FormSpring now has one more feature to recommend it, and it’s a big one for web workers: extensive third-party integrations. Using said integrations, you can now use any form you create in FormSpring with a laundry list of web apps that many readers of this blog will immediately recognize.

I want to take a look first at what FormSpring offers as a forms creation suite, and then go into a little more detail about the new third-party integration feature.

Creating a Form

Making your first form with FormSpring is not very complicated at all. You can start from scratch, use a template, copy an existing form from another web page (ethically questionable?), or upload a pre-existing HTML form. FormSpring’s template list is fairly comprehensive, without being overwhelming, and it’s broken down into categories to make it that much easier to find what you’re looking for.

Once you’ve chosen a type of form, you’re presented with the form editor. The editor’s clean layout gives you a WYSIWYG view of the form you’re building, including preset fields if you chose to start building from a template. Any field can be edited using a convenient pop-up window, where you can customize the field type, size, label and a number of other options. Fields can be dragged and rearranged, and you can add new fields, sections, and extras using a convenient sticky toolbar at the bottom of the editor.

Form Extras include options like global layout settings, form progress indicators and saving options for end users, submit button customization and CAPTCHA options. The nice thing about these options is that they exist for people who need them, but if beginner users don’t notice or take advantage of them, it really won’t detract from the quality of their final form.

Using a Form

Having a great form creation engine is great, but it’s all for nothing if you can’t get that form out to the people you want to use it in an easy and effective manner. FormSpring provides you with a number of easy-to-use options for distributing your creations, so that you can target different users in the way you deem best.

You can choose from having FormSpring generate a unique URL at which your form can be reached, embedding the form using JavaScript code or HTML, installing a widget in your TypePad-enabled blog, or using an intermediate form that gathers data from your user before forwarding them to the form you’ve created.

Providing so many options ensures that you can tailor your form distribution strategy to specific target respondents, and also allows users with varying levels of technical expertise to take advantage of what FormSpring has to offer.

Third-party Integrations

As I mentioned earlier, FormSpring recently introduced new third-party integrations that makes it easier to use forms created via the web app, and to use the data gathered with said forms in other popular online applications.

The list of new integrations includes Campaign Monitor, FreshBooks, Google Apps and Salesforce.com, among others. For Campaign Monitor, integration allows you to add subscribers from your forms directly into your email marketing software. FreshBooks integration allows you to create clients, invoices and estimates automatically using data collected with FormSpring forms. Salesforce.com integration means you can make web forms for any Salesforce object, and update existing records using web form data.

Integrations finally allow some of the promise of a web-based information management system to be fully realized. “Synergy” is an old buzzword that’s been stripped of much of its significance over time, but it truly applies here, in a good way.

Let us know your thoughts on FormSpring on the comments.

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After signing up, you have three options for adding the VisitorContact form to your site. The first is copying and pasting some generated JavaScript into your site’s code. When visitors click the button, they’ll receive the popup form as the next image shows.

If you don’t want to use the JavaScript method, you can use an iframe. This just pastes the entire form into the page, without using the button.

The third and final method is a WordPress plugin that works like the JavaScript method, except you don’t have to copy and paste the code (Disclosure: WordPress is a product of Automattic, a company that is backed by True Ventures, a venture capital firm that is an investor in the parent company of this blog, Giga Omni Media. Om Malik, founder of Giga Omni Media, is also a venture partner at True Ventures). You just upload the plugin, activate it and enter the form ID provided by the VisitorContact web site.

As you can see in the image above, the contact form displays your basic contact information, address, Twitter and Skype IDs. You can choose to publish all or some of this information. If you include your address, the contact form displays a Google Map pointing out your location. You can customize the form using VisitorContact’s design options and change the background color, hover color and screen placement of the form to match your site’s theme.

VisitorContact also has an autoresponder option that will send an acknowledgment email to any visitor who uses your contact form. It’s an opportunity to connect, send a “thank you” gift, or simply let the sender know the form reached you.

You can edit your forms through VisitorContact’s simple dashboard, which also gives you access to the JavaScript embed codes  and the list of recent contacts (without email addresses).

After your form has received 50 messages, you can export the data containing contact names and email addresses. Until you reach the magic number of 50, you can only view an online list with names, location and the form name.

When a visitor emails you through the form, you’ll receive a simple email complete with their details, including IP address, as the next screenshot shows:

VisitorContact is a good option for quickly adding contact details to a site and works well, with one exception. If a visitor makes a mistake entering the spam-protecting CAPTCHA code, the contents of the form are wiped, meaning they’ll have to start over. I think the information in the form should stay put to avoid aggravating users.

How do you include contact information on your site?

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Like Wufoo and SurveyMonkey, Mineful provides an easy way to generate online forms and surveys. First things first: Mineful’s interface might turn off some users. It’s meant to resemble a Windows desktop. I’m not thrilled about it, either, but the last thing I want to do is throw the baby out with the bath water. So I figured I’d better check out Mineful’s function before I condemn it based on form.

One good thing about the mock-Windows look is that it makes using the app a very simple and intuitive experience. Windows work like windows, the Start menu works like the Start menu, and desktop icons work like desktop icons. With that in mind, I clicked the “Start” button in order to get, ahem, started.

I first set up a simple user experience survey using Mineful’s Survey editor, like the ones you see pretty much everywhere these days while browsing the web. You know the kind, they pop up right when you’re in the middle of shopping or reading something, and I’m fairly sure everyone with a pulse clicks, “No thanks.”

I was pleasantly surprised, and almost overwhelmed, by the variety of question options available to me. Multiple choice/single answer and multiple answer, Yes/No questions, text box, etc. I chose a Likert scale format for some questions about web site navigation. It took no time at all, and produced very nice-looking results.

Once you’ve completed your survey, you have a variety of publication options. You can physically print the thing out, though the tool is designed primarily for web use. You can also email the survey, or generate HTML for your own site. I chose a third option, which was to create a link that leads visitors to a pre-formatted version of my questionnaire hosted by Mineful, which you can go ahead and check out.

Although the Survey option seemed like a perfectly good way to go about building a client feedback form as well, I wanted to take the Form editor for a spin so that I could compare the two. Form construction features a single-page layout that might be more appropriate and efficient for use when trying to get feedback from clients. You can select either a one- or a two-column layout, and when you publish it, you can set up security on your web link if you want to require a password or login to view the HTML document. Here’s a simple example two-column client feedback form.

The free version of Mineful has some limitations. You can only have up to five surveys and five  forms active at one time, and you can only receive up to 100 responses per month. If you’re a freelancer only using it to gather client feedback, you probably don’t need much more than that.

There are also two paid options: “Personal” subscription costs $20 a month, while “Business” costs $149 per month. Both increase your feedback levels, allow for unlimited concurrent forms and surveys, and add personalization options, like adding logos and modifying the theme of your surveys and forms. The “Business” version also allows you to add more users to your account.

I’m really glad I didn’t give Mineful a pass just because of my initial impressions of its interface. Turns out it’s a fantastic tool, and one that takes a lot of the heavy lifting out of HTML-based form creation. Check it out if you’re looking for a cheap, easy way to gather feedback from customers, clients and visitors over the web.

What tools do you use for constructing feedback forms?

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Format

Choosing the right format and delivery method for your feedback form will have a profound effect on how often you actually get it back filled out.

Personally, I like to use an Adobe PDF form because it’s easy for the client to use: simple, portable, compatible across platforms and distributable both online or off. If you don’t have a copy of Acrobat, you can use OpenOffice Writer to create PDF forms instead. An HTML form is a good alternative, though if you don’t have any HTML experience it might be more difficult to put one together. As a final option, be ready and willing to call and conduct your survey on the phone directly with a stakeholder, since this may be the only way to ensure you get some kind of feedback.

Question Composition

As for the questions you ask, you may first want to decide how many you’re going to use. For the sake of ease of use I generally ask between 10 and 20 questions, depending on the length and type of engagement. You don’t want to use too many, since you risk exasperating your client, but if you use too few, your results won’t be very meaningful.

The nature and wording of each question will also determine how meaningful the answers are. The most important thing to consider when composing your questions is to consider how you might act based on the answers you receive. If, for example, you ask, “Was the project I delivered what you anticipated receiving upon completion?” with the client answering on a scale of one to five, the answers will be meaningless without additional questions. Regardless of whether you score high or low, you won’t know how to change your practice based upon those results.

It’s better to ask more specific questions like, “How satisfied were you with any pre-project materials received?” since this points to a specific area that you can act to improve. As a rule of thumb, ask yourself what you would do following a positive or negative response to each question you come up with. If you can’t come up with anything, then it’s probably not a good question.

Breaking your questions up into categories (with subheadings) is also a good idea, as it will focus your client and, again, help make your results more meaningful. You also might want to ask for a general measure of satisfaction for the project as a whole, just to see if your client’s micro and macro observations are consistent.

Finally, always leave space for extra comments, context for answers given, etc. Whether or not it gets used, respondents will appreciate the opportunity to speak outside of your prescribed boundaries.

Scale

Form design is one area where you don’t want to get too far off the beaten track, because it’s a genre that people are already very much acquainted with. You can use that familiarity to your advantage. Using the typical answer scale of scores from one to five, for instance, will give your respondents instant, easy access, because it’s something they’ve seen in many different forms before.

Of course, that still leaves choices about how to use that scale. Personally, I use the one to five scale differently depending on what kind of feedback I’m looking for. If I want something that I will be using as a reference for future engagements, for instance, I might orient the numbers from highest to lowest, which seems to encourage people to choose higher numbers overall. If I want more criticism, because I’m using the survey results primarily for internal, professional development purposes, I’ll use the reverse tactic and order the numbers from lowest to highest.

Designing a good feedback form is not easy, and you’ll no doubt encounter many competing opinions on how best to do it. A good tip, though, is to always offer some kind of incentive to fill out the form, whether it be a discount on the client’s invoice, some kind of free service like a client-sector specific research report, or a charitable donation. Believe me, feedback is well worth the investment.

How do you gather client feedback?

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It just seems like there’s so much that can go wrong and information will be lost before I get to the submit button. Even posting in forums or comments sections can be a little unnerving, because you’re trusting that submit button to faithfully deliver the paragraph you just spent a good 10 minutes getting just the way you want it.

Lazarus, an add-on for Firefox, now makes the internet slightly less ephemeral, and provides an insurance policy in case that submit button isn’t cooperating.

Lazarus is a form recovery tool for the Firefox web browser. It’s designed by the team behind Interclue, another popular add-on which provides previews of websites when you hover over active links with your cursor. Lazarus has less apparent, but more broadly appealing functionality.

As its name implies, Lazarus will bring your forms back from the dead, should you be unlucky enough to have one die on you. Lazarus runs in the background and saves that data intermittently and when the Submit button is pressed, locally on your computer.

To test Lazarus, I loaded up the ABC contact form, since I’d been meaning to voice my concern over the recent cancellation of the excellent Pushing Daisies. I prepared a brief missive and pressed send.

I should note that Lazarus is a very innocuous add-on, and has no sidebar or toolbar interface. Optionally, you can have a Lazarus icon in the status bar, which is the gold ankh symbol you’ll see in the screenshot.

After successfully submitting my form, I went back and refreshed the page to clear data already entered.

Sure enough, right clicking on any field or in the general vicinity of the form area brought up the “Recover Form” submenu, from which I could choose to restore either from an autosave or from the version saved at time of submission. Multiple autosaves were even present after staying at the page for more than a minute.

Keep in mind that information is stored locally in a SQLite database found in your Firefox profile folder. Setting a Firefox Master Password will prevent others from being able to restore the data, and you can set an expiry date for saved information. By default, all data is saved indefinitely.

Lazarus is effective, light, secure and runs in the background, so there’s no reason not to use it. Recommended for anyone who’s ever had to rewrite that incredibly clever forum post retort, and lost some of the killer wit in the process.

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