We will shortly present our WebSM study on survey software (Vehovar et al 2012) which is an overview based on the list of survey software. At the 5th ISM workshop we presented some preliminary results of our research which are now supplemented with new findings. The result show that the number of software is in steady decline. Newcomers are increasingly rare, while the solutions which could not adopt slowly disappear. Open source solutions are almost non-existing.
Service prices are becoming more and more competitive, development costs are increasing, requests for new features is expanding. This is particularly true for support for mobile surveys, mixed modes, multilanguage support and panel. These are also the features which separate advanced solutions from the simple one. Other survey software features basically converge much more easily. So to keep the pace, considerable team of developers needs to be there. Consequently, market segmentation, concentration and takeovers have been in full progress in recent years, particularly in 2011 (see WebSM 2011) and continues in 2012.
Although there still exist a clear separation between high-end and low-end solution (with few segments between), we can observe the convergence: cheap and low-end SaaS solutions are becoming increasing powerful, while high-end complex software are often stuck in old architecture and awkward interfaces. There is a trend towards vendor based (SaaS), GUI interface and Web2.0 approach (the latter appeared very late in this industry), which is the trend also for most complex solutions. The customer support (documentation, help) is also increasing, as well as aggressive marketing.
Approximate visitation statistics for SaaS solution show that among 365 software included in our report are around ten solutions with more than 100,000 visit per day (few millions is the maximum), and around 40 with daily visits above 10,000.
The majority of software focuses on web surveys, while some are specialized solely on forms, polls, quizzed or events. On the other hand, the web software is increasingly integrated - and thus losing its separate identity- into (email) marketing research, human resource management, enterprise feedback management, voice of the customer and business intelligence. Major suppliers also seek business in the integration with their own panel of respondents.
In this respect, we will discuss the development trends of web survey software; evaluate which are the preferable solutions and what are our needs and expectations as users.