One Event, Multiple Tracks: How Do You Run a Complete Survey with a Single Form?
Ideas worth spreading.
TEDxShuinan received official TED licensing in 2020 to hold local events. The license holder also organized the TEDxChinaMedicalU annual conference and related events in 2017. The move to focus on the Shuinan area followed the university's relocation to its Shuinan campus in October 2020, and reflected a belief in the area's limitless future development, driven by projects like Central Park, the trade and business park, and the smart city initiative, positioning it to become Taichung's next hub of urban development. Shuinan also carries historical significance as a military site from the Japanese colonial era. The ultimate goal is to deepen roots in the Shuinan community and spread TED's core value of ideas worth spreading.
Committed to promoting talks on all kinds of topics and holding related forums, how does TEDxShuinan use SurveyCake to effectively manage event registration and volunteer recruitment?
Before SurveyCake
Q: What was your previous survey method?
Our surveys in the past generally fell into three types: paper, Google Forms, and Typeform. The biggest problem with paper was manual analysis and tabulation. We had to manually transcribe responses into an Excel file, which was very tedious.
Google Forms' interface was basic and its features limited. While it offered collaboration, event surveys rarely actually need a group of people editing questions together, so we used that feature relatively little anyway. Also, events often have attendance limits, and capping the number of responses required installing an add-on, but the add-on was unstable and occasionally buggy, causing trouble with response collection.
Typeform's English-only interface wasn't very friendly for Chinese-speaking users. Its free version also had more restrictions, limiting the number of surveys and responses, making it less practical for running events.
"SurveyCake, a Taiwanese startup, supports a Chinese interface that fits the habits of Chinese-speaking users, and members enjoy unlimited surveys and responses free for life."
Q: Why did you choose SurveyCake?
SurveyCake's interface isn't just easy to use, the visual design of the survey is also more attractive, and it feels a bit flashier to use. In a sense, using Google Forms feels serviceable and standard, but SurveyCake feels professional. That's the impression SurveyCake gives.
SurveyCake also supports a Chinese interface, offers unlimited surveys and responses for free, and lets us set a maximum number of responses, helping us control event attendance, which is why we ultimately chose SurveyCake.
"SurveyCake removes limits on survey and response volume, offers a smoother response experience, and effectively sets a response cap."
After SurveyCake
Q: How do you design and promote your event registration survey?
For the form's content, I generally try to keep the survey and question wording lively, and I use the introduction feature to explain the event content more fully.
In terms of question design, we use skip logic to make filling out the form more intuitive and smooth. For example, in an event with 150 people split into Track A and Track B, a respondent who chooses Track A goes on to answer questions about Track A's speakers, while someone choosing Track B answers questions about Track B's speakers. On other platforms, this might require building 2 separate surveys, but SurveyCake lets me ask 2 different groups of respondents within a single survey, and I can just look at one statistical chart to see the results, which is really convenient.
Online, we promote the event through Instagram and Facebook. Offline, we print the event page's QR code on flyers and hand them out at in-person events for people to scan, taking them to the event page which then links to the registration form.
"A must-know feature for survey design, skip logic, gives a friendlier response experience and makes survey design more intuitive."
Q: What costs has SurveyCake saved TEDxShuinan?
SurveyCake saves us an enormous amount of time and labor. Because it's relatively easy to use and doesn't take much time, one person alone can manage collecting and consolidating form responses, without needing to recruit anyone else. With a traditional paper survey, we would have needed to hand out forms and print hundreds of pages, and since this involves storing personal data, storage space becomes a real concern too. Storing it in an office, with people coming and going, makes it hard to guarantee privacy and security.
"With an online survey service, your password is the best protection. No one else knows it, not even us."
A Word for SurveyCake
Q: What is SurveyCake's most practical feature?
I think skip logic and response caps are both extremely useful for running events. Not only can we survey different audiences with a single form, we can also easily cap the number of responses, keeping registration in line with venue capacity.
Q: What do you like most about SurveyCake?
Running events over the past few years, I've searched through many similar services, and SurveyCake is a distinctive online survey tool. The interface has a little cake and other icons that make building a survey feel lively, not like work. Beyond offering many useful features like detail export, statistical charts, skip logic, and response caps, the overall interface is also very friendly.
Making Event Registration Easier
Our thanks to TEDxShuinan for taking the time to share their experience and candid feedback, helping us understand the platform's current strengths and weaknesses so we can deliver a better survey service. As a success story, it also shows peers how to use surveys for feedback collection and effectively raise response rates.
To learn more about diverse survey applications, or if you are interested in SurveyCake ENTERPRISE, contact us. Fill out the Enterprise trial form and a specialist will reach out to understand your organization's needs and ideas.
