How to Create a Questionnaire in WordPress (Easy Way)

How to Easily Create a Questionnaire in WordPress (Ultimate Guide)

Do you want to survey your website visitors, gather feedback from customers, or collect research data? Creating a questionnaire in WordPress is an effective way to gain valuable insights to help you make better decisions and grow your business or blog.

In this ultimate guide, we‘ll show you how to easily create a professional questionnaire in WordPress step-by-step. We‘ll cover everything from choosing the right questions to configuring advanced options, so you can start gathering responses in no time.

Why Create a Questionnaire in WordPress?

Here are just a few of the many benefits of creating questionnaires in WordPress:

• Get feedback from your audience to improve your website, products, or services
• Learn more about your visitors to deliver more relevant content and offers
• Conduct market research to test out new ideas or understand your industry better
• Gather data for academic research studies or school projects
• Quiz your students or employees to assess their knowledge and performance
• Create fun Buzzfeed-style personality quizzes to entertain and engage your audience

With WordPress powering over 43% of all websites, it‘s the perfect platform to build your questionnaire. You have complete control over the design, integrations with your other marketing tools, and full ownership of your data. Let‘s dive into how to get started.

Step 1: Install and Activate WPForms

The easiest way to create a questionnaire in WordPress is by using a drag-and-drop form builder plugin. We recommend WPForms, the most beginner-friendly WordPress form plugin used by over 5 million websites.

To get started, install and activate the WPForms plugin. If you need help, see this guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

WPForms has a free lite version, but we recommend upgrading to the Pro version to unlock advanced features like conditional logic, survey reporting, user journey tracking, form abandonmen, and more addons – all of which are very helpful for creating effective questionnaires.

Once WPForms is installed, you‘ll need to enter your license key under WPForms » Settings to activate the Pro features. You can find the license key in your account on the WPForms website.

Step 2: Create a New Questionnaire Form

Now you‘re ready to create your questionnaire. Go to WPForms » Add New to launch the form builder.

First, enter a name for your questionnaire form at the top, such as "Customer Feedback Survey" or "Reader Interest Questionnaire".

Then, scroll down to the Additional Templates section and click on the Survey Form template to get started quickly with pre-built questionnaire fields. Of course, you can always start with a Blank Form template if you prefer.

Now you‘ll see the drag-and-drop form builder interface. You can add new form fields from the left panel, customize field options, and rearrange fields in the preview panel on the right.

The Survey Form template includes the following fields to help you create a basic questionnaire:

• Name
• Rating (1-5 stars)
• Multiple choice question – "How did you hear about us?"
• Likert scale matrix – "How would you rate us on the following?"
• Open-ended text question – "How can we improve?"

Step 3: Customize Your Questionnaire Form Fields

To edit a form field, simply click on it in the preview panel. This will open the Field Options in the left panel where you can:

• Change the Label
• Enter a Description
• Mark the field Required or not
• Customize the Choices for multiple choice, dropdown, or Likert scale fields
• Enable Columns to make checkbox or multiple choice options appear side-by-side

For example, you might want to make the Name field optional and change the Choices for the "How Did You Hear About Us?" question to be more specific to your business.

Feel free to drag and drop additional fields from the left to expand your questionnaire. WPForms supports many different field types including:

• Single Line Text – For open-ended short answer questions
• Paragraph Text – For longer open-ended questions or feedback
• Dropdown – Allow users to select one option from a list
• Checkboxes – Allow users to select multiple options
• Multiple Choice – Allow users to select one option
• Rating – 2-10 scale or 1-5 star rating
• Likert Scale – Matrix of dropdowns for users to rate statements on a scale
• Net Promoter Score – Ask users "How likely are you to recommend us to a friend?"

As you‘re building your questionnaire, consider what information would be most valuable to your goals. In general, it‘s best to:

• Keep it as short as possible (aim for 5-10 questions)
• Start with easy multiple choice or rating questions
• Place open-ended questions that require more thought at the end
• Use skip logic and conditional logic to keep it relevant
• Make most fields optional (only require an email if needed)

Step 4: Configure Your Questionnaire Settings

Once you‘ve customized your questionnaire form fields, it‘s time to configure the settings. Click on the Settings tab in the form builder to set up the following options:

General:

• Form Name – Internal name for your reference
• Form Description – Explain the purpose of your questionnaire
• Submit Button Text – Customize the text on the submit button
• Spam Prevention – Enable the anti-spam honeypot feature and Google reCAPTCHA
• AJAX Form Submission – Enable to submit the form without reloading the page
• Disable storing entry information in WordPress to comply with GDPR

Notifications:

• Send To Email Address – The email address to receive form response notifications (defaults to your WordPress admin email)
• Email Subject Line – Customize the notification email subject line

Confirmations:

• Choose a confirmation type – Message, Show Page, or Redirect (URL)
• Confirmation Message – Customize the message users see after they submit the form

You may also want to click on the Appearance tab to customize the form design and CSS. This is completely optional as the form will inherit your WordPress theme‘s styles by default.

Click Save at the top to store your questionnaire form settings.

Step 5: Configure Survey and Poll Settings

If you‘re using WPForms Pro or above, you can enable survey reporting to view interactive visual reports of your questionnaire responses.

Go to Settings » Surveys and Polls from the form builder. Then at the top, click the Enable Survey Reporting button.

This will open up new options to customize the survey reporting:

• Survey Name – Internal name for your reference
• Allow Multiple Responses – Allow users to respond more than once
• Disable Storing Responses – Choose not to save responses in your WordPress database
• Show Survey Results – Display live survey results to users after they submit
• Show Survey Results: Require Answer – Only display results after the user responds
• Survey Results Display Format – Choice to display results as Bar Graph, Pie Chart, or List

Step 6: Add Your Questionnaire to Your Website

Now that your questionnaire form is ready, it‘s time to embed it on your WordPress website. With WPForms, you can easily add it to any page, post, or widget area with a shortcode or block.

To embed your questionnaire form in a new page:

1. Go to Pages » Add New in your WordPress dashboard
2. Enter a title and optional content for your page
3. Click the Add Block (+) button and search for "WPForms"
4. Select your questionnaire form from the dropdown in the WPForms block settings
5. Update or publish the page to make it live

If you prefer, you can also go to WPForms » All Forms and click on the Embed button to see the shortcode for your questionnaire form. Copy this shortcode and paste it into the classic WordPress editor of any post or page to embed it inline.

Once your questionnaire is embedded, be sure to test it out to make sure it‘s working properly. Fill out the form yourself or ask a colleague to do a test submission. This will help you catch any typos or errors before you start promoting it.

Step 7: View Your Questionnaire Responses

One of the best things about using WPForms to create your questionnaire is that it automatically stores all the response data for you. You can easily view the responses in your WordPress dashboard and generate visual reports without having to manually transfer any data.

Here‘s how to view your questionnaire responses:

1. Go to WPForms » Entries in your WordPress dashboard
2. Click on the name of your questionnaire form to view that form‘s entries
3. Browse individual entries in the list or click View to see each response
4. To generate a report, click on the Survey Results button at the top

On the Survey Results page, you can view colorful graphs and charts visualizing the data for each question in your questionnaire. You can segment the data by date range and easily export the graphs as a PDF or JPEG to include in presentations or reports.

For open-ended text questions, you‘ll see a word cloud highlighting the most commonly used words and phrases. This can help you quickly spot trends or recurring themes in the responses to inform your decisions.

With WPForms, you can also:

• Download all the raw questionnaire data as a CSV spreadsheet
• View individual user journey maps to see how each respondent arrived at and interacted with your questionnaire
• Integrate with email marketing and CRM tools to automatically send questionnaire responses to your other business apps

Maximizing Questionnaire Response Rates

A successful questionnaire is one that gets in front of the right audience and motivates them to complete it. Here are some tips to boost your questionnaire response rates:

1. Offer an incentive like a discount code, free resource, or entry into a prize drawing upon completion
2. Keep the questionnaire short and communicate upfront how long it will take to complete (e.g. "5 minutes")
3. Make it visually appealing and user-friendly on desktop and mobile devices
4. Set it to pop-up or fly-in at the right time based on a user‘s behavior (e.g. scrolled 50% of page, spend 1 minute on site, etc.)
5. Personalize it by using merge tags to greet returning users by name
6. Follow accessibility best practices to make it easy to read and navigate for respondents using assistive technology
7. Customize the share messages and make it easy for respondents to share your questionnaire on social media
8. Send the questionnaire link to your email subscribers, share on social posts, and link to it from your website navigation or home page

With a solid distribution plan and optimized questionnaire design, you‘ll be collecting helpful responses from your audience in no time.

Conclusion

Creating a questionnaire in WordPress doesn‘t have to be complicated or time-consuming, thanks to powerful plugins like WPForms. With its intuitive drag-and-drop builder and advanced features, you can design effective questionnaires to gain insights, improve your offerings, and grow your business.

By following the steps in this guide, you‘ll be able to launch your WordPress questionnaire with confidence. Customize it to your needs, embed it on your site, and start collecting valuable data from your audience today.

We hope this ultimate guide has been helpful in walking you through exactly how to create a questionnaire in WordPress. With these tips and tools, you‘re well on your way to making data-driven decisions to better serve your customers and achieve your goals.