How to Create a Pipe Survey in WordPress

A pipe survey is a simple way to personalize the user experience. We’ll show you how to make question and answer piping in just two steps!

Customers today appreciate a personalized experience. A pipe survey can be just the tool you need to provide them with one. However, understanding the benefits of question and answer piping isn’t quite the same as knowing how to use it.

Fortunately, the process doesn’t have to be complicated. By getting familiar with the basic building blocks of a piping survey, you can create personalized content for your own visitors.

In this article, we’ll cover a few reasons why you might want to consider using a piping survey. Then, we’ll show you how to create one in just two steps. Let’s dive right in!

What is a pipe survey?

A pipe survey is a form that uses a person's entries in one field to customize other fields later in the form. For example, it may ask someone what product they bought. Then, it would provide a uniquely named follow-up question based on their answer.

Why you might want to use a question and answer piping

Your audience may appreciate this tailored approach. However, it's not just about offering a pleasant user experience. There's potential for profit too: 63 percent of marketers report an increase in conversion rates after using personalized content.

Moreover, a piping survey isn't limited to customized questions and answers alone. Almost every field can benefit – dynamic fields, labels, and answer options included.

Best of all, you don't need to be a coding expert to use this feature. With a little bit of practice and guidance from our knowledge base, you'll be applying piping data wherever you need it in no time.

How to create a pipe survey

Marketing-focused options like Qualtrics piped text may be helpful, but this focus may limit how frequently you can actually apply it. That's why we’ve decided to use the most flexible form-building plugin for this walkthrough. Make sure you have it installed and activated before you begin.

Step 1: Add a page break and an HTML field

To get started, you'll need to create a new survey. You can do so by going to Formidable → Forms → Add New. After you decide between starting from scratch or with a template, you'll reach the main editing screen.

Then, add your first field. This will collect piping data that your survey will use later on. You'll also need to add a page break below it:

After the page break, add another field. This can be an HTML field to show a message, or another question type if you'd like to customize the field label or answer options. In an HTML field, you'll see an Content box where you can define how you want your piping data to be used:

Let's start with something simple. In our example, we've asked the user for their name. We then want to give them a personalized greeting using that information.

If you want to do something similar, find the ID for that first field. Then, write your text as you'd like it to appear in the Content box, adding in the ID number where you want the name.

For example, we entered the following custom variable:

Hi [617]! Nice to see you.

As a result, the user would see this screen after entering their name:

Basic piping like this can be helpful for simple situations, such as when you want to confirm a user's information.

The same field id can be used inside the question text (field label), description, or the answer options in another field. This is perfect to maximize personalization throughout a form, using any previous questions.

If you're looking for more advanced options, you can continue onto step two.

Step 2: Create conditional statements

Conditional statements are an easy way to take your piping survey to the next level. Not only do they collect that data from earlier, but they can also produce different responses based on the entry.

You can get started by going back to the HTML box from earlier. For our example, we want to add a unique response if the user doesn't enter their name. To do that, we'll add an if/then clause that looks something like this:

[if 617] Hi [617]! Nice to see you. [/if]
[if 617 equals=""] Whoops! You forgot to enter a name. Please go back and try again. [/if]

Now, users who submit a blank entry will see this:

Keep in mind that this is only the beginning of what you can do. There are tons of different types of conditionals that you can use. Feel free to play around with them!

Conclusion

A little bit of personalization can go a long way. Fortunately, you can easily accomplish this with the help of a pipe survey. By understanding the basics of this form-enhancing tool, you can start tailoring your fields to fit your users' individual needs.

In this article, we showed you how to create a piped survey using Formidable Forms:

1. Add a page break and a customized field.
2. Create conditional statements for extra personalization.

With Formidable Forms, catering to your audience has never been easier. Check out some of the other great features that our plugin has to offer!

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