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How to Create Online Surveys for Consumer Insights

Creating a survey with aytm takes five steps: choose where your respondents come from, write your questions, launch, track results as they arrive, and turn the data into insights. This article walks through each step.

In This Article

Step 1: Choose Your Respondents and Define Your Target Market

Every survey is either a List Survey or a Panel Survey. You pick one when you create the survey. For a side-by-side comparison, see List Survey vs. Panel Survey.

List Surveys

If you already have people to survey, such as your customers, sales leads, or social media followers, create a List Survey. The List Survey itself is free; some premium question types carry a per-use fee. After launch, you share the survey link by email or on social media, embed the survey on your website, or print a QR code. Every response lands in the same results page, whichever channel it came from.

A List Survey doesn't come with demographic data. If you need age, gender, income, or other traits, add those questions to your survey.

List Survey Demo Stats Page

Panel Surveys

If you'd like aytm to provide respondents, create a Panel Survey. You get access to more than 100 million people worldwide through aytm's panel and partner panels, available around the clock. Every Panel Survey includes key demographic traits at no extra cost, so you don't need to ask them in your survey.

You can narrow your audience in two ways:

  • Premium Profiling (US surveys only): choose from 2,000+ behavioral and psychographic characteristics, such as media habits, purchasing behavior, and personality traits. Want to survey people who love sushi, own an iPhone, and watch the Disney Channel? No problem.
  • Screeners: if Premium Profiling doesn't have what you need, click Add a screener in the survey editor to write your own pre-qualification questions.

Panel Survey Demo Stats Page

Sample Complexity and Delivery Guarantee

As you adjust your target market, the Sample Complexity meter updates to show how demanding your targeting is, from Blitz to Sophisticated. The sidebar also shows your delivery guarantee: if you launch within the time shown, we guarantee delivery by the quoted date. If you launch later, you get a new guarantee.

If your survey runs past the guaranteed date, you can stop it. The unused part of the sample cost is credited back to your aytm account, plus a 10% bonus, for 110% in total.

⚠️ Note: The 10% bonus doesn't apply to surveys with screener questions or surveys that include respondents from your earlier surveys. You can stop a survey with screeners at any time and get the unused amount back, but without the bonus.

Finally, enter how many responses you need in Total Sample size (N). For a List Survey, the field is Number of Completes.

Defining a target market on the Target Market page 

Step 2: Write Your Survey

Once you've defined your target market, it's time to write your survey. Choose from 20+ question types and 8 research tests, such as MaxDiff, Conjoint, Shelf Test, and Competitive Topography. Which ones you can use depends on your plan.

  • Images: add images to most questions and answer options.
  • Reorder and clone: drag a question by its handle to move it. To clone it, hold Shift (PC) or Option (Mac) while you drag, or double-click the handle.
  • Video answers: use the Video Response question to have respondents record an answer with their webcam or upload a video. It adds qualitative depth to your data.

List Survey Messages and Appearance

List Surveys have a few extra options:

  • Custom message: a message shown alongside your survey.
  • End of survey: either a custom "thank you" message or your own forwarding URLs.
  • Theme editor: upload a logo, add header text, choose an accent color, and pick a background from our library or upload your own. Then preview the result. Backgrounds you upload stay available for your other List Surveys.

The custom message, thank-you message, and forwarding URLs are available on Plus plans and higher. The theme editor is available on every plan. For details, see Edit Appearance on List Surveys.

Writing questions in the survey editor 

Step 3: Launch Your Survey

Once you've finished writing and previewing your survey, check out and launch.

  • List Surveys: checkout gives you the survey URL to email or post on social media, an embed code for your website (GET EMBED CODE), and a QR code for printed materials (SAVE QR CODE). The link works once the survey is launched.
  • Panel Surveys: most go out to our panelists as soon as you launch, and responses start arriving on your results page. Some surveys are first queued for our Panel Operations team to set up a fielding plan. The dashboard shows these as in Queue.

The checkout page after launching a survey 

Step 4: Track Your Results

To see results for a survey that's in progress or completed, find it on your dashboard and click the chart icon in the Results column, on the right side of the survey row. The results open in a new tab. You can also choose Stat report from the survey's menu.

The results page doesn't refresh by itself. Click Refresh report to load the newest responses.

 

Step 5: Turn Your Data into Insights

As responses come in, the results page shows your data as charts that you can filter, split, and export. Research tests come with their own views; Competitive Topography, for example, adds an interactive 3D Topography view.

  • Split charts by a demographic: in the View tab, use Split all charts by a demographic to compare how people of different ages, incomes, education levels, ethnicities, careers, or relationship statuses answered, all in one chart.
  • Filter your data: in the Filters tab, filter by any trait your survey collected, such as gender, age, income, ethnicity, education, employment status, career, relationship status, parental status, and location (state, region, or ZIP code).
  • Choose colors: in the Colors tab, pick one of the default palettes or create a custom palette in your company's colors. The survey owner and team admins can create custom palettes.
  • Export: in the Export tab, download response-level data (Excel, CSV, SPSS, or JMP), summary data (Excel), banner tables (crosstabs), or a presentation (PowerPoint or Keynote). Select Apply active filters to export only the filtered data. SPSS and JMP exports are available on Flex and Enterprise plans.
  • Share: invite up to 10 people by email, or generate a report link that anyone with the link can open.

For a full tour of the results page, see Stat Reports and Visualizations Overview.