, but sometimes people send me the upgraded version without telling me (most of the time they are not being malicious by doing this), I believe there are 3 purchase options on the FE and what I have use the ‘ultimate’ version.
If I already have a few other types of WordPress and SAAS surveys purchased within the last year, would you still suggest investing in this one also? Social Lead Chief and SocialMobiSurvey are 2 that comes to mind,not sure if you are familiar with them or not.
If you already have a lead platform you will have to decide if you need another one for yourself. I can tell you about the software, its good things, its flaws etc, but I cant give you advice on your business since I know nothing about your business. My goal in my reviews is not to tell you if you should buy or not. Its to give you as much information as possible so you can make an informed decision.
Thanks for the reply Brett. I didn’t explain myself well. What I should have said and meant was have you tried other survey software, and if so how does this compare, in general?
Excellent review Brett! I was particularly impressed with you bringing up the reset thing and the developer using your suggestion to improve the product so quick. I also like how you laid out who could use this. There were things there I hadn’t thought of and I liked how you put one in under your review. I took it so I could see immediately how I could use it too!
Coincidences are strange animals… I did an Alex Jeffreys training last night which in hind sight set this launch up nicely as far as timing goes. He was going over what to do first for new subscribers to a list. He told us DO NOT to send them an affiliate offer right away like most marketers do – he told us that we should immediately get them to do a survey.
He went into detail on how to get them to participate with what he called the sandwich approach which I’ve seen used and my plan for this week was to try and revive a list of people who I’ve been guilty of ignoring.
I was going to get started today with what Alex uses but this software looks easier to use out of the box so I’m going to give this a whirl.
Brett,
Thank you for another great review. If i was going to sell this to a business,where could i find a resource, to ask great questions on the survey?
Well the questions you ask in the survey will widely vary from one client to another. Its your client that will give you the questions based on what they want to know. For example, lets say a restaurant client wants to know if the people are happy with the waitstaff. They would probably ask questions like “Was your server friendly” .. “Did he / she take get you your drink orders quickly while you where deciding what to order” .. etc.. There are no ‘general’ questions because its going to depend on what feedback the client wants.
Brett,
Thank you for your advice,always clear and precise.
Brett – awesome review as always (tho as a note, I’m getting very worn out by people saying “in this video” at the beginning of every video, yep, we all know it is a video so please don’t tell me LOL – you’re not the only one who does it – just about 50% of the population seems to think they have to say that and it is driving me bonkers — sorry for the rant)
I didn’t see it mentioned in your post or video… is there a way to show the results to the users? You know, some surveys have a function where at the end the readers can see the results? Not sure I would do it all the time, but maybe sometimes i’d want to do that on my blog. I could replace another plugin if I could do that
Thanks for the feedback, though Im not telling you its a video, Im telling you what Im doing ‘in this video’. It would make little sense to say “In this blog post” since its a video and since its a YouTube video people do see it off my blog.
For the answers I did not see any option to show the answers to other people when they finish the review. I will ask Karthik about it to be sure.
Hey that’s a good idea and in some cases it will be useful to share the result on the survey page right after the survey. If the questions are few in number and poll type showing the results would make more sense.. But anyways I will have a discussion with my team on it and if we take it up will give an ETA on when we can implement this. anyways watch back here for my updated reply tomorrow.
Thanks for being responsive!
A very good in-depth review Brett. Totally agree with the in built templates which looks too glossy. It would have been nice if they there is an option to upload a custom background image.
I thought I saw a dropdown in Brett’s review that showed where you could add a photo or video. So I’m assuming that is where you change your background 🙂
Excellent help as always Brett and thank you for the FB Pixel giveaway!
No this is to add an image / video inside of the page its not to change the background. Im sorry if I did not make that clear in the review video.
No worries, thank you! There’s so much to get through in a review and you need to get it out the gate. Impossible to catch every single thing I’m sure.
I wonder if changing the BG image is something Karthik can implement?
Not a deal breaker by any means, just a nice option for those of us who want continuity in our branding and colors etc.
Thanks again!
If you pick it up make that as a suggestion to Karthik, in my experience he is very open to suggestions.
Great review as always Brett.
Is it possible, using SS, to have the following question dependent
on the preceding selection?
e.g. 1. Are you Male or Female? 2. Have the next question tailored to
a male or female selection.
Yes you would do that with the logic settings. I covered it briefly in the review video.
On the 3rd page of your example ( the one with the woukld question) there seems to be no way forward – it doesnt auto refresh and the arrow way off to the right is not an ‘action’ item – broken survey or problem with the software ?
It does not auto refresh because I have multiple questions on that page. If I had put just one per page it would have. As for the arrow ‘not being an action item’. I think its quite obvious to click the arrow. Over 100 people have taken that sample survey as well and they all seem to understand to click the arrow as well, so I dont think there is an issue as far as usability. If you feel like the arrows are not prominent enough then I would suggest you keep it in the 1 question per page format. This is actually what I would normally do in a survey, I just had one page with multiple questions for example.
Thanks Brett, appreciate being on your mailing list and being alerted to your reviews and the clarity you bring to the party. I think it looks great, pretty indespensible for anyone who has a web site, so I’m going to buy. Just wondering, can it function as a form – – I guess it can since it is far more complex – but is it suitable? I can’t see any reason why not, but you might.
But it wouldn’t do an opt-in would it? Meaning, can the email address be verified by sending and then receiving hence verify before they continue with the survey? Didn’t see that anywhere.
Thanks Brett!
yes it can, because it has autoresponders –
Me again, just to make sure I’m on the right page – this offer is a once only fee, and because it’s in the cloud it comes with a lifetime of updates – as long as the company is still functioning (and if they disappear so will the program).
And after this offer expires it will be a monthly fee – all of which which makes this offer pretty awesome.
So by being on your mailing list, we get to be in on the ground floor. Not too shabby Brett!
• yes it’s a one-time fee,
• yes it is on their servers (so the url will jump to their servers but not sure about how that exactly works)
• yes it’s a lifetime of upgrades,
• yes after the special is over it will be a monthly fee.
Great Review and great product, thank you Brett.
Brett, I purchased Social Mobi Surveys from them last year. Do you know what the difference is with this product. Thanks for your help. Enjoy your reviews.
You can check out my review of Social Mobi Surveys here:
http://brettrutecky.com/Software-detail/social-mobi-surveys-review/
Also I will be honest if you are happy with SMS then you might not need another survey app.
I can not get support to respond, submitted ticket yesterday. Their auto-responder html option is not working with my HTML form code and I found a few other bugs. I realize they are launching, but the auto-responder issue is no small thing. I spent hours trying to wirte a custom gateway in PHP but its on their side it seems.
Brett, have you used the same support the users have to use and if so did they respond.
Well I contact Karthik directly, in fact I just got him to do another change to the system (to the reporting). Now to be fair your setting up a custom gateway with your own code so I cant say if your issue is with you or them however Im sure that they will be more than glad to help you. In fact let me see if I can get Karthik to respond here. Also I do want to point out that you could not have been waiting for support for long since this was just released. 24 hours for a response is very standard online and we really should give a little extra leeway during a launch.
Hey tony, sorry if my team hasn’t got back to you yet. We have replied over 600 tickets with helping with customers questions and even calls with people on day1, so if they haven’t replied they might be working on it, can you share the ticket number so I can expedite the reply.. I can get my support team to speak one on one with you over a call. if you need any assistance just update your Skype Id or your number with country code so my team can call you back. Thanks and apologize for the inconvenience
Here are some ticket numbers
29999
30063
30282
Hey Tony, i just followed up on the support desk and see these were replied 6 hours back. Do lets us know if you have any questions and we are happy to help. Thanks
Re uploading a custom background or at least being able to use a color rather than an image, I agree that this would be highly desirable for maintaining website congruity. Nice review and a very useful and flexible product with a great UI.
Hey Brett, thanks again for the review,
I’m not sure if you know the answer to my question or maybe Karthik can answer if he’s reading this post
I have already Social Moby Surveys which I’ve purchased in October 2014, Is there a way to upgrade to the new Social surveys? or do I have to buy this new version?
many thanks
kami
I don’t believe that there is an ‘upgrade’ option, since Social Surveys was done from scratch, sorry. But honestly if I where you I would ask myself “Am I happy with the survey software I have, and do I really need a new one?”
Thanks Brett..you know those 95 percenters who do not take action,,,well sometimes I’m one of them,,,I still haven’t created a single survey with SMS…
I’ve just quickly had a look at SMS and I can see now that SS has a lot more in it……..
As I see your link for the 02 extra software has now expired…Never mind…..next time perhaps…
I see Karthik responding Here. That gives me a good feeling. Too often developers launch with big stories and get their money and forget about bugs and updates. So I only buy iff I’m sure they Care about customers too. Iff they don’t respont to questions in Brett review, I know they are only in it for the money.
Hi Brett
I enjoy your reviews a lot, as you have your amazing and unique style at doing them. I really appreciate your honesty. I do email marketing and I’m thinking about tapping into video reviews too. There is something about your reviews that I really love to learn about.
Why you add content to your review posts while you can cover them all in your videos??? Isn’t time consuming for you as you spend sometime on recording the video and some more time adding your written review to it??? Do you use this for SEO stuff?
I would appreciate to have your answers…
Regards
Mike
Yep you got it. I add the article content for SEO. If you Google any product I review you will notice Im very often on page one (and normally near the top) ,, that is because of the text content. So the videos are for the people and the article is for Google (and some people who dont like videos)
Hi Brett,
Just to clean a little confusion from your review.
There is no problem with the templates because there are many solutions :
First you can add an overlay to the templates making them usable.
Second you can add an image, (400px square suggested), there is an option when setting the background (in fact you can choose a color OR download an image)
Third you can either download your image or one from Pixabay or from Youzign for those who bought it !
I am surprised that Karik did not mentionned it…
What is missing, according to me is the ability to duplicate a survey, useful for those who works in many niches and want to use same questions many times.
I also noticed the impossibility to change the color of the final SUBMIT button, this is not really important but frustrating because the actual color is really ugly 🙁
I asked to the support for theses changes, I hope they will be done.
I haven’t tested custom html for autoresponder yet, I hope it will works because I will need it.
Thanks for your reviews who help me to make my choices.
Re: “The reason being that its difficult to read the text of the survey over the ‘busy’ photo background.”
That is what they “overlays” are for. The mute the background to different shades. My only complaint is you have to do this on a “slide to slide” basis rather that for all pages.
Great tip!