We just released iSalient version 2.30.2.  This update removes the confusing drop-down based question type chooser and replaces it with a graphic based / friendly new question type picker.

The export page (from the Surveys > Manage page) has also been updated to allow you to either export the survey responses (to a .csv) or the survey structure (to a .xml)

As always - let us know if you have any suggestions or questions!

We have updated our iSalient hosted service to offer

 Unlimited Surveys.  Unlimited Users. Unlimited Responses.

For only $19.95/mth.  Unlike traditional hosted survey services, you will not have to worry about responses, overage fees, etc…

For more information about iSalient and to signup click here.

In my previous post, I talked about some of the reasons to start doing web surveys. Of course, for someone who has no experience with this way of gathering information, starting to run surveys can be a little daunting. As always, you’ll want to make the user’s experience your first priority. This means taking a little extra care in crafting the surveys themselves and the ways that you promote them.

Survey early, Survey often

Don’t go back through the last 5 years of business data and figure out everything you’ve ever wished you knew about your clients and their habits and dump it all into one survey. It would be great if all of your customers were willing to spend 30 or even 60 minutes answering your questions, but they are not. In fact, if you ask them to do this, they’ll probably lose a lot of respect for you and be less likely to do business with you again. You’ll probably have better results doing a short 5-6 question survey every few months.

Mix it up a little

Since you’re adding frequent, short surveys, why not hook them into different actions that your site’s visitors are usually taking anyway? If you have a membership area, you could add in a quick survey between the login page and the member’s area. If you offer something for download, you could stick one in before the download is served. Make it feel like a quick, relatively unobtrusive extra step in the middle of an action that your clients are used to performing anyway. If you play this right, you can actually gain an extra layer of data that might tell you about the different types of answers you get from users engaged in different types of activity on your site. Continue reading →

One thing that really amazes me about the Internet is the level of value it’s brought to information. Just look at Google: one of the most recognizable and powerful companies in the world. Based on what? Possession and leveraging of information. It’s an information economy, and the more information you have, the more leverage you can wield. And yet, how many businesspeople do you know, even in the world of web business, who chronically undervalue the information available to them? Chances are, you’re one of them!

It’s very very easy to get all tangled up in products and services and policies and marketing, and to forget the most important part of the whole process: the information. If you develop and market and offer a product that no one wants, people are just not going to buy it no matter how great a job you’ve done every step of the way. Then again, maybe you’re offering exactly what people want, only they don’t know it because your marketing materials phrase it in a way they wouldn’t have thought of. Or maybe it would be great if you had just thought of this one critical thing.

So how do you gather information about what people want, what they need, what they like, dislike, hope for, dread, are excited about, will leave and never come back over? It couldn’t be simpler. You just ask them.

That’s why web based surveys are so powerful. They allow you to tap this type of information directly at the source, a little bit at a time. A lot of people aren’t sure exactly where web surveys fit into their business model, so I’ll break it down for you real simple. Are you ready? Here are 4 outstanding reasons to have your web surveys up and running yesterday:

1. People will tell you exactly what they want.
2. You will give it to them and become extremely wealthy.
3. Other people will want to know what you know.
4. You will give it to them and become extremely wealthy.

Okay, okay, I know. This all sounds a little extravagant. But the truth is, the best way to sell more is to know your market better. And if you just ask your existing customers what they really want, they’ll be happy to tell you, because they’ll understand that you’re ready to give them exactly what they want. It’s a beautiful thing, because everybody wins. Especially you

So what kinds of successes and failures have you had in your information-gathering efforts so far? And how do you think you could use web surveys to improve your business?

Next time you visit the download page you should notice a new type of download available. Upgrade Patches. Now you can generate your own special download that is tailored for upgrading your install.

With the new upgrade patch options you can choose what version you are upgrading from and what type of encoding (zend or ioncube) you use. After making those selections simply click download! The resulting download will only include files that were changed and need to be uploaded.

This should make the process of upgrading much easier for many of our clients. There is no need to scan a changed file list or upload the whole distribution.

Please let us know if you have any comments or questions regarding this!

A major development for iSalient is that we have added crosstab functionality to reports. Showing a report with a crosstab lets you view only the responses from people who gave a specific answer to a question. For example, if one of your survey questions is which country are you from, you can create a report that shows responses only for those who are from the US, or only those from Canada, etc…

Crosstabulation is where you can view survey results that come from a subset of people. For example, let’s say I have a survey that asks people 3 questions: Gender, Age, and Favorite Hobby. While the survey results will tell me what people’s favorite hobbies are in general, it would be much more useful if I could break it down further so I can view hobbies for all males between 25-35, or hobbies for females between 40-60. Crosstab lets you do that.

Crosstabs can be added by going to Reports -> Add New Crosstab. Type the name of the crosstab (for internal viewing purposes) and choose a survey, and then save. Next, you can choose a question, a condition, and then an answer. So in our case I would choose “Gender”, “Answer is equal to”, and then enter “Male” (or select a suggestion). Then I could add another condition by choosing “AND” or “OR”, and then choosing “Age” for the question, etc…

It is easy to create a set of conditions for a question and even join those conditions to another question. Click on Conditions sand then select a question that you want to add crosstab functionality to. Conditions that you can set include Answer is equal to, Answer is not equal, Answer contains, Answer does not contain, Answer starts with, Answer ends with, Question has been answered, and Question has not been answered. You can set this using suggested answers to questions. You can then join this condition to another question by using an And or Or condition.

Now we are ready to view the results. Click on Reports -> Survey Responses, and choose a survey. If there are any crosstab views for a selected survey then they will appear in the section below. Choose the crosstab filter and then hit submit. The charts and graphs you now see will contain ONLY those responses that match the criteria in the crosstab view.

Starting today you can now have a total of 1,000 subscribers per list in your iSalient Hosted Account! That is double the previous limit and will allow you to deploy your surveys via email easier and to larger audiences.

If you haven’t signed up for iSalient.com view how it works or checkout our pricing.

A short time ago we started offering the iSalient Hosted Trial with no time limit. That means no expiration and no need to ever pay or upgrade.

Here is what you get with the trial (free) plan:

• Unlimited Surveys
• Unlimited Admin Users
• Up to 50 responses per mth

Click here to signup

This is a great deal for companies and organizations that require a survey solution but with a small response level. If you should need more responses you can upgrade at anytime to one of our paid plans.

As always - just let us know if you have any questions!

We just released 10 new survey styles for iSalient. You can download these by visiting:

http://www.isalient.com/styles.php

Login to your iSalient account. Go to Surveys > Styles to import.

Our iSalient Application Provider licenses are now available.

Click here for pricing.

The application provider licenses allow you to rent/sell usernames/accounts to your clients. Charge any amount per month. At only 25 users for 1 year at $20/mth/user you are looking at around $6,000/yr. After the license fee you are looking at well over $4,000/yr in profit. And that is only at 25 users.
As many of our resellers do - you can expand on your offerings by providing templates, add-on services, etc…

Questions? Email sales@activecampaign.com