From day one we've provided survey templates as a way to help you get started sending out great surveys. We've recently started adding survey templates created by "influencers" in various industries who have some perspective and experience surveying their customers.

Today, we've added four new ones by some great folks!

Market Research 101 by Mike McDerment, CEO of FreshBooks

When starting a new business, it's important to validate your idea as quickly as possible. Even if you haven't been out in the proverbial wild for that long, your customers will likely already have invaluable feedback for you about the pain points you are (or aren't) solving for them.

Using our Market Research 101 template, you can survey users and find out how well you're doing with both solving the issues they're having as well as if you're marketing your product correctly.

Feedback for Add-On Product/Service by Rob Walling of HitTail, Drip and more...

If you sell any type of add-on or upgrade to a product or service, you need to know if your customers are happy with their purchase. This survey, put together by startup maven Rob Walling, will help you hone in on exactly what you're doing right or wrong with your add-on.

Pre-Proposal Survey by Ruben Gamez, Founder of BidSketch

Whether you freelance on the side or run a full-fledged consultancy, it's absolutely important that you know what your client wants before you start. This survey template, put together by Ruben Gamez (who knows more than most of us ever want to about putting together proposals), will help you get to the core of what a potential client wants before you get too far in and realized you weren't on the same page.

Support Followup by Sarah Hatter, Chief Awesome Lady of CoSupport

Customer support is ultimately about making sure your customers are happy. Finding out if you and your staff are doing a good job now is a great way to ensure the future happiness of those customers. Created by the queen of customer support, Sarah Hatter of CoSupport, this template will help you quickly figure out how you're doing and where you could improve.

Check those out, give them a try and let us know what you think!

Today, I'm excited to announce another highly requested feature: required questions.

It may seem like an obvious feature, but let me explain things a bit.

Building a product that satisfies the need of the survey builder while doing its best to also respect the survey taker ultimately means some sacrifices have to be made.

The folks building the surveys typically err on the side of trying to ask everything they can think of while the folks taking the surveys just want to finish the thing and get it over with. Not a great combo.

So our top priority at PopSurvey is providing tools that help survey builders create surveys that their users actually want to take…and that means some limitations on things (ie. multiple choice options, question length, etc).

We've held out a really long time on adding the "required question" feature because our testing showed that it reduces completion rates as well as accuracy. People tend to either abandon a survey or just pick a random answer if they are required to answer something they don't want to.

But at the same time, the overwhelming feedback is that this is a must-have feature for many of our users. And it's our job to find the right balance between all of this.

So, here we are with the launch of this new feature! It's available to everyone on all plans now!

We do suggest that you use this sparingly and remember that requiring a question will likely have an impact on your completion rates.

Enjoy!

It's been a long time coming. We've just launched a new question type: Matrix. It's easily been the most requested feature addition in the past year.

The Matrix question type is great when you want to ask a similar question about certain things within the same context. Examples are experiences at an event or the service you received somewhere.

They are a relatively complex question for your respondents to take, so try not to go overboard. Remember, you want your surveys to be as painless as possible, and adding a lot of these can make your surveys harder to understand for the taker. So, just keep that in mind as you build your surveys.

The Matrix question type is available to everyone on all plans. Enjoy!

The number of non-English speaking users has been steadily increasing since we launched. And while you've always been able to compose your survey questions and answers in any language you choose, there have always been certain "hard coded" elements that were in English (words and phrases like "begin survey", "continue" and "complete survey"). Today, that changes!

We now offer the ability to automatically translate those "fixed" survey elements into nearly two dozen different languages!

We're launching with the following languages:

• Chinese
• Croatian
• Danish
• Dutch
• English
• Finnish
• French
• German
• Hindi
• Indonesian
• Italian
• Japanese
• Korean
• Malay
• Polish
• Portugueses
• Russian
• Spanish
• Swedish
• Turkish
• Vietnamese

If you would like an additional language added to this, just let us know and we'll get it added!

You can find the language translation under the "Settings" tab for the your Intro slide when you edit a survey. The language is only set for that specific survey, so you can create surveys in as many languages as you'd like!

This is available to all customers, free or paying. So, go create a survey and let us know what you think!

When developing a new product, it’s not enough for your family and friends to say they love it. The problem is they generally don’t want to hurt your feelings and will tell you that your idea is sheer creative genius even if they think it’s the most ridiculous thing they’ve ever seen. This is the time for a product development survey.

Find out the potential customer’s initial reactions to the product. What is their level of need for it? Would they kill for it or would they never consider removing it from a shelf? Would they want to receive it as a gift?

Surveys Are a Pass or Fail Clue

This is where a product development survey can help. You will receive objective comments and constructive criticism that will give you an indication of if your product is deserving of financial success or the bottom of a trash can. Once you find out how people feel about your product you can make adjustments to improve it or start all over at the creative drawing board.

A survey might consider the frequency of use. If a lot of people say they’d never use it, that’s a big indication that your product may be headed toward the round file. Ask the customer if they’d consider using your product over their usual brand.

An important question to ask is what would make someone want to purchase your product. There are quite a few considerations that can be used to entice a new buyer:

• Value your product offers
• Quality of you product
• Product performance
• Ease of purchase
• Good warranty
• Level of customer service
• Product variety

Ask a customer’s preference on how they’d go about making a purchase. Would they buy online or want to visit a physical store? Maybe they’d rather pick up the phone or really do it the old fashioned way and send a check in a letter.

Ask your potential customers what method of advertising would get them to buy your product. What would they choose?

• Testimonies from other customers
• A friendly company representative in sales or service
• An industrial publication
• Television advertising
• Trade shows or related events
• Newspaper advertising
• Online advertising
• Special offers, like rebates or longer warranties

It’s important to ask a person what they like most about your product, but gather the courage to ask what they don’t like about it, too. Phrase the question more optimistically, “What do you like the least about this product?”

You might not like the results of a survey, especially if after investing countless hours you find that you’re the only one with an interest in your product. But you could save money on any further investment or find that you need to take out a really big loan when you conduct a proper product development survey.