Professional features

Although YouAks.com can be used by anyone for free, you might want to consider upgrading to a professional account. With a professional account you get more options that will allow you to quickly create professional grade surveys and download more results than with a free account.

List of features

Demonstration

You can experience the professional features by enabling the demo mode which will allow you to use all these options for new surveys, but cannot save your work.

Adding a custom header

When creating a new survey with a professional account you will notice a large text input field labeled header. Any text you enter here will be visible above the quiz for the entire time. You can add markup and images to the header using ubb codes.

The standard YouAks.com header will still be visible above your own header. You can remove it by adding /plain after the survey number in the address bar. Here is an example of the same survey with and without the standard header:

If it is a private survey the edit code should be added to the end, after /plain.

Matrix and rating answers

Professional surveys often include matrix and rating type questions to measure how a participant feels about a variety of topics.

One of the main reasons to use matrix questions is to save space, which is important when creating a survey that is printed on paper. This is not a problem online, you can simply add new questions with no extra cost at all. Separate questions reduce the amount of information that is visible and help the participant to focus better. It also helps the participant feel like he is making progress faster when the questions take less time to answer and will result in more completed surveys. We advice that you use matrix and rating questions sparingly.

Unlike other websites where you can create surveys online you can mix rating and scale answers in the same question with other kinds of answers.

To create a rating or scale answer select an answer and set the answer type to number. Now enter a minimum and maximum number. This will determine how many options appear. Then check the checkbox Select number using radio buttons which will display radio buttons to be displayed instead of text field.

You can enter an optional default numeric value. The radio button associated with that value with automatically be selected before the user has selected another value. Naturally the default value cannot be less or more than the minimum or maximum.

When the option A value must be entered is checked the user must select one checkbox before continuing to the next question. If an answer is not required an extra radio button with the label none will be displayed. The none value will also be the default if there is no default value set.

For answers displayed as radio buttons it is usually best to select them by default and lock the selection of that answer but it is not required.

Adding custom labels

The radio buttons are labeled with the numeric value that they represent. You can replace the default label with your own labels by entering them in the answer's text field like this:

Use the # character followed by the numeric value and the = character followed by the label. Not each value has to have a label, you can choose to have one only the first and the last, like in the example with the answer Apple. You can also replace the default numeric label with nothing by simply not adding any text. The empty value has a default label none, you can change this label by simply adding #= without a number in between.

Use these kind of questions with care, if you are not careful they end up so big and complicated that the participant might be intimidated by it and does not complete the survey.

Summary for creating matrix and rating answers

  1. Set the question type to multiple answers.
  2. Set both the minimum and maximum allowed answers to the number of answers.
  3. Set the answer type to number.
  4. Set the range by setting both a minimum and maximum allowed number.
  5. Check the option Select number using radio buttons.
  6. Check the option Select this answer by default and Lock selection of this answer.

Open answer filters

When you choose the answer type open you can choose a filter for the input that the user can enter. When you don't choose a filter a user can enter any kind of text. You can require the input to be in a specific format by choosing a filter.

Depending on the filter it is possible to enter the minimum and maximum allowed number of characters for open answers. You can set any number from 0 up to 9999. If you don't specify a length the accepted range is 0 to 10000. Also, not that setting a minimum amount of characters does not mean that the answer is required, you need to check the option A value must be entered for that, otherwise empty answers are also accepted.

Date and time filters

Two very useful filters are the date and date and time filters which will display date selection fields. It is possible to set both a minimum and maximum allowed date. Enter the date in the following format: YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM (long to short). You don't have to enter the full date and time, just entering the year, or date will also work.

The minimum allowed date that you can enter is 1 January 1000 and the maximum is 31 December 3000. If you don't enter a minimum or maximum date the default date selection will display years from 3 years in the past up to 3 years in to the future.

Times are entered in the 24-hour format. All dates on this website are displayed as UTC.

Copy answers with one click

When creating a survey some answers might be very similar. Because a professional survey has much more options than a free survey there is a button copy answer for each question. It can be used to add a copy of a selected answer from any question to the question for which the button is pressed. Not only the label text, but also all the settings are copied to the new answer.

Custom thank you message

After submitting the answers a standard thank you message is displayed. You can replace it with your own message by entering a custom thank you message in the text field underneath the questions. You can write things like 'Thank you for your time', 'We at AnyCompany appreciate your feedback', 'your results have been saved', 'we will contact you', or 'have a nice day'.

The thank you message can contain markup like links and images. If you leave the field empty the default message is displayed.

If you want to display a thank you message on your own websites you can enter a URI in the field below. If an URI is entered here the user will automatically be redirected. If you have both a custom message and a URI, the message will be saved but ignored.