Free Online Survey Tools

Creating a survey can be a great way to understand current and potential customers’ thoughts, behaviors, and intentions, and obtain demographic information about them.  A survey is a list of questions aimed at a particular group of people to attain specific information from them. 

I recently administered a survey that was non-business related for my family. We are planning a family reunion and I wanted to know which months were preferred to travel by my family members. I created a short and free survey on SurveyMonkey.com which consisted of:

1. A multiple choice question with certain months to select
2. An open-ended question in which family members could write in their names

I also created and conducted a survey for my previous transportation company before I launched operations. I wanted to learn about my targeted market – airline travelers’, onboarding and deplaning behavior and transportation habits while visiting a city. I wanted to be able to reach these travelers physically to conduct this survey. So I went to JFK Airport to conduct this survey face to face.

Surveys are a form of primary research. Primary research is any type of research that you collect yourself or have someone else collect for you. Primary research allows you to learn firsthand from your target market about their feelings, actions and planned actions on an issue or topic that is important to your business. Types of primary research include surveys, questionnaires, interviews, focus groups and observations. The answers and information collected from these types of primary research can be used as part of your market research analysis on your targeted market.

Surveys can be conducted via face to face, online, telephone, or mail through a form. Question types can be structured as multiple choice, open-ended, rating scale, ranking, etc. You can also mix up different types of questions to use in your survey.

A survey should flow like a conversation, with questions grouped by topic and unfold in a logical order. I like my surveys to be short and sweet, and straight to the point like some of my conversations with family and friends. Keep in mind that throughout your survey, an effort should be made to keep the survey interesting and not overburden survey participants with difficult questions consecutively.

If you would like to conduct a survey to learn more about a targeted market, potential customers or current customers, the following are free online survey tools you can use:

1. SurveyMonkey
2. Typeform
3. FreeOnlineSurveys
4. Survs
5. Qualtrics
6. SurveyLegend
7. SurveyPlanet
8. Survicate
9. Google Forms
10. Instagram Poll Sticker (when creating an Instagram story or reel, choose the ‘Poll’ option)

Dream Big,