SurveyMonkey Forms
Extending the SurveyMonkey platform to new audiences
I spearheaded the design of our new Forms offering, defining the strategy, creating the product vision, and driving execution across the platform in collaboration with a cross-functional team.
Date
2023-2024
BACKGROUND
Small business owners and professionals in events, HR, education, marketing, and customer experience frequently gather information for specific purposes, such as collecting contact details for mailing lists or registration fees for events. Making a strong first impression is crucial for these users, as is ensuring that collected information integrates seamlessly with the other tools they use daily.
CHALLENGE
As Lead Product Designer at SurveyMonkey, I led a strategic initiative to expand the company’s core offering into the forms market—a space four times larger and growing faster than traditional surveys. While surveys capture opinions and feedback, forms handle transactional data like registrations and payments. Our challenge was to broaden SurveyMonkey’s feature set beyond its survey-focused roots while maintaining its reputation for simplicity and reliability.
STRATEGIC APPROACH
I led two parallel workstreams to drive this initiative:
Tactical Enhancements – Enhancing the platform to achieve feature parity with competitors for essential form use cases, such as contact forms and event registrations.
Vision Development – Defining a long-term strategy by identifying winning product capabilities through comprehensive user research and strategic planning.
This initiative required close collaboration across Product, Engineering, Marketing, and Growth teams, with executive sponsorship from the Senior VP of Product and Senior VP of Design.
TACTICAL ENHANCEMENTS: BUILDING A COMPETITIVE MVP
Competitor Analysis and Experience Audit
I began with a detailed competitive analysis, partnering with Product to map competitor offerings against SurveyMonkey’s capabilities. This revealed critical gaps:
Rigid Question Types: SurveyMonkey’s contact information field was inflexible compared to competitors. We redesigned this into four distinct fields—Name, Email, Phone, and Address—adding customization options like placeholders and validation settings.
Cumbersome Embedding Flow: Embedding forms required multiple steps, unlike competitors' seamless copy-paste process. I streamlined this into a single-page flow for quicker, more intuitive use.
Ineffective Data Analysis for Forms: SurveyMonkey’s aggregated data view was suitable for surveys but not for users needing to review individual submissions. I prioritized developing a tabular view for quick, granular data access.
Tactical Improvements
Working within platform constraints, I led several enhancements to elevate the platform’s forms capabilities:
Enhanced Contact Information Fields: Redesigned into purpose-built fields for name, email, phone, and address, with options for placeholder text and email verification.
Streamlined Embedding Process: Simplified to a single-step flow, enhancing efficiency and user experience.
Improved Data Analysis: Introduced a tabular view for quick individual response scanning.
Advanced Customization: Enabled custom CSS styling for enhanced brand alignment and design control.
These enhancements not only closed competitive gaps but also improved the overall user experience, making SurveyMonkey a more versatile tool for both forms and surveys.
STRATEGIC VISION: INNOVATING FOR THE FUTURE OF FORMS
Foundation Research and Ideation Workshop
To shape the long-term vision, I collaborated with the Product Research team to understand user motivations and needs. Key insights included:
Users expected SurveyMonkey to support both forms and surveys, provided necessary form-specific features were available.
Customization and integration were crucial for high-value use cases, particularly for teams managing complex workflows.
I organized a cross-functional workshop with Product, Engineering, Marketing, and Growth teams, utilizing a Creative Matrix to explore solutions across the user journey—from consideration to data actionability. This generated a robust pipeline of innovative ideas.
Rapid Prototyping through Hackathons
To maintain momentum and stakeholder engagement, I championed one of the workshop ideas during a company hackathon: the “Theme Analyzer,” which scanned a user’s website and auto-styled their form to match. This prototype generated significant excitement, winning the Customer Innovation award and reinforcing buy-in for the initiative.
Vision Crafting and Roadmap Development
I synthesized workshop ideas and research insights into a cohesive product vision, focusing on:
Personalized Journeys: Tailoring user experiences based on form use cases.
Workflow Automation: Enabling forms to trigger downstream actions, such as CRM updates or follow-up surveys.
Enhanced Customization: Expanding design controls for a fully branded experience.
I collaborated with my Product partner to prioritize these ideas into a strategic roadmap, aligning them with engineering capacity and business goals. This roadmap now guides the Forms product direction for 2024 and 2025.
LAUNCHING SURVEYMONKEY FORMS
In September 2023, SurveyMonkey launched its new Forms offering, supported by a strategic marketing campaign. The launch included key features such as:
Pre-designed Form Fields and Layouts: Allowing users to personalize customer and candidate experiences.
Simplified Web Embedding: Enabling effortless form integration into websites.
Customizable Templates: 50+ templates supporting common form use cases.
List View of Responses: A new tabular view for efficient individual response analysis.
Extensive Integrations: Compatibility with tools such as MailChimp, Zapier, and Google Sheets.
LEARNINGS AND NEXT STEPS