This article follows on from Survey Questionnaire Design and covers the practical steps for configuring a survey in Dynamic Survey Admin once the questionnaire itself has been created.

Getting set up right matters as much as getting the questions right – a well-designed survey can still under-perform, save incorrectly, or expose the client to risk if it isn't configured correctly.

1. Choose the URL for the survey

Best practice format is clientnamefeedback.hgem.com, e.g.:

• pizzaexpressfeedback.hgem.com
• pretfeedback.hgem.com
• tenpinfeedback.hgem.com

Do not include a date in the URL, e.g. tenpin26feedback.hgem.com. This becomes out of date as soon as the year ends, and can be costly for the client to update when it's already in use on printed QR codes, POS materials, and other promotion methods.

2. Anti-fraud measures

Consider how the client is promoting their survey and what the purpose is, to decide what anti-fraud measures should be in place.

• Cookie - fingerprints a guest's device on completion and prevents them from re-accessing the survey for 7 days.
• AFB (Anti-Fraud Bot) - tracks visitor ID and flags duplicate submissions. Where duplicate surveys are submitted for the same branch and date, these are quarantined.
• reCAPTCHA - a silent version of Google's reCAPTCHA that checks mouse movement and click patterns to assess whether a user is human. Where a bot is identified, the survey is quarantined.
  
• Minimum Completion Time - we can set a minimum completion time on a survey. For example, if the completion time is set 30 seconds, any surveys completed in less time will be quarantined. This is to help further prevent bots. Just be cautious not to set the time too low, as you could be quarantining genuine surveys.

For an internal audit survey, turn off all anti-fraud measures to ensure no surveys are quarantined in error, as the user is the client. For guest feedback, you would likely want all measures in place to mitigate fraudulent submissions.

3. Privacy policy – legal name, URL and contact

Use the client's website to find their privacy policy. This will display their legal name and a way to contact them with privacy or GDPR queries. This is the information you need to populate the corresponding fields during setup.

4. Prize draw

If the client is running a prize draw on the survey, this needs to be set to "Default" during setup. This ensures the Prize Draw Terms & Conditions are available for guests in the survey footer.

5. Intro text

All surveys should have a friendly introduction and advertise the prize draw or incentive to encourage engagement.

6. Branch picker & date/time picker

All surveys should have a branch picker and date/time picker, unless this information is being populated by the query string. Alternatively, the survey can be locked to save to a single "default" branch, e.g. Head Office.

A survey will not save without a branch to save the data against.

7. Visit source

Consider how the survey is being promoted, and whether this should be tracked to understand where guests are accessing the survey from.

For example, if the client is promoting on their website, printed QR codes, and post-visit emails, this can be tracked by populating "VisitSource" in the query string, e.g.:

To track this, add the Visit Source dropdown to the survey and activate the relevant sources. This is not visible to guests and is populated silently. A list of available sources can be found in Visit Sources.

8. GDPR consent options

There are three available consent options:

1. To receive marketing from the client
2. To be contacted by the client
3. To enter into the prize draw

For all options, first name, surname, and email address must be captured – without all three, the survey will not save. Mobile number, date of birth, and postcode can also be requested and can be optional.

Consent options must be clearly labelled so the guest understands what they're opting into, and should be prefaced with HTML text reminding guests what the prize draw is.

N.B. A survey can have more than one consent page, but only one must be visible per submission.

9. Social advocacy

If the client would like to encourage positive social reviews from promoter surveys, this needs to be enabled. Further detail on setup can be found in Setting Up Social Advocacy.

10. Exit text

All surveys use the following exit text as standard: "Thank you for completing the survey."

A client may want to tailor this to their brand tone of voice, use it to give further information, redirect the guest elsewhere, or show different exit text depending on a consent option or NPS score.

Quick Best Practice Checklist

When setting up a survey in Dynamic Survey, ensure that:

1. The URL follows the clientnamefeedback.hgem.com format, with no date included
2. Anti-fraud measures (Cookie, AFB, reCAPTCHA) are set appropriately for the survey's purpose
3. The client's legal name, privacy policy URL, and contact details are populated from their published privacy policy
4. Prize Draw is set to "Default" if the client is running one
5. Intro text is friendly, on-brand, and advertises the incentive or prize draw
6. A branch picker and date/time picker are included, unless populated by query string or locked to a default branch
7. Visit Source is tracked and activated where the client promotes the survey across multiple channels
8. GDPR consent options are clearly labelled, capture first name, surname and email as a minimum, and only one consent page is visible per submission
9. Social advocacy is enabled if the client wants to encourage reviews from promoters
10. Exit text is reviewed and tailored to the client's tone of voice, consent outcome, or NPS score where relevant