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Dear independent software developers, stop developing new apps and services! Research the demand for your idea first.

Dear independent software developers, stop developing new apps and services! Research the demand for your idea first.

Dear independent software developers!

If you have a brand new idea for a new service or product please do not hurry to work on the implementation. Yes, the technology side is very important but customer development is important as well.

This tutorial will show a free and fast (this will take 10-15 minutes only) way to start researching the market and the demand for your new idea by creating an online survey.

3 Important Rules before you start:
– To get visitors to fill the survey you should offer something in exchange for those who submitted the survey. For example, this could be a free subscription or a free copy of your future product!
– There should be no “required” fields as this could stop one from submitting the survey
– Do you like long and detailed questions? Be specific and ask 3-4 questions only! If you have more questions then you may create a more specific survey later

Here are steps to create a free survey and start gathering results in 15 minutes

1) Write down the idea of a new product service
For example MyReminders – service to remind you of important tasks to do

2) Sign up into Google Drive (it is free!)
you may just log in with your Google or GMail credentials if you already have one

3) Create a new survey:

– Click on the “Create” button at the left bar– select Spreadsheet and this will create and open a new spreadsheet:

Creating a new spreadsheet in Google Drive

The new spreadsheet you just created will appear.

4) Create a form for your new survey

– in the menu select Tools – Create A Form:

Creating a new survey form that will gather results into this parent spreadsheet

This will create a new survey form, then create a new survey

Example survey:

Editing the sample survey

Important: you should tell visitors what you would offer in exchange for their feedback! In most cases, a free license or free subscription offer will work, but you may experiment with this. Anyway, there should be something as a reward!

Here is how this survey will appear (you may preview it by clicking on “View Live Form”):

Sample survey preview

5) Google Drive based spreadsheet will automatically collect new submitted results from the survey:

New submitted results will automatically appear in this spreadsheet

6) Then you may post or send the link to the “live form” to your social network. If you have a website then you may just insert this survey into the website page:

Click on Form – Embed the form on a webpage.

Getting the HTML code to embed the survey

The popup dialog with the code will appear, just copy and paste it into the target web-page:

Popup dialog with HTML code to embed into target web-page

7) The last step is to set up the notifications so you will be notified when new results were submitted!

Click on Tools – Notification Rules

Tools – Notification Rules…

Then put the checkmark at “a user submits a form” and “Email – right away”

So Google Drive will notify you about new results immediately!

Setting the notification rules

8) When some results were collected you may view the statistics:

Click Form – Show Summary of responses

And Google Drive will show nicely formatted stat for responses

Summary of responses

That’s all!

Gather a few dozens of results and this will give you invaluable insights into what your future customers really want and on what matters and what is not in your idea.