Creating a survey with the Webform Builder in Business Catalyst

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The Business Catalyst Platform enables you to build sites, also known as online businesses, that offer a variety of ways for your site visitors to interact with you. Unlike static websites that only present text and images in a brochure-like fashion, the online businesses you create include two-way communications to keep your customers engaged and keep you informed of their preferences and product requests. Being able to gather this type of personalized data for your site will ensure that your business remains competitive.

In this article, you'll learn how to use the new Webform Builder to generate a survey to collect feedback from site visitors. The Webform Builder interface makes it easy to generate complex forms, including questions with multiple-choice answers.

Note: To follow along with the instructions outlined in this article, you'll need to sign up for a free account on the Business Catalyst Platform.

This article is dvided into the following sections:

• Building the survey with the Webform Builder
• Adding the survey questions
• Inserting the web form survey on a web page
• Collecting and analyzing the survey responses

Building the survey with the Webform Builder

Web forms serve many functions on sites. You can configure them to subscribe users to e-mail campaigns, gathering contact information and customer messages. Forms can also be set up to trigger workflows so that you receive text messages (SMS) or e-mail notifications every time a user submits a form on your site. This functionality makes it easy for you to be responsive to customer inquiries, as well as gathering their customer data to grow potential leads and opportunities.

In this section, you'll learn how to launch the Webform Builder included in the Admin Console and use it to configure your survey questions and the possible answers. You may find it helpful to compile the list of questions and answers in a separate document prior to building the survey. Be sure to spend a bit of time constructing the questions, and strive to word the questions in a way that does not lead the user to answer in one particular way over another. The goal is to gather your users' unbiased opinions. It may also be useful to have other people review the contents of your survey to see if they have any difficulties understanding the questions. Having another set of eyes review the content of the form will help you address any issues before generating the survey.

If you are new to creating surveys, many helpful guidelines are available online. Check out the Qualities of a good question article and read the full survey tutorial on Statpac.com for more details.

Follow these steps to use the Webform Builder to create a survey:

1. Use your e-mail address and password to log in to the Admin Console for your site.

   Note: See Introducing the Business Catalyst Admin Console to get instructions on registering your site and accessing your site's Admin Console in a browser.

2. Choose Modules > Web Forms to access the Web Forms section. Click the Try our new Webform Builder button located directly above the Web Form list view to launch the interface (see Figure 1).

The Webform Builder appears. The interface presents the fields to begin creating the survey (see Figure 2).

3. Enter a descriptive name for the survey and click Save. The page refreshes with the name of the survey listed at the top, along with the generic set of form elements to gather the user's name and e-mail address (see Figure 3).

Gathering users' contact information serves two purposes; it ensures that their submissions will be tracked in the database along with any other activities they have performed on the site, such as e-mail subscriptions and purchases. It is also vital to collect users' contact data so that you can contact them directly if needed. The form will not function if you remove these fields.

4. Since the form is preconfigured to collect the title, name and e-mail address of the user, you only need to add the custom fields you'll use to collect the survey responses. However, if you would like to gather additional contact data from users, select the desired field names in the top of the Add New Items section on the left side.
5. Scroll down in the Add New Items area to access the Custom Fields section. This part of the interface allows you to choose from a variety of different types of form input elements (see Figure 4).

6. For the purposes of this example, select the List (Radio List) option. But remember that you are free to insert any type of input field you'd prefer—some survey questions might be best suited to choose a specific type. For example, if you want to collect qualitative feedback, you could choose the Text (Multiline) option instead.

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Adding the survey questions

In this section, you'll begin populating the questions and possible answers in the form to build out the survey. If you have created a list of the questions and answers for your survey, you can use it as a guideline during this process to ensure they are properly entered.

1. Enter your first survey question in the field labeled Field Name. Be sure to select the Required option to add validation to the form so that the answer is mandatory. If the fields are not required, users may choose to skip some questions, and the survey data will not be complete. Required items will display a red asterisk beside them in the final version of the form.
2. Enter the list of possible answers (called Items in the Webform Builder) that the user can choose. After entering the first answer, clicking the plus (+) button to add each new item (see Figure 5).

3. After entering the first question and its associated answers, click Save.

   As you build the form, each new question appears in the preview pane to the right (see Figure 6).

4. Repeat steps 1–3 to add each new question you'd like to ask in your survey.

Note: Try to be as concise and clear as possible. If the survey has too many questions or is difficult to understand, users may decide it is taking too long and won't complete it.

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Inserting the web form survey on a web page

After you've finished adding your questions to the survey with the Webform Builder, the only remaining steps to distributing the survey on your website are inserting the form on a web page (or web pages), and then publishing the page so that it is displayed on the live site.

Choose one of these methods to insert the form on a page:

Method 1: Inserting the form with the Module Manager

1. Choose Website > Web Pages to view the list of pages in your site.
2. Select the desired page to insert the survey form.
3. While the page is selected, click the Add modules to web page option from the right side bar (see Figure 7).

The Module Manager appears on the right side of the Admin Console. Scroll down to select Web Forms > Web Form from the list of modules (see Figure 8).

The Web Form interface appears.

4. Choose the name of your survey and click Insert (see Figure 9).

5. After inserting the survey in the page, you can preview it in the Design tab. If you are satisfied, click Save and Publish to push the changes to the page live.

Note: If you'd like to customize the appearance of the survey form, click the HTML tab and edit the code to add CSS, text, and images as desired.

Method 2: Copying the form's code into the body of an HTML page

1. Choose Modules > Web Forms to access the list of forms on your site. Select the survey from the list and choose the Edit with New Webform Builder option (see Figure 10).

A preview of the survey web form appears.

2. In the right side panel, select the Get Web Form HTML Code option (see Figure 11).

3. Choose Website > Web Pages and choose the desired page from the list.
4. Click the HTML tab and paste the code from the survey into the HTML of the page, at the desired location. Be sure to preview the page before saving and publishing it.

Tip: After you've published the survey, you can send out the link to it in your next e-mail campaign to encourage users to participate. You may find it helpful to post an expiration date so that users feel inclined to respond right way. (Be sure to remove the survey once this expiration date has passed).

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Collecting and analyzing the survey responses

Say you've already published and publicized your survey. Some time has passed, and many visitors have submitted their feedback into the survey. Now it's time to collect the data and export it so that you can analyze the responses more closely.

Follow these steps to create a Customer report and export the form data:

1. Choose Reports > Create a Customer Report to access the customer data section of the database.
2. In the right side panel, click the Create a new Customer Report option (see Figure 12).

The New Customer Report window appears.

3. In the Report Type column, select Customers and Cases. This option ensures that the generated report will include both the customer details and their survey responses (see Figure 13). Click Next.

The list of available Data Fields appears.

4. Select the check boxes next to the system fields you'd like to include in the report. For example, you might choose very specific fields that you want to appear when you export the spreadsheet.
5. For the purposes of this article, select the Customer Name with Details and Email 1 (Primary) options as shown in Figure 14.

6. Click Next to continue. The next screen displays the list of filters you can use to define the data that will be included from a web form.
7. Use the pop-up menu under the Filter by your own custom CRM forms and Fields header to select the name of your survey form. Make sure that the Display all custom fields in report option is selected. Click Generate Report.

   A table appears, displaying all of the details about the users who submitted the survey form, along with their answers. If only a few users have submitted the form, you may find it just as easy to review the responses online (see Figure 15).

Note: If your survey has gathered a significant number of responses, you should export the Customer Report that you just generated so that you can open it and examine it in a spreadsheet, statistical package, or database application so that you can sort the answers in the various columns and review the results.

Analyzing the survey data

Now that you've generated the Customer Report that collected the survey data, it exists in the system. To analyze and sort the results at a more granular level, click the Export Report button and export the information in a spreadsheet format (see Figure 16).

Once you've exported the data, you can open it in a statistical software program, such as Microsoft Excel or SPSS, to sort the columns and read through the survey responses. It is helpful to offer surveys at least once a quarter and track the results frequently to identify trends and better understand how your online business is performing.

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Where to go from here

This article has highlighted some of the unique types of forms you can generate with the Webform Builder. As you can see from this example, you are only limited by your imagination in regards to the type of information you can collect from your site visitors. Visitors appreciate the opportunity to provide feedback, and you can leverage the results of a survey to redefine your business and address the areas for improvement, as well as learning useful details about the types of products and services your potential customers are hoping to purchase.

To learn more about Business Catalyst, check out the following online resources:

• Create and insert custom web forms
• Working with the Web Form module
• Business Catalyst training videos on Adobe TV

And be sure to visit the Business Catalyst Developer Center, where you'll find helpful articles and tutorials to get you up to speed quickly.