It’s come to that time of year when the air is cool, the windows are frosty and we hope for the magic of snow (with no thought of the slush that comes after!). These times lead us to think back on what we’ve achieved and the journey we’ve taken over the last year, before looking ahead to the next. Casting your mind back can be a little mind boggling when so much has happened!
SurveyOptic is always being updated and improved but this year, a re-design of the surveys page and a new survey testing suite are amongst the bigger changes we’ve made for survey builders and the people they collaborate with. Everyone has been great at providing feedback, and we have taken an exciting step forwards in refining the look and feel of the platform. Modern and fresh, but still fast and familiar. These changes have already improved the experiences of SurveyOptic users, and we’re excited to continue the development into 2025. The testing suite has brought easy previews and testing to users’ fingertips, and improved the control they have over their stakeholder feedback and managing survey revisions.
It has also been great to see more and more customers making use of Two-Factor Authentication (2FA). This additional layer of security joins our suite of security and data privacy tools, giving customers all they need to manage their data and governance with confidence and meet the requirements of security certifications and audits.
On the subject of stakeholders, our new Hubs module sprang into life this year, offering public web pages that can be used to gather surveys and consultations together. They provide an easy place for stakeholders and respondents to view and respond to current surveys or consultations, and access supporting documentation and resources. These pages can also serve as a communications hub for updates following a survey or consultation, sharing news, findings and planned next steps. As well as being great for citizen engagement, they have applications in many forms of consultation process and policy development.
Of course ultimately the experience of our survey respondents is the most important thing. Without them, you wouldn’t have the data you need to make informed decisions and improvements. That’s why we’ve continued to keep a sharp eye on the latest developments in accessibility best practices. We’ve ensured that SurveyOptic is compliant with WCAG 2.2AA accessibility standards, supporting our customers in delivering surveys that are as accessible as possible. We have also made optimisations to reduce the time it takes for survey pages to load even further, maximising user experience and pushing up response rates. We have even created a course to support our customers in designing accessible survey content.
We’ve really enjoyed hosting a number of webinars this year, ranging from best practices, to getting the most from an employee survey programme, to what goes into running public consultations. It has been really great connecting with people, listening to the current sticky issues and sharing guidance and expertise. We’ll be doing a lot more of that in the coming year – keep an eye on our webinars page for current and future sessions.
This year also marked our 15th birthday as an organisation, which we celebrated in style, with interviews, outtakes from our customers and supporters and a good old fashioned birthday party! Other celebrations this year included being approved on the latest wave of the G-Cloud framework. Next year marks a decade of working with Government and the public sector through G-Cloud, for us, which has been a thoroughly positive experience for both us and our public sector customers.
As well as working with Government and associated Agencies and Regulatory bodies, we have also expanded our links with Healthcare and Education during the year. We’ve been kept busy building accessible outcome measures and reporting, as well as bringing Lived Experiences into the digital realm to amplify the coproduction of services, with the positive change that these insights can bring.
Whilst all of this was happening, our customer operations team were doing what they do brilliantly: training new platform users, delivering surveys and reporting to complex organisations, and always ready at the other end of the line for any questions our users have. Though we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention at least one multi-lingual survey with 10 different languages, the widespread return of the 360 degree feedback survey as a tool for internal feedback within organisations, and our continued involvement in our local Cyber Security Cluster.
There’s always more we could say, but the candle’s getting dim and there are only a few more sleeps till Christmas… so we’ll have to share those in 2025.