Post Online Surveys to Your Bank Website for Free

By Jason Sherrill
Posted on Feb 19, 2008

One of the easiest methods to quickly collect customer feedback is via online surveys, posted either on your website or distributed via email. Since few website content management systems (CMSs) offer survey tools and third-party products can be expensive and cumbersome to install, not many small and mid-size banks and credit unions use online surveys.

Using a new feature in Google spreadsheets, anyone can easily create, distribute and analyze online surveys. Best of all, it's free! Let me show you how to get started.

First, let me share an important disclaimer: Spreadsheets are not databases. Spreadsheets are not databases. (Twice for emphasis)

The process is simple:

1. Go to www.google.com/docs and sign up for your free account
2. Create a new, empty spreadsheet
3. Click on the Share tab and input a name when prompted
4. Click the "to fill out a form" radio button in the Invite People: section
5. Create your survey
6. Email it

Here's a quick screen cast showing step-by-step how to do it. The audio is a bit muffled since I left my recording mic at the office, so just turn up your volume a couple of notches.

Simple, eh? You can email the form directly to your recipient list, or you can skip that step and just post a link to the survey on your website. Go ahead, fill out my survey.

As I mentioned, spreadsheets are not databases. This Google method will work ok for 50 to a few hundred respondents. But think twice before you send a survey using Google docs to your list of 100,000 recipients. If you're working with a list that large, call us, you'll need a database-driven solution.

For those who understand why I stated the disclaimer twice, you'll enjoy this blog post.