The practical guide to launching your Qualtrics survey

If you’ve ever wondered how to create a survey on Qualtrics, you will find it’s an easy-to-use tool that even survey novices can use, coupled with an in-depth statistical and analysis capability that could even meet the needs of some data scientists. When you open the tool, it may not look as visually impressive as others, a small scratch below the surface reveals all the depth of a tool to manage even the most complex surveys.

The depth of use cases and functionality of Qualtrics covers many industries, and many other requirements that businesses may have in understanding their customers or employees – this article focuses on Qualtrics as a self-serve survey software tool. Here we guide you step-by-step as you create your survey on Qualtrics.

1. Getting started

Your first challenge may be understanding where to start and cutting through the sheer volume of options Qualtrics has available.

The good news is that you can create a survey free and there are many up-front videos to guide you. Despite some restrictions on analysis, if you go to this page, you can create a survey immediately, or start a 30-day free trial of ‘Design XM’ which contains more analysis options and more features in general. Note that no pricing is available on the website, so before you get too comfortable, you’ll need to request more information. As you would expect given the depth of features, Qualtrics is more expensive than Alchemer or Survey Monkey, but if this depth is what you need it may be worth it.

2. Think about your analysis first

Whilst this is always our number one recommendation before diving into writing or creating your survey from templates, because Qualtrics has such a depth of expertise behind it, you can be confident that if they have included a question in one of their templates and that template is the right one for you, there is a good reason for each question being there.

If you are using open ended questions, you will also need to code your data before analysis can begin. Whilst Qualtrics has a basic tool to support this, codeit offers a direct connection to Qualtrics to ensure this can be done fast and efficiently.

3. Your questionnaire content

The project creation tool allows you to filter down your template choices by choosing audience, department and use case. All question templates are written by industry experts. Taking customer research as an example, there are twelve templates available, from concept testing to Touchpoint NPS. Browse the choices to make sure you can find one that meets your needs. We’ll cover the steps on how to use it under ‘Built your survey’ below.

4. Who are your respondents?

Like many tools, Qualtrics offers links, QR codes and the ability to get a quote to use an online panel.

• Email allows you to distribute your survey either with Qualtrics’ in-built email system, using a list you have created and can be segmented, via anonymous link or personalised link.
• SMS Text Messages can be sent depending on your licence (not available in the free version)
• Social media – Twitter, Facebook LinkedIn and Pinterest are all available, creating posts ready-to-go
• QR code – use the QR code on your materials or website to collect feedback once the user scans the code
• Online panel - If you do not have access to your required survey audience via social media or contact lists, Qualitrics offers a panel service.

5. Build your survey

Qualtrics’ interface mirrors most other survey builders such as Survey Monkey and Alchemer, with a five-step menu guiding you through each phase of survey creation and reporting.

Under ‘Survey’, choose the one that’s right for you – or closest. The image below shows you the options you can use to get the initial survey that’s best for your project.

You can then add individual question using ‘Add Block’ below a question where you want to insert your new ones. For example you may want to insert demographics questions at the start (if using them for quotas) or the end of your survey.

You can choose from:

• Import from library – import individual questions from their extensive library that includes demographics plus specific options linked to industry or survey type
• Add new question – choose from the options below and more to build a question from scratch

Once you’ve created the bulk of your questions from a template and chosen more from the extensive library, you can fine-tune your individual questions.

Click on each one in turn, where you’ll see a left-hand menu enabling you to edit an exhaustive list of question features, such as:

• Question type – everything you would expect, plus more niche options such as signature, heatmap, captcha and drill down.
• Answer type – toggle between the different question types to view the answer options available, which are completely comprehensive for any survey question needs
• Format – determines how the list will appear with options for checkboxes, dropdown and alignment
• Response requirements – whether to allow people to skip the question or force a response, as well as response validation options such as maximum length of text for open-ended questions
• Question behaviour – logic for both asking the question or skipping it, based on answers given to previous questions or information such as device type, location or quota.More complex options include ‘carrying forward answers’ (e.g. when you have first mention and other mentions – no need to ask them to repeat their first mention at the second question, but carry forward their answer so it contains all mentions). Randomisation, recoding and default answers also available.
• Question text – by clicking on the question text in the right hand side you can edit the question text, and also choose piped text (incorporating into the current question answers given previously)

Before launching your survey you are able to complete various housekeeping tasks such as autonumbering questions, generating test responses, and exporting the questionnaire to Word.

Workflows

Qualtrics also incorporates something called ‘Workflows’ which enables you to trigger actions, such as your questionnaire to be delivered when an event occurs – this can come from triggers such as a service desk ticket, via a JSON data connection trigger from another external platform such as salesforce, or when a response is received to a survey.

6. Launch your survey

Using one or more of the options described in section four, your survey is launched!

While you await the influx of competed surveys, it’s already time to think about your open-ended coding and how to analyse data from Qualtrics. codeit works seamlessly with Qualtrics via a direct connection to ensure your coding can be done fast and at the depth required. If you’d like to give codeit a go, you can take up their 30 day free trial to help you start coding and analysing your open-ended question data today.