Are you wondering how to create a survey form in WordPress? With a well-designed survey, you can easily collect useful information, feedback, and opinions from your site visitors.
You can then use the collected information to make informed decisions for improving your business strategies.
In this article, we’ll show you how to create a survey in WordPress and build beautiful reports.
Choosing the Right WordPress Survey Builder
Creating a survey and using the collected data can be easier if you choose the right survey builder plugin.
But which survey builder plugin should you use?
Many survey builders store your data on third-party servers you can’t easily access. They also generally offer limited customization options. Some even limit the number of responses you can collect.
This is where you need the best WordPress survey plugin to get the job done. We recommend checking out WPForms, the world’s BEST plugin for creating surveys in WordPress.
WPForms is a drag-and-drop WordPress form builder that helps you create survey forms, contact forms, order forms, donation forms, and practically any other form you can imagine.
Its survey forms add-on lets you make WordPress surveys easily and provides you with useful reports. You will need WPForms Pro or a higher license to use this add-on.
Using the WordPress Survey add-on, you get the following:
- A pre-designed survey template to quick-start making a survey
- Drag-and-drop form builder to easily create survey forms
- Smart survey fields like Rating, Likert scale, and multiple-choice
- Options to embed the surveys in posts, sidebars, footers, and elsewhere
- Survey reports with graphs, charts, and tables
- Ability to export survey results in JPEG, PDF, or print formats
- An SMTP service (WP Mail SMTP)
In essence, WPForms comes as a solution for every type of form you’ll need.
Now, let’s check how to create a survey form in WordPress using WPForms.
WordPress Survey Form Builder Video Tutorial
You can also go through our written step-by-step guide on how to create a survey for your WordPress site.
How to Create a Survey Form in WordPress
- Create a Survey Form using WPForms
- Customize Your Form
- Configure Your Form’s Settings
- Embed Your Form in WordPress
- View Your Survey’s Results
Just follow these steps, you’ll have an online survey added to your WordPress site in no time.
1. Install WPForms + Create Your Survey Form
Before you can create a survey, you need to install and activate the WPForms plugin on your WordPress site.
If you don’t know how to do that, here’s our step-by-step guide on how to install a plugin in WordPress.
After activating the plugin, you’ll see a new WPForms menu on your WordPress dashboard menu. Under the Addons submenu, choose the Survey and Polls addon.
Click the Install Addon button, then Activate the addon.
Now you’re ready to create a survey with WPForms.
To get started, go to WPForms » Add New from your WordPress dashboard. Select the Survey Form template.
WPForms will provide you with a ready-to-use survey form.
You’ll see the following fields in the survey form:
- Name
- Star ratings
- Likert scale
- Paragraph text box
You can use this form without any customization if this suits your needs. If this is the case, click the Save button and head to step 3.
If you want to customize your WordPress survey form, keep reading.
2. Customize Your WordPress Survey Form
WPForms allows you to completely customize the survey form to suit your needs.
When creating your survey form, you can add additional form fields by dragging them from the left-hand side panel to the form-building interface on your right. Then, you can reorder and rearrange the fields.
If you want to edit any field, point and click on the field to open Field Options.
You can change the label, format, description, or enable Required for your fields there.
Customizing your rating field works almost identically, starting with clicking on Field Options.
You can change the field label, description, and scale for the rating between 2 and 10 stars.
Advanced Options allows you to choose an icon, icon size, icon color, CSS classes, and more.
You can also enable conditional logic by clicking on the Conditionals.
After you’ve customized your fields, click the Save button.
3. Configure Your Survey Form Settings
To configure the survey form settings, click Settings in the WPForms menu. There are 4 settings you can configure.
First comes General settings.
General settings cover the basics, including your survey form name, description, and “submit” button text and processing text. You can also decide whether to enable anti-spam honeypot, Google reCAPTCHA, and so forth from there.
Next up is Notifications. This lets you configure how you’re notified when someone completes your survey.
You can turn the notifications on or off. If you turn it on, you’ll see a default notification setting which you can review and edit as per your needs.
Third is the Confirmation setting. It’ll let you set the confirmation message your users receive after they complete your survey.
Last is the Survey and Polls setting. It’s where you can enable survey reporting.
Clicking the Enable Survey Reporting checkbox enables survey reporting for all your forms sitewide. This collects survey results for the following fields:
- Single-Line Text
- Paragraph Text
- Dropdown, Checkboxes, and Multiple Choices
- Ratings
- Likert Scale
It’s important to note this turns all your forms into surveys. If you want to enable reporting for a particular form alone, uncheck Enable Survey Reporting and save.
Then, open the form you want to enable survey reporting on and click the survey field to edit. In Field Options, click Advanced Options. There, you’ll find Enable Survey Reporting checkbox. Simply click the box and save.
4. Add Your Survey to Your Site
Now that you know how to create a survey form, including customizations, you can embed it on your WordPress site.
WPForms makes it easy to embed forms in WordPress. There are 3 main ways to embed your survey form.
Option one is to find the form shortcode in the Embed button on your form editor page.
Click the button to get a shortcode.
Copy the shortcode and paste it anywhere on your page, post, or text widget. After you’ve added and saved the post, page, or widget, you can preview your survey form.
Option two lets you directly embed your survey. As you edit a page or post, you’ll find an Add Form button in the post editor toolbar.
Click the button and select the survey form you want to add. Then, update your page or post to preview the survey form.
Option three is using the WPForms widget to add the survey form into your sidebar, footer, or any other widget-ready area.
Visit Appearance » Widgets from your WordPress dashboard and drag the WPForms widget to any widget-ready area. Then, select the Survey Form you want to add and click Save.
You can preview your survey form by visiting your site’s widget area in the front-end.
5. View Survey Form Reports
After people start filling out your survey, you can see the data in survey reports.
To view the survey data, visit WPForms » All Forms first. Go to the survey form you want to view the report for, and hover over it to view its options.
Then, click Survey Results to view your survey data.
This shows the results for each survey question.
The default data view option is a bar chart you can switch to another type of chart by clicking the relevant icon.
Next to the data view icons is an Export drop-down box. By clicking on that, you can export your reports as JPEG, PDF, or print.
And, that’s it!
Looking for a Plugin to Track All Types of Forms?
We’ve talked about how to create surveys and track their details. If that’s all you need, the WPForms Survey and Polls add-on is perfect. But, if you want to track all types of forms, including those without survey fields (like Rating and Likert scale), use MonsterInsights.
This plugin comes with a Forms tracking add-on to help you to track the overall performance of all your WordPress forms.
Are you wondering what the difference between the Survey Form results and MonsterInsights forms report is? The first one is a survey-specific report and the second is your forms’ performance report.
WPForms Survey results show you how people responded to your survey questions, while MonsterInsights Forms report shows you how many people submitted your forms.
If you want to learn more, here’s our complete guide on how to track WordPress form conversions using MonsterInsights.
How to Create a Survey that Stands Out: 5 Tips
Now that you know how to create a survey, here are 5 tips for boosting your survey’s performance:
- Offer incentives like a discount or a chance to win a giveaway.
- Keep your survey simple and short.
- Avoid biased survey questions.
- Know your target audience create your survey with them in mind.
- Test your survey on a few respondents or your fellow coworkers.
We hope this article helped you to learn how to create a survey in WordPress and generate results.
You might also want to check out our guide on how to create a contact form in WordPress.
And don’t forget to follow us on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube for more helpful Google Analytics tips.