Foresee Visitor Survey
Helpful feedback for high traffic pages
Foresee Survey
Foresee is a customer satisfaction survey offered on Mass.gov pages to about 70% of visitors who have not been on the site for 90 days (or who have opted out of the survey in the last 90 days).
Unlike the feedback tracked in the CMS, this survey is session-based, rather than page based, so authors can learn more about the visitor’s summary experience on Mass.gov. The survey asks several questions to learn more about the specific needs of the visitor and what went right or wrong.
We get about 5,000 responses a month, which is about one fourth the number of feedback responses we receive. Because this sample size is smaller, this data is most useful for organizations with high traffic on their pages, as they will have more responses to review. With a small number of responses, you get the views of a few people, where larger numbers reveal trends.
Foresee produces a satisfaction score (0 to 100) that is an industry standard, based on three questions:
What is your overall satisfaction with this site?
How well does this site meet your expectations?
How does this site compare to an ideal website?
If the user enters a low score for any of these, they can elaborate in an open response box.
The survey also asks visitors, “Please tell us why you visited Mass.gov today” and offers roughly 20 reasons, based on the pages in the CMS that receive the highest traffic. There is also an option to write in a reason. (It may be possible in the future to customize these reasons further.)
Other questions ask if visitors accomplished their goal at Mass.gov and if the visit to Mass.gov eliminated the need to call or visit a state office. Other survey questions ask about ease of navigation on the site, clarity of the content, and overall suggestions for improvement. In each case, if the answer is no, the respondent can explain why.
Using the Dashboard
On the back end, as authors and editors, you will see the survey results in the Foresee dashboard in this view:
Notice on the left that you can choose between two views: Dashboard (the survey results) or Surveys (the questions visitors answer).
Across the top, authors will see data for their own organization as well as sitewide general data.
Clicking on the Customer Satisfaction box will expand it to fill your screen for easier viewing.
Hovering over the graph lines on any point, you will see a black box showing more details about that data point, such as the number of responses and the date range.
For “Goal completion” or “Did your visit eliminate the need to contact the state,” you will see lines that represent visitors’ responses. Again, hovering over any of the points on these lines will produce a box with more details about the responses.
By clicking on the circle on the graph lines, you open a pop-up window with the option to “Drill in to explore the data for this segment by navigating to Overview, See Responses.”
By clicking on “see responses,” you open a new dashboard view where you can see visitors’ typed comments and satisfaction scores. You can filter these comments further, organize them by score, or rearrange the order of the columns. If you want to look at a larger data set, you can increase the time frame.
So, for example, you can gain useful information for improvement by digging into “no” responses for Goal Completion, reading what visitors came to the site to do, and then learning their specific reasons for not being able to complete those goals.
Another helpful view allows you to dig into one respondent’s survey. If you click on any individual response, a new screen opens about that individual and their session.
In this view, you can see:
the number of pages the respondent viewed
the URL where they started their session
what kind of device they were using
their Google Analytics user id number
One other helpful feature of the Foresee dashboard is the Download CSV in the upper right corner. Clicking this will produce a spreadsheet of all the responses where you could then do further analysis, such as keyword searches.
Using Google Analytics to dive deeper
By logging into Google Analytics and looking up the Google Analytics user number (under “Audience” and “user explorer”) and--most importantly--filtering for the date of the survey response, you could view the respondent’s entire session. (Learn more on accessing Google Analytics)
Mass.gov will give access to the Foresee dashboard to organizations with high traffic. Please complete a ServiceNow request to set up an account.
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