Thanks for the comment. I want to think about your question some more, but my first thought is that the online survey creation process stinks. Even with a fast web connection, it can be painfully slow to create adn edit a survey, especially whenit goes to more than a few questions. It’s hard to detect errors in skip logic in the tools I’ve used (I need a flowchart view), and I have had lots of problems getting complicated filters to work. There are a lot of services, though, and it may well be that I just haven’t tried the right ones yet.

Once the survey’s completed, the process of getting it out to people is pretty easy and quick — you just e-mail the link to the survey, or have your list vendor send it out. Some of the survey tools don’t report results the way the list vendors want, so that can be an issue.

Thanks again for asking, and I’ll try to think about it some more.

Mike

Specifically, I’ve seen little focus on international markets, and penetration issues in regards to online surveying. I’m glad someone’s delving in to that.

Seeing that you know what you’re talking about, and furthermore, you know how to express it well, I was hoping to see if you’d noticed anything that could have been improved during the “create survey -> distribute invitation -> track responses -> analyze results” process.

The company I work for, Tercent Inc., recently released www.surveyscholar.com, yet another online survey tool. As you know, the market is quite full of these online survey tools. We hope to distinguish ourselves from competitors by providing features that facilitate the process at a more than competitive price. We want to be easy and cheap. Although we are focusing on the educational market, I’m sure that any improvements on the general process that you may offer will be invaluable to improving our service.

I thank you now for the time you’ve spent reading this, and in advance for any time spent offering your advice.

Donald