Unlock the potential of your WordPress survey data! Master how to analyze survey results with this 3-step guide. Forget formulas and embrace simplicity with Formidable Forms' pre-built reports.
Approximate read time: 6.5 minutes
Surveys can be a powerful tool for any website. With just a few good survey questions, you can learn a lot about your audience and get important customer experience feedback.
But if you aren't analyzing survey results as a whole, you're likely missing out on important insights.
Luckily, there’s a simple — and automatic — way to transform responses into easy-to-interpret survey reports that can help you make better business decisions.
In this article, we'll quickly discuss the importance of survey analysis, set you up for statistical success, and finally take you through a step-by-step guide to getting the most out of your survey data.
Why analyze survey results?
You probably already know that online surveys and questionnaires can tell you a lot about who visits your site and how they feel about your brand, product, or services.
But did you know focusing on individual form entries won't give you the full picture?
Even if you gather all your results into a table, it's hard to identify trends just by looking at columns and rows of raw data. Not to mention it's not the most impactful way to present your findings.
That's where survey data analysis and data visualization come into play! Suddenly patterns jump out of the statistics and actionable insights become apparent.
By analyzing your results, you can:
- Understand the preferences, opinions, and pain points of existing or potential customers
- Spot patterns, trends, or problems you may otherwise miss
- Make data-driven decisions to optimize and improve your offer or processes
- Measure and monitor the success of marketing strategies and campaigns
- Identify overlooked growth or improvement opportunities
All this helps you offer better customer service, optimize marketing efforts, and ultimately increase revenue.
We know data analysis sounds daunting, but we promise there's no need to panic!
You actually only need a single WordPress plugin to make online surveys AND analyze the results. It's called Formidable Forms, and it can even generate custom reports, charts, and graphs for you too.
So say so long to spreadsheets and confusing Excel formulas. Let's show you how easy it is to analyze survey data right in WordPress with Formidable Forms.
Already have a Formidable survey on your site? ⏭️ Skip straight to Step 1!
Before you can do survey analysis...
You need some data to analyze! And for that, you need to have a survey on your site as well as at least a few form submissions.
To get your survey set up, first pick up Formidable's WordPress form maker by clicking the button below!
After installing the plugin on your site, navigate over to Formidable → Add-Ons to Install and Activate the Survey and Polls Add-On.
Now you're ready to create your survey! Head to Formidable → Forms → Add New to make your form. Add or edit fields to ask whatever types of research questions you want.
You may want to include a Net Promoter Score (NPS) survey, multiple choice questions, Likert scales, and other close-ended questions to collect quantitative data.
You can also ask open-ended questions, but keep in mind qualitative data is tougher to analyze.
Hit Update to save, then publish your survey form on any page or post you choose.
Need help building your survey form? Check out this Knowledge Base article.
Now, just sit back and relax, and watch the responses roll in! Once you have a couple entries, you're ready to move on to the next step and interpret the data.
How to analyze survey data
When submissions start coming in, you can do some basic survey analysis with Formidable's default reports. Just remember — the more survey respondents you get, the more statistically significant data you'll have.
Aren't sure whether you have enough data points? This sample size calculator template will tell you if your sample size is big enough.
Step 1: View default survey reports
To view your automatically generated survey report, go to Formidable → Forms.
Then select your form and click Settings. Under the Reports tab at the top of the screen, you should see a few graphs presenting your results.
Sure, this graph is pretty basic. But even the simplest details such as the distribution of responses over time can provide valuable insights.
And it's worth mentioning these graphs display live data and are updated in real-time with every new or edited entry. That way, you always have a clear picture of your survey answers no matter how many people have responded.
While these default reports can be helpful, they may not give you the in-depth analysis we real data nerds are after. We have a few tricks up our sleeve though, so keep reading to find out how to create custom charts and graphs.
Step 2: Create custom charts and graphs for survey results
Forget formulas, spreadsheets, and coding. All you need to create custom charts and graphs in WordPress is Formidable Forms and its simple data visualization shortcodes.
And the best part? You can display your data on any WordPress page, post, widget, or View you want!
There are two different ways to plot your survey data with shortcodes.
First, if you want to only graph specific fields from your survey, here's the shortcode you'll want to use:
[frm-graph fields="x,y,z"]Just replace "x,y,z" with the field IDs.
Or, if you'd rather display the entirety of your survey responses, use the shortcode:
[frm-graph form="x"]replacing "x" with the form ID.
By default, these shortcodes will create a bar chart (aka column graph). But, you can change the type of chart or graph by adding "type=" to the end of the shortcode.
For example, here's how to display results as a pie chart:
[frm-graph form="x" type="pie"]
And Formidable gives you several types of graphs to choose from. Discover all of the WordPress graphs you can make with Formidable Forms.
⚙️ Learn more about creating custom graphs in WordPress, including cool cross-tabulating and filtering features.
Step 3: Analyze your entries using statistics
Would you rather display numbers? No problem! You can also use a text-based statistical approach with Formidable. Like with charts and graphs, you just have to copy and paste shortcodes.
Let's say we want to show the average from a star rating survey. So, we'd publish the following shortcode:
[frm-stats id=17 type=average]And ta-da! Here's what appears on the front end:
It's a simple but effective way to represent any amount of data.
And in Formidable, you can get just as specific with statistical analysis as you can with graphs. Whether you want to display a count, average, total, min/max values, or another result, the shortcodes handle the math for you.
Check out all the calculation options in our statistics knowledge base article.
Ready to analyze your online survey results?
While we may not be statisticians, we do hope this article still helped you learn how to analyze data from survey questionnaires in WordPress!
Whether your audience is large or small, analyzing survey answers can be the key to unlocking a new level of success for your online business. Fortunately, getting the most out of your data doesn't have to be difficult.
By using Formidable Forms' built-in reporting and analysis tools, you're sure to get the most out of your web forms and surveys. And let's not forget, this one WordPress plugin helps you both collect and interpret survey results.
Now that's what we call an all-in-one survey solution!
For more data analysis awesomeness, be sure to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
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super helpful! Thanks
This is awesome. I will have to investigate this further. It seems like a great way to understand the captured data.
Nice tutorial. ?? This help a lot.
Woo! Thank you, that is what I needed to manage better my data!!
Nice and very helpful.
I would like that this was easier to setup with some common measures etc. and also filtering options so I could filter data for a week, a month etc. I dont see how I can do this as it is now.
Hi Peter,
Improving how our graphs work is on our roadmap. In fact we are currently in the design stages for a way to add the various parameters and filtering options without clumsy shortcodes. We don't have an ETA on this release, but it is in the works.
For now, please check out our documentation and contact our support team if you are still unsure how to filter your graphs the way you would like.
Here is a link to a relevant doc: https://formidableforms.com/knowledgebase/graphs/#kb-filtering-parameters
Is it possible to get the reports emailed