Gathering data for your business is one of the most important tasks. This is especially true when building a sales funnel, outlining a marketing campaign, or improving customer retention. Hence, you need to work with the best tools for data collection.
In the past, gathering data was a difficult process requiring a lot of manual input and even more time and resources. Fortunately, things are much easier with technological advancements like cloud storage and big data analytics.
When running a small business or startup, your hands are full of trying to grow your company. Also, making sure everything runs smoothly. This means that you don’t have time to waste on extra work and processes that you could automate.
When looking to automate your data collection processes, we have some suggestions for data collection tools.
TypeForm Provides You The Best Tools For Data Collection
One popular choice for those looking to create simple forms, surveys, and quizzes. However, it’s the easy-to-use interface isn’t for beginners. Typeform has a wide range of features that can be used by advanced users as well.
The data collection tool allows you to choose from dozens of templates. The templates match specific purposes such as event registration, feedback collection, and product research. You can also start from scratch by creating your form from the ground up.
For advanced user looking for more control over your form or quiz design, Typeform offers CSS editing for its paid plan options.
The free plan offered through Typeform allows you to create an unlimited number of forms with ten questions each and up to 100 responses per month. Paid plans start at $35/month. It includes custom branding, unlimited questions per form, advanced reporting options, etc.
Zoho Survey – Best Data Collection Tools
A feature-rich data collection tools of data collection that you can use to create surveys, questionnaires, feedback forms, and more. The tool has over 15 question types. This includes multiple-choice, rating scales, and open-ended text questions. Zoho Survey has all the digital data collection tools to collect the answers you want.
The software also lets you add images and videos to your surveys to make them more interesting for respondents. Other valuable features include:
- Customizable themes and templates.
- Logic-based branching (to skip irrelevant questions).
- Sharing tools to promote your survey on social media.
This makes Zoho Survey one of the best data collection tools for researchers looking for a quick way to collect and analyze data.
Survey Monkey – Cheap Tools of Data Collection
An online survey development cloud-based software as a service company. It was founded in 1999 by Ryan Finley, who currently serves as CEO of the company.
Moreover, it is easy to see why SurveyMonkey is a popular choice for online survey creation and distribution. The free version of SurveyMonkey allows you to create surveys with up to ten questions or 100 responses per month (whichever comes first). The paid options will enable you to create more complex surveys with more advanced features.
SurveyMonkey allows you to create your surveys with simple drag-and-drop survey building tools and analyze your data right away with real-time reports. You can also export your data into Excel, SPSS, or even R (if you have some coding skills).
PollDaddy – Simple Online Data Collection Tools
A free WordPress poll plugin lets you quickly and easily create polls, surveys, and ratings. You can insert polls in your posts, pages, or sidebar. Moreover, you can also embed a survey on any website. Polls are entirely customizable with unlimited options. You can add images to your questions or use images as answers (great for A/B comparisons). Polldaddy integrates with the WordPress dashboard, so it works seamlessly with WordPress.
You can use Polldaddy to get feedback from your customers, find out their opinions, or ask them questions. The most popular way to use Polldaddy is to ask your readers what they think about something by creating multiple-choice questions. You can also add open-ended questions that allow your readers to reply with more than one answer and even upload pictures if you want them to.
Google Analytics – Affordable Data Collection Tools For Website Owners
One of the most comprehensive tools for analyzing your website traffic. The tool is available for free. Also, you can use it to understand how your customers are accessing your website. Moreover, where they are coming from, and what they are doing once they get there.
For example, if you want to see which devices most of your customers use when accessing your site, you can go to Google Analytics. Afterward, see whether most of them use a desktop, smartphone, or tablet. You can also discover which pages on the site are the most popular and whether users stay on those pages for a long time or bounce right away.
In addition to the information you can pull from Google Analytics, you can integrate Google AdWords with Google Analytics. This gives you insights into how many visits to your website are through paid search results. This integration helps you understand if your AdWords campaigns are performing as expected and whether they’re driving more traffic to your website.
Form Builder by Cognito Forms
One of the most user-friendly tools. With its drag and drop builder, you can create a beautiful form in minutes. The tool also allows you to collect payment information from your respondents. This means that you can create forms for registration and sales, for example.
Form Builder by Cognito Forms is best for small businesses. The tool has a free plan to create unlimited forms with unlimited fields and 500 responses per month. You can select from different templates or start with a blank template from scratch. The tool offers advanced features like conditional logic and eSignature, but only on paid plans.
Wufoo – Inclusive Tools Of Data Collection
An online form builder enables you to create contact forms, surveys, and more for your website. The service will help you collect the information and manage it from a central location. You can customize the form to match your website. Also, you can use the API to integrate the online data collection tools with a third-party app.
Wufoo integrates with over 400 apps. This includes popular services such as Salesforce, Dropbox, MailChimp, etc. You can also integrate Wufoo with Google Drive, Zendesk, and Evernote for data storage purposes. The reports section of Wufoo allows you to view data in real-time, export them as PDFs or Excel documents, send automatic notifications when you receive data, and much more.
Wufoo offers a free plan with limited features such as three forms and ten fields per form. The paid plans start at $14.95 per month, allowing you to create up to 100 forms with an unlimited number of fields in each form.
For more about data storage: Best tools for file storage and sharing
American FactFinder
The U.S. Census Bureau provides various data that covers everything from population and housing information to business and industry statistics. Most of the data come from the decennial census. The Census Bureau takes it every ten years in years ending with a zero(2010, 2020, etc.). However, there is data collection in between. Some of this information is available via American FactFinder. Thus, you can use to track down relevant statistics for your area.
Once you enter your search criteria, you should see some results appear in the right-hand panel. The first few entries will be summaries of relevant data tables. However, as you scroll down, you will see individual facts such as median income and total population.
You can also download the raw data by clicking on “Download Center” in the top navigation bar. Finish by selecting your preferred file format (CSV and Excel are available).
Statista
An excellent tool for conducting market research. One of the main advantages of Statista is that it provides users with a wide variety of highly diverse data sources. This ranges from market reports to infographics and statistics.
Another advantage is that the website is easy to use. Also, it offers features like an intuitive search engine and interactive charts to visually present information. However, the downside is that some content behind this platform can be scarce. Thus, it means that it can be hard to find the correct numbers when you need them.
A relevant element of Statista is its data-gathering expertise. This allows it to create complex surveys and analyze their results. The best part: you can use Statista to conduct your surveys or rely on its professional team of researchers.
Here is a look at some common questions asked about the best data collection tools.
FAQs about best tools for data collection
The online data collection tools allow you to gather information from your customers quickly and efficiently. You can use this tool to gather feedback or ask for specific information like email addresses.
With Benchmark, for instance, you can easily create surveys using our survey builder. You can also embed the surveys into your emails so that your customers can answer them without leaving their inboxes with digital data collection tools.
You can download raw data from your survey by choosing the “download data” option in the results area of your survey.
Final Takeaway
What are the best online data collection tools? With so many ways to go about it, figuring out what method you should use in any given situation can be a challenge. No tools of data collection are perfect for every occasion. Therefore, how do you know which one is appropriate for the job at hand? Go through our list to find your best tools for data collection.