My first introduction to Caroline Di Diego, co-creator of InclineDesign--an international residential design firm with corporate offices at Lake Tahoe--was through the open Twitter forum known as #blogchat.
Caroline (@CASUDI) was an active participant the night of July 27, 2009. Her insight and comments were admirable and her Twitter avatar, depicting her sense of style, was just as memorable. What began as mainly a bunch of folks who, with a few exceptions, had never met in person, resulted in a series of connections and conversations that have continued long since we said goodnight at the session's end.
Through my online conversations with Caroline, we have shared ideas and exchanged information and have each implemented "take-aways" from #blogchat. One enhancement Caroline made to her web site was the addition of a survey, but not just any survey--Caroline's survey has style.
Posted on the INCLINEDESIGN web site (www.inclinedesign.info), the Design Preference survey is subtle and elegant, asking the user to look at the four designs on the page, choose their favorite and post a comment. Different from a poll where statistical results may be revealed, the comments section is open-ended, encouraging participants to share reasons or feelings behind their choices. "It's been very interesting," says Caroline, "People like to see what others write, how people answer, as so many
survey's are closed and just give the tally. I think people don't respond
if they don't like any of our designs and don't want to make a choice."
A Wordpress template was used for the survey web page which, according to Caroline, automatically provided a mechanism for the comments section, making it very cost-effective to set up. "I was really pleased," she adds, "that we were able to carry our website design aesthetic through on the survey."
Comments from the survey have provided unexpected insight. "The fact that Island Retreat comes out on top is no surprise, however a 10 year old Pied a Terre design comes in second and since this property will be marketed next year, it gave us a really good idea of the demographic to target which is quite different then the marketer was proposing."
Having recently learned how to create surveys using Google Forms, my take-away from Caroline's experience is that when less is asked for, more is often given.
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