The data you collect in your Signup Form is used in various reporting tools and can be used to filter and group participants in the Participant Relationship Manager. For these purposes, we recommend creating the form before you launch your site and not making any changes.
Please read the following advice and guidelines before altering your form.
Check your form
You should start in Site Settings > Signup Form > Preview to review your existing Signup Form. This will give you an understanding of what data you already have and indicate any gaps. You can also check how long your form is; if it is already too long, adding more questions is not ideal.
Check your data
To further identify the gaps in your data, go to Reporting > Project Reports and filter your reports to All Projects and for All Time. Select and download the All Projects Demographics Report from the Download Report dropdown menu. It may take some time to load, but it will contain data for all registered participants.
Here are some gaps you may find:
Sites launched before 2013 may have participants from a different registration process or Anonymous survey_taker accounts.
Missing data in the Last seen column, from participants who haven’t logged in since we introduced it. If the majority are missing this data, it’s time to send out a Newsletter inviting them back.
Blank cells if the questions have been optional or you’ve already changed your form. Deleted questions will still show in the report but will be blank for participants who could not answer them.
Some data may be outdated for participants who registered a while ago. For example, they may be in a different age bracket or have moved out of their original suburb.
Plan your changes
As you now have a greater understanding of your existing participant data, you can start planning and implementing the changes to your Signup Form.
We recommend:
Consider your long-term needs and the demographic data you need and will use.
See if you are collecting data from any other platforms in your organization; you may want to align your EngagementHQ site with that.
Keep your questions and form short and optional. One way to do this is to have a short list of core questions, and then make additional questions conditional. With this option, you can ask participants if they want to provide more information instead of presenting them with a long form before they can participate.
Write questions that can apply for the long-term. For example, if asking for age, ask them for their birth year instead of an age bracket so they don’t age out in a few years.
Check out other EngagementHQ sites for ideas about what other organizations are asking.
You should avoid:
Asking unnecessary questions that will provide data you won’t use. Think about what answers will help you in future reporting and consultations.
Changing existing questions too much. You can safely reorder questions in your form and options within questions but try not to reword the questions or options.
Recycling a question to ask something different. This will compromise your data.
Building an excessively long form. You may want to ask as many questions as possible, but people often register because they want to engage directly with a tool. A long form may put them off registering and participating.
If you have a change you want to make but are unsure if it will affect your data, please contact us via chat or email and ask us.
Invite participants to update their profile
Once you have changed your Signup Form, you may want to send Newsletters inviting participants to update their profile. Ensure that you provide instructions on how they can manage their profiles.
You may want to send different emails to participants who joined before and after a specific date; you will need to create a dynamic participant group before you create the Newsletter.