The QuestionPro Blog

AskTheSpeaker.org Launched - Powered By IdeaScale

2008-07-03T20:23:19Z

Jefferey Feldman from the Daily Kos just put out a blog entry launching AskTheSpeaker.org -- A crowdsourced question collection tool for a Q&A session with the Speaker - Nancy Pelosi.

What was cool about this launch?

Gina Cooper - The organizer for the event (NetRoots Nation) contacted me yesterday around 1PM PST.
We talked for about 10 minutes and realized that our standard offering of the URL (xyz.ideascale.com) will not work - We needed something more customized so that the IdeaScale portal can be hosted in a new/separate domain --in this case askthespeaker.org.
We helped her setup the DNS for askthespeaker.org and made internal changes so our servers start responding to that URL.
By 5PM yesterday we were ready.
The site was launched today and publicized on the Daily Kos in the morning.

In less than 24 hours of initial contact Gina and I were able to understand each others position and get agreement and launch a pilot project.

Here is one idea Gina suggested --

Being able to customize the "New Idea" button

If we get more requests for creating these "Ask The [Person]" portals, then we can probably come up with another template for such portals and make it happen.

Meanwhile, if you have questions for Nancy Pelosi - Go here and submit it. Gina and Jefferey will be moderating a Q&A with her and might choose your question.

http://www.askthespeaker.org

IdeaScale Updates - New Features

2008-07-01T06:06:34Z

Wanted to share a few updates regarding IdeaScale with everyone.

Tagging Upgrade:

We've revamped how we do tags. Tags now display the total number of times users have used a tag, as well as the ability to click on a tag and search all entries related to that tag.

Pending Items:

Tag Cloud (or something that displays the leaderboard of tags)
Integrating tags with search

Personalized Messages:
Using Cookies to "Remember" your last visit to an ideascale portal. If you've visited an IdeaScale portal, and come back after a couple of days, you'll see a message like the screen below -- based on what has changed since you last visited.

Activity Charts:

Activity charts to give you a ballpark idea on how many users are voting up and down the ideas.

Twitter Integration:

Integrate your IdeaScale portal with Twitter.

Ironman Nice Update

2008-06-30T12:00:00Z

I am happy to be back home in Seattle with the Ironman successfully behind me. It was a privilege to have the opportunity to compete in another country. The swim in the turquoise waters of the Mediterranean was breathtaking. The bike ride was the most grueling and beautiful experiences of my life climbing 5000+ ft through the Nice "hills" and cruising through rustic French villages. As expected, the run was both mentally and physically challenging, but the endless support of my family and friends kept me cranking along...with my sanity in check. I am looking forward to getting back in work mode and pushing QuestionPro to the next level. I am sure I will be in touch with many of you in the near future, but don't hesitate to contact me if you need anything. Cheers, Scott

Notes from CASRO Technology Conference: SMS Research

2008-06-26T20:32:10Z

Lots of great presentations today at the CASRO Technology conference. One of the themes today has been SMS marketing and research. I culled out some interesting notes from all the talks that I thought you might enjoy: -Mobile phone market is exploding (presented with too many slides to make the point) -23% of US mobile subscribers say they have been exposed to adverts or marketing on their phone -Only way to reach people that don't have a landline (duh) -Phones are deeply personal - must be careful about contacting people -95% of phones can receive SMS/text messaging -SMS can be used for: alerts, info, messages, coupons, surveys -SMS research always has faster response times -Better to execute short SMS interviews over time vs long surveys over short time -Data plans are expensive and requires special hardware thus explains 20% mobile web adoption rate We've integrated SMS polling within MicroPoll.com for some time now. Its interesting to see the myriad of SMS market research projects that companies have implemented already. Do you have a need for some type of SMS research? Is there a particular feature related to SMS research that you need or are unable to find? Submit an idea today - we'd love to hear your SMS related feedback/ideas.

13th Annual CASRO Technology Conference

2008-06-23T18:01:20Z

We are pleased to be attending the CASRO Technology Conference this Thursday and Friday. Personally, I've always been impressed with the issues/topics that come up at the CASRO events - I would recommend it to anyone in the market research industry. This particular event is very relevant for us, as it relates specifically to technology issues related to market research. Stop by our booth and say hello if you plan to attend!

Multilingual Custom Variables Imported from Excel file

2008-06-18T16:18:21Z

We recently upgraded the Email List Management system to support multilingual custom variables (Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, German etc).

The system supported the upload of multilingual custom variables via the web interface, but was not able to handle multilingual custom variables uploaded via a CSV file.

After doing some research, we found out that the CSV file import simply could not be used to upload multilingual custom variables.

The solution; we enhanced the import function to handle Excel files. This solution killed two birds with one stone; 1. Excel import is actually very convenient format for users 2. Solved the multilingual custom variables upload issue.

QuestionPro Sponsors Employee

2008-06-12T12:00:00Z

Hi All, Some of you may know that I will be competing in the Ironman Nice - France race on June 22nd. Even better, QP has graciously sponsored a portion of the event. I really can't thank QuestionPro enough for this...being able to have the financial and scheduling freedom to train has been a huge privilege the past 6 months. This is just one small piece of how employees are treated at QuestionPro. With my responsibility of running Sales at QP...I am confident that this managing style resonates on how my team collectively treats and respects our existing and potential customers. That being said...here is how I will be representing QP on the 22nd. I told the QP Management team that I can't promise any measurable leads will come out the race, but rather I would consider this more of a EU brand awareness campaign. Cheers, Scott

BugLabs Using IdeaScale - Their viewpoint.

2008-06-10T17:15:56Z

I've been working closely with the BugLabs "Marketing Guy" Jeremy Toeman - About IdeaScale and how they can leverage IdeaScale to gather ideas and feedback for the different systems and products they should focus on.

If you are unfamiliar with BugLab :

BUG makes it fun and easy to build any gadget you can imagine. Build familiar things like digital cameras and GPS locators or create new devices like a LoCamMotion or a GeoPhotoShooter or an Accel-o- Mailer or ... the list is endless!

From Jeremy's post:

Our goal is to have the voice of the community at large play a loud part in our product planning. This means we'd like to know how the ideas you are all sharing really rank with each other. One person's all-important laser range finder module is another person's worst. idea. ever. And the forums don't really let you express that very easily. Enter IdeaScale.

One of the things that we are learning as we push through this crowdsourced feedback model is that while technologies like Forum's and Wiki's exists, they are not the best suited for feedback. There is "too much chatter" in forums and it really becomes difficult to separate the apples from the oranges.

Check out BugLabs IdeaScale.

QuestionPro - Changes/Enhancements based on Feedback

2008-06-05T07:54:20Z

We've made a few updates/upgrades to QuestionPro based on some internal and external feedback:

Grouping/Filtering + MS Word

http://questionpro.ideascale.com/akira/dtd/858-393
Location of the Save & Continue Button

http://questionpro.ideascale.com/akira/dtd/415-393
Mean to be included in the banner table reports

http://questionpro.ideascale.com/akira/dtd/407-393

We've also made a few changes to IdeaScale. I'll be posting a detailed blog post with all the updates and bug fixes to IdeaScale soon.

Focus groups - are they really dead?

2008-06-04T07:24:52Z

Our friends at the clickadvisor blog seem to think that focus groups are dead. I know that a lot of Market Research companies and agencies use QuestionPro for quantitative research - what about qualitative?

Personally I would not use a focus group for anything we do here @ QuestionPro - why? - Well partly because I am in the software/service business - so our real cost of innovation (implementing new ideas) is actually not that high. It's not like CPG (Consumer Packaged Goods) - Kraft, P&G etc. -- where the the cost of failure is not really incremental but generally catastrophic (OK - Not catastrophic but lets say non-trivial.) In our case, if we implement a feature (that no one uses, or is really underused) it's not going to break the bank - In businesses that produce physical goods, there have high capital costs, untested/wrong product direction that can make or break companies.

I obviously am biased against using focus groups to determine product direction (given that we peddle IdeaScale every chance we get) -- but I am curious what kind of requests market research companies out there are getting from your clients? -- Are you still getting requests from your clients and stakeholders to conduct qualitative research using focus groups?

I wish organizations like CASRO or AMA or even magazines like Quirks put out reports on share of research types and usage (on an aggregate level.) -- Most MR companies are members of CASRO or AMA, and a simple survey to all the members can give a decent snapshot on where the mindshare is headed.

Here is another (old) BW article slamming focus groups.

On a side note check out the YouTube Video about a focus group here : Pretty funny (Embedded below)

If you are in market research and have a story to share (about focus groups) please feel free to leave a comment below or if you have a good case-study (either pro or con) regarding focus groups please free to contact me directly blog [at] surveyanalytics [dot] com -- I'll compile a collective list and publish it in the blog for everyone else.

Seattle Times - Coverage - Business and Technology Section

2008-06-02T18:10:29Z

So - Today we got profiled in the Seattle Times -- Under the business and technology section. We've been covered on blogs a few times, but getting profiled on a physical newspaper actually makes me feel a lot more important?

Anyways, here is a link to the coverage:

Making Valuable data quick work

Fun times!

Funny back-story -- I had to scramble to Sears Portrait Studio to get a Head-Shot -- All the other photos that I had were cropped images from regular (friends and family) photos. I barely got the photo in time for the publication.

New Ideas from QuestionPro Feedback via IdeaScale [May 22, 2008 - May 29, 2008]

2008-05-30T06:40:10Z

Date Filtering For DropOut Analysis

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As I make changes to the survey in response to the Drop Out Analysis, it would be nice if I could filter by date so that I can determine if the changes are effective. Currently all of the responses are grouped together...

Comments (0)Posted By : erich.price on 05/29/2008 under Reporting Tools

Survey Dropdown Box

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In the top right corner of QP the current survey you are working with is displayed as you navigate through the various features - often I have to perform the same task (reports, send reminders, etc) with several surveys at the same sitting. Could the current view of just the name of the current survey be modified to a dropdown box of active surveys?

Comments (0)Posted By : erich.price on 05/27/2008 under Reporting Tools

Customized User Homepage/Dashboard for Question Pro

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I find myself typically using the same features over and over - and having to click through several levels of menus to get there. If it was possible to build a customizable dashboard where users could put QP links that were important to them or used frequently it would certainlty save a lot of time.

Comments (0)Posted By : erich.price on 05/27/2008 under Reporting Tools

Spanish version

-1

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Do you plan to offer your system in Spanish in the foreseeable future? Otherwise it would be useful if the administrator can personalize the tags / interface (as is the case with the Home page) to accomplish this.

Comments (1)Posted By : hector.pereznieto on 05/24/2008 under IdeaScale

International users

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If I post non-english characters (e.g. accents) they get published as junk. Extremely few users would know the HTML / ASCII codes and have the time to write using them. I would guess this is a database encoding issue.

Comments (0)Posted By : hector.pereznieto on 05/24/2008 under IdeaScale

Allow user to change the answer width on a multipoint scales/text input question

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Before the recent upgrade of the survey design interface, the QuestionPro user was able to change the width of a text input ANSWER for a multipoint scales question.

I used this feature in several surveys before the upgrade. It is still an option presented to the user. However, changing the answer width modifies the question width instead of the answer width.

This is a feature I very much need returned to the survey design process.

Comments (0)Posted By : elkin on 05/23/2008 under Survey Development

Alltop - human powered smartness? Powered by Twitter of course

2008-05-28T04:20:04Z

I just got introduced to Alltop - It basically is a "starting point" of all things -- primarily happening in the blogosphere. Unlike most other aggregators it's neither "crowd" powered (like Digg) or "algorithm" powered (like Google News etc.) - it's human powered!

Check out some of the cool categories :

http://marketing.alltop.com (marketing related blogs)
http://startups.alltop.com (for startups etc.)

Just goto alltop.com and check out any category for yourself. Want to add your blog to the list -- here's a secret -- Follow @guykawasaki on twitter and then tell him to add your blog to the list! -- Yes, it _could_ be that simple! I'll try it out and let you know!

(or your could promote alltop in your blog and then as Guy Kawasaki to give you some love back?)

Need a researcher to help you with your survey?

2008-05-26T08:20:58Z

You've conducted your survey, collected your data and would like someone with a deep statistical background to explain and interpret the results? -- I've been recently chatting with Scott Gingold of PowerFeedback. They are a full-service market research firm and we are in a pilot phase of a partnership with them.

If you need some "full-service" advice that can take a look at your issue and then suggest solutions, ranging from how the design of the survey should be, to how to best structure the survey -- This may be one way to go. You can check out the researchers that PowerFeedback has here :

http://www.powerfeedback.com/team.html

We at QuestionPro usually do _not_ engage in full-service work unless the agreement is strategic for us. We've in the past done end-to-end work for select clients (where we design, execute and present results) of the survey -- only in strategic circumstances -- when we are developing new products and solutions or if we believe a joint project is actually beneficial for us (other than stuffing our pockets with cash.)

I've talked to a few of our clients and many of you have mentioned that one of services that Questionpro could provide is deeper human research services - more full-service oriented services. While I understand the need, I do not actually think we are best suited for this -- We'd rather partner with an existing agency (or a few) to provide this service than do it ourselves -- PowerFeedback is our first initiative in this direction.

There were two things that attracted me towards PowerFeedback:

Scott - himself is a very down-to-earth and straightforward guy. No BS and no long winded talks -- we agreed to pilot this over the phone and got on board.
The PowerFeedback Team -- Obviously the Bio speaks for itself.

If you think you need end-to-end project help or need a researcher look into your survey and give pointers feel free to contact Scott Gingold at sg [at] powerfeedback [dot] com.

Oh yeah - Happy memorial day everyone!

Telephone surveys - inching to the to the deadpool?

2008-05-24T04:43:10Z

The National Center for Health Statistics put out some numbers on surveying -- The general conclusion is that using "landline" only methods for data collection will skew the analysis. Here is a direct link to the report.

The key findings are :

1 in 6 homes (~15%) are "Cell Phone Only" -- that is they simply DO NOT have a landline.
1 in 8 homes (~13%) receive "almost all" calls on their cell phone even though they have a landline

If you just look at those two numbers, ~30% of households essentially rely on cell phones as their primary voice communication device. And this is the last 6 months of 2007. I can only imagine, the first six months of 2008 this has only gone up, especially with the launch but both Sprint and At&T for "unlimited" minutes. I can also say from personal anecdotal evidence, I finally convinced my wife what we really don't need a land line -- so my own residence does not have a landline anymore. We were getting too many telemarketers anyways.

The other paradigm shift that is happening is that businesses (brick n mortar) are accepting emails as the preferred communication model -- Eastside Bavarian where I change oil emails me and I can email them to request an appointment -- they even send me a survey after every service! I hardly ever talk to my mortgage broker or banker anymore -- we simply rely on email to communicate with each other.

The third component that is facilitating this shift is the "Smart Phone" market is expanding rapidly - Blackberry, iPHones etc.  -- All these phones are becoming communication assistants rather than being a phone. I use my iPhone for email, text and phone (in that order.)

Now, what does all this mean for research? -- The big issue is that of sample bias. Traditionally online research was considered as an after-thought to phone based research. Now with potentially a 30% sample bias error, phone surveys will become increasingly difficult to conduct and more importantly pass the sample bias validation test. That is the general conclusion of the report also.

UPDATE:
Here is another interesting blog post from one of my competitors - Check it out. It addresses the same issue.

Bootstrapping and building your research panel - Via IdeaScale

2008-05-22T01:49:22Z

One of the random side-effects to creating our own IdeaScale portal for new ideas and feedback has been that we've actually created a online panel of what we call "Core" users -- users who care enough about us to give us feedback.

Lets think about this for a minute. Users who give you feedback, are taking the time to help you -- The least you can do is to acknowledge the feedback. The best you can do is turn around and do something real about the feedback. The greatest side-effect to this is that you have, within your reach all the power users and core users of your system. There is absolutely no reason this cannot be your research panel. OK - I must say this -- Dan Keldsen from AIIM Market Intellgence actually planted the seed in my head. AIIM has been thinking of creating a panel, and we were pitching them IdeaScale -- I think all the smart folks in the conference call put two and two together and came to a conclusion that conceptually IdeaScale can be thought of as a panel.

Once you have critical mass with your ideascale portal you can then use the same users to solicit feedback via surveys, polls and even have them vote on ideas and topics (even if they did not come up with the idea) -- they can contribute to the brainstorming.

The obvious question is that - how will all this work? The short answer here is that, it's part of our vision and roadmap for IdeaScale portals to be integrated with QuestionPro surveys as well as MicroPoll polls. We obviously own all three systems and should be able to integrate the systems together -- if we know what we are doing. As IdeaScale comes out of beta early next month, we'll be launching a set of survey integration tools for IdeaScale next month. That will allow customers to send surveys and polls to their IdeaScale portal users, track rewards, redeem points etc.

I've had this theory of setting up an advisory board for QuestionPro about 4 years now -- I think it might finally happen now. Except, my original vision was to actually recruit 4-8 advisors, but now I'll just use our own system to have a panel of advisors. We already have about 100 users in the QuestionPro IdeaScale -- and we've only really promoted it via the blog. We can start here with all the users in IdeaScale and start having a meaningful conversation with them.

Another side effect to this survey integration is that the point system we use currently in IdeaScale can be integrated with a point system for surveys also. So we can easily sort and find users who've participated the most and reward them.

I think this is a good experiment in bootstrapping a research panel. Although we did not originally intend to create a panel, but once we had our success with IdeaScale, it makes obvious sense to continue down this path. We'll be sending out a short survey via our ideascale portal next month as our first research project -- We want to find out what the single most important update we can do to QuestionPro for you to absolutely LOVE QP for the rest of your life! In market research terms, what we need to find out is how can we increase "value extraction" for our customers. Fun!

If you'd like to have your say, all you need to do is be a part of the QuestionPro IdeaScale portal. You'll get an invitation to the survey next month when we are ready.

We are also going to try another experiment -- We'll make the results of the survey (including open-ended responses etc.) everything - public to all the users who take the survey. Yeah - we could give out a AMZN gift certificate, but I doubt all you market research hot shots out there really care for a $5 gift certificate. I think access to the data is a better incentive - Do you?

Online Research- what we have so far

2008-05-20T14:05:09Z

The model of engagement on the internet is evolving and so are the means for conducting market research. These are currently the 5 main channels for getting research done online: Online Surveys - Surveys are and will most likely be the core of conducting research online for the foreseeable future. They are an efficient and cost effective manner for collecting quantifiable data. Blogs - This is your avenue to harness some casual back and forth banter with your customers. This is a perfect opportunity to initiate the conversation and start to gauge interest. Much of the data coming out of blog comments will be somewhat anecdotal, but nonetheless may help to shape the direction of other research initiatives. Communities - Communities are probably the fastest evolving space on the online research front. Communities in the research world are evolving into a means to capture the thoughts of your customers. They present your customers with a space for making their voice heard. The key to making communities a viable option for gathering feedback is a mechanism to measure the buzz of the community. Ideascale (http://www.ideascale.com) is our first take on the community platform. The concept is simple, give customers a way to voice their ideas, give them a way to quantify these ideas, and the winners get what they want. The value is in the crowdsourcing model. The challenge is controlling the chaos. Online Panels - A survey panel is basically a structured online community. A researcher is essentially pre-screening these customers and asking questions, soliciting comments , and/or testing ideas through surveys or online focus groups. The demographics of these users are usually known so the data collected from a panel will have quite a bit more structure than a freeform community. The advantages are in the structured data. The huge disadvantage of online panels is the overhead that it takes to manage this panel, which includes keeping panelists engaged, preventing professional survey takers, managing incentives etc etc etc... Web Analytics - How are my customers actually reacting to promotions via email? What products are getting more traffic than others on my site? Are my customers reading reviews and are these reviews influencing their buying habits? These are the questions that web analytics are answering and providing yet another clip of data to add to the mix. Every online research strategy should include a mix of them all in order to maximize the value of collecting data online.

Keep your survey respondents in the loop

2008-05-20T01:53:14Z

It's almost considered "standard practice" to have a "Progress Bar" -- indicator that tells the respondents where they are in a branched or multi-page survey. However, if you think about this for a minute there are a few other strategies that you can use to keep your users engaged :

Single Page Survey -- In some cases if you can fit the entire survey into one single scrolling page. The argument here is that users know _exactly_ how long the survey is. The browser scroll bar (Vertical Scroll Bar) on the right gives a visual indicator on how long the survey is and how much of it has been completed. Usually there is not much sense in having a "Progress Bar" in such a model (cause there is really only one submit button for the entire survey.)
Creative Progress Bar Schemes -- Another creative way would be to make the progress bar "engaging" -- what do I mean by this -- Lets say we are doing a automobile/car dealership survey -- the progress bar can be a tachometer or a fuel gauge. These kinds of progress bars obviously require customized programming since it'll probably only make sense in a particular industry vertical.
Using text to engage respondents -- When designing the survey questions you can make the wordings more informal -- "Finally we would like to ask ....." or have some to the effect "Almost there - 4 more questions..." etc.

It's important to note that, having a "Progress Bar" is not the only way to give relevant contextual information to your respondents. We can think of other creative ways like the ones mentioned above to give users a sense of where they are in the survey process.

AFL-CIO - How get a survey done right

2008-05-16T22:37:58Z

The AFL-CIO launched the "Working Women 2008" survey a few days ago and here is an example of great marketing of the survey itself.

A few key points that I think all of us can learn.

Consistent Brand / Marketing:
Having links to the survey in the footer of the page - to increase awareness:
There carries into the survey itself

It looks like the AFL-CIO and WorkingAmerica invested some time and though into putting this survey together. The payoff will also be there in both in terms of brand perception -- Working America, AFL-CIO wants to listen to their members, as well as the obvious advantages in terms of lower drop out rates.

When deploying a survey, we need to start thinking of it in terms of a communication and marketing exercise as much as a data-collection exercise. Why? - Because you are touching your customers, stakeholders, partners etc. You simply cannot afford to look unprofessional. No monkeying around (OK - thats a dig at one of my competitors ;)

Best Practice : Have an introduction to your Survey!

2008-05-15T00:26:33Z

When conducting a survey -- there are a broad set of "Do's" and "Don'ts" -- Keep in mind that you are asking your customers, users or partners to spend their time and give you feedback. Think about this for a minute -- you are asking someone to spend their time and give feedback for YOU -- In most cases without any real tangible and immediate benefit for them.

One of the easiest way to build confidence for users to spend 10/20 minutes of their time is to put together a "Intro" page that describes the survey, explains why you are soliciting feedback and explains your privacy policy and statement.

What are the key messages you want to convey in your INTRO page? Explain to your users:

WHY are you conducting the survey? To better understand opinions? Is there a deadline?
How LONG will this survey take? You are asking users to spend time -- Have you ever asked someone to spend time with you, without telling them how long?
Your PRIVACY STATEMENT - Who will have access to the data? Is the data anonymous? Will the privacy be protected?
Explain clearly any INCENTIVES that you may be planning on giving. If you have images, insert an image of the incentive -- This will increase the response rate and participation rate.
Finally, have clear instructions on WHAT TO DO NEXT. Make it clear that the user has to hit "Continue" or the submit button in order to participate. Explain what to do if users do not want to participate.

Think about surveys as inviting someone to spend time with you -- You have to be compelling and authentic enough for someone to spend time giving you feedback. Remember, sloppy surveys = sloppy data + brand dilution. Think about the second part here -- "Brand Dilution" -- Not only will you get high dropout rates, your brand will have a negative impact.

New Ideas from QuestionPro Feedback via IdeaScale [May 06, 2008 - May 13, 2008]

2008-05-14T06:37:54Z

Weighted responses

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Is it possible to integrate a weighting system into the software - whereby I can weight the data to be representative relative to a lack of responses from particular demographics?

Comments (0)Posted By : kevin.wynne on 05/13/2008 under Reporting Tools

Open ended responses

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Staying with open-ended responses - is their of getting breakdown report of what was said - currently to analyze the data I need to copy into excel - sort alphabetically and then group according to similarities....Can something be done to make this easier?

Maybe a system where I can input the categories of responses and the software can assign statements based on keywords or phrases?

Thanks,
Kevin

Comments (0)Posted By : kevin.wynne on 05/13/2008 under Reporting Tools

Reminders

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Reminders are sent to non respondents of a survey on the basis of the email list created. If some people do not have access to their email (out of office) and decide to complete the survey by using the internet link, they will receive a reminder to take the survey but they will already have taken it !
I would suggest to be able to remove some addresses from the email list before sending reminders.

Comments (0)Posted By : s.graf on 05/12/2008 under Survey Delivery

Grouping/Segmentation filters

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Because you have a limit of 10 groups when using the grouping/segmentation filtering function, we're forced to delete filters if we surpass this benchmark. It would be more efficient if we could keep all filters that we create and just activate/inactivate them as we broach/surpass the 10 group limit.

Comments (0)Posted By : Shari Countryman on 05/09/2008 under Reporting Tools

Validation error messages

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I have a couple suggestion regarding the validation error messages:
1) When enabling validation on a per question basis, I've noticed that the default error message for a multiple choice question which requires only one response is "please choose at least one answer." I think this is confusing for respondents as in a case like this, we only want them to choose a single answer, not more than one.
2) I have a few questions in my survey that are followed by open-ended text comment boxes. QuestionPro counts each one of these comment boxes as a question (even though I don't) so that any validation error messages that pop up on questions that follow do not reference the correct question number. Very confusing for any respondent who uses the validation error hyperlinks at the top of the page to access the questions for which they're missing responses.

Comments (0)Posted By : Shari Countryman on 05/09/2008 under Survey Development

Banner Reports

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I think it would be a really good idea to have the mean included in the banner table. For instance, it would be useful to know the average score for a particular group to a particular question.

Comments (0)Posted By : shrikant.shinde on 05/08/2008 under Reporting Tools

IdeaScale Moderation/Authentication Settings

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The following setting is not working properly:

High - Authenticated Users Only
Users MUST be logged into the site to view ideas, comments. New users must be approved by the moderator.

Even with this setting, new users can create accounts, view, post, and have full run of the site without initial approval from the Moderator.

Also, the "Top Contributors" section is shown on the site before logging in with a site under the "High - Authenticated Users Only" setting.

Comments (0)Posted By : bill.ralston on 05/08/2008 under Bugs/Issues

Special Characters

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Custom fields are not allowed to have special characters like accents. To deploy on several languages a personalized invitation I must add a dear Mr. or dear Mrs. depending on gender and language plus the name of the person. As example in the French language you have Chère Madame (for Dear Mrs) with an accent in the first e. Having no accent will be seeing as misspelled and not seriously. There are names in Spanish that having no accents are misspelled as well. There are other languages like in German having characters like ä, ü and ö.
Could you please arrange that custom fields accept special characters?

Comments (0)Posted By : antoine on 05/06/2008 under Bugs/Issues

Dell "IdeaStorm" style site - For the Unfortunate 5 Million (!Fortune 500)

2008-05-08T06:08:42Z

A small community here in Seattle of tech geeks are working hard to plan their upcoming conference. They are called the "Six Hour Startup" -- the basic premise is - they want to create a startup -- you guessed it -- IN SIX HOURS.

The Six Hour Startup (or SHS) is a tight knit groups of technology geeks, design dudes, marketing folks that get together once a month (on a Saturday) and launch a new startup!

They are currently trying out IdeaScale -- Check out some ideas that people have proposed:

http://sixhourstartup.ideascale.com

This example reflects crowd-sourced feedback in a very distinct way -- Typically most users would have done a survey -- but the issue here, when you run a survey is that users cannot really "collaborate" -- in the Web 2.0 world, what is life without collaboration?!

If you are in the Seattle area, you should checkout their site : http://www.sixhourstartup.com and more importantly, if you are a tech geek or thinking of starting a company, you should check out their conference : http://www.sixhourstartup.com/conference.

If you want to setup an IdeaScale for your blog, company or cause -- Fire up an account @ IdeaScale and get rolling!

http://www.ideascale.com

BTW - If you are wondering what the title means ("Unfortunate 5 Million") -- We all know and talk about the Fortune 500 - Well, we think there are a lot of tools and services that others need, but don't have the kind of cash to blow - I call them the Unfortunate 5 Million. I am not sure who coined that term, but I've decided to use it.

Aaargh! - You know what you should do?

2008-05-03T15:07:20Z

I still see lots of if ideas for QuestionPro coming into my inbox. While we have our own tracking system for reviewing ideas internally, I find myself going to our own IdeaScale portal and checking for new ideas there instead. I love seeing our customers make suggestions that I haven't even had the time to think about! Got an idea for QuestionPro? Submit it today at http://questionpro.ideascale.com.

My Partner in crime - My Customers!

2008-04-30T11:04:37Z

The fascinating thing about launching new services and products is the adrenalin rush we get when we see our tools being used -- Seriously -- as tech geeks, we _love_ the fact that our customers pay us money (well some of you at least) -- but equivalently important is the fact that new concepts and ideas are used in the real world -- not just in our heads. Fortunately for us, we are in a financial position now to try and develop new/bleeding-edge ideas without worrying too much about monetizing them.

As many of you who've been following the blog know -- we've been harping about IdeaScale for some time now. There is still a lot of work ahead of us, but we feel really confident in the underlying conceptual model of crowdsourcing feedback now -- If you are still on the fence about this model I would urge you to think again -- Why? - Read on below...

One of our early adopters was John Thompson from Choice Hotels. They had some unique (well in hindsight not really that unique) requirement that ideas and topics get moderated -- they get "approved" by the moderator(s) and then the ideas show up on the website. The good news about working with customers in solving these issues is that -- usually someone else down the road has the same requirement. John was patient enough to give us some breathing room and time to develop his requirement. He even offered advice and worked with us as we talked through his requirements and needs and designed a solution.

I think this represents a shift in the traditional Vendor/Client relationship model -- where clients usually think of vendors as their adversary rather than a partner. Generally there is a lot of mis-trust (at least at the enterprise level) between clients and vendors. Both of us understood where each of us were coming from, we had an idea of the challenges each of us face and respected each other's position and basically relied on each other.

John went live with his IdeaScale portal yesterday -- within 24 hours he had over 60 new ideas, 20 or so comments on his ideas and about 1500 votes on a various ideas and topics. Thats the power of IdeaScale. A great success -- no doubt.

I remember when we started QuestionPro about 4 yrs ago, we worked with a few key clients in the exact same way as we are working on IdeaScale today. I am glad that a few of our customers are willing to try new tools and concepts and are thinking outside the box -- along with being patient and understanding.

I know there are a lot of clients who would say -- I wish QuestionPro did "X" -- and "I can't believe they don't do "Y" -- All I have to say is -- most companies (including questionpro) have finite and limited resources. We are software developers -- we can do _anything_ but we definitely cannot do _everything_!

Want to give IdeaScale a spin? - Goto http://www.ideascale.com

Branching/Skip Logic using QuestionPro

2008-04-30T00:46:04Z

Everyone wants to do branching, but it can be a little confusing to figure out! We threw together a quick help video that should clear up a lot of the confusion. Check it out on our YouTube Channel, or below.