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[A264]Advantages And Disadvantages Of Using Computer

by Franklin Lucer, Fra

The landscape has shifted over the last decade. In the same way that the internet has changed the way we purchase products and services, it has altered the manner in which companies interact with their respective markets. More businesses than ever are leveraging online surveys to attract the data they need at a substantially lower cost. This article will provide a high-level view of the advantages and potential drawbacks of using online questionnaires.

Shortened Response Collection Time

It's no longer necessary to send researchers into the field to personally interview people. Nor is it necessary to maintain a team that enters individual responses into a statistical analysis program. By posting your questionnaire online, the data can be collected and collated automatically. This dramatically reduces the window of time between your survey's launch and being able to take action on the responses. Indeed, what once required weeks now takes days.

Also, by allowing respondents to complete your survey online when it is convenient for them to do so, you'll enjoy a higher response rate. The more people who participate, the more reliable your data.

More Flexibility In Design

Questionnaires that are used in a "real world" environment lack flexibility. For example, consider a market research survey that is soliciting responses from a broad audience. There will be many people within that population to whom questions will be irrelevant. A researcher or interviewer would be tasked with identifying which questions were relevant to the individual participant.

Online surveys make use of skip, pipe, and branch logic to personalize each item on the questionnaire. Skip logic allows each participant to automatically pass over items based on their responses to previous questions. Branch logic lets you (the surveyor) send participants along different routes based on their previous responses. This type of technology not only saves time, but makes the experience more fluid for the respondent.

Better Profile Targeting

Because you can control the paths by which participants find your online questionnaires, you can target specific profiles. For example, suppose that you operate an online bookstore. If you maintain a robust customer database, you can send email invitations to specific groups of customers. You can target them based on the types of books they have purchased, their average order size, and the recency of their orders. Better profile targeting yields more valuable data.

Potential Drawbacks: Server Crashes And Programming Errors

Depending on the software or third-party vendor you use to manage your online questionnaires, server crashes and programming errors can occur. When they do, they can become problematic. For example, if you're using an in-house solution and your server crashes, you may lose your data. Or, if you have hired a programming team to design your survey software, and they have done a less-than-perfect job, it can lead to errors during the execution phase. This may cause confusion among respondents, leading to a rise in your abandonment rate. Worse, it can influence the purity of your data.

The advantages of conducting online surveys far outweigh the potential drawbacks. In fact, server crashes and programming errors (arguably, the two most significant drawbacks) can be eliminated by choosing the right third-party software vendor.

Price, while important, should not be the sole criteria by which you identify potential providers; many low-priced vendors offer very little flexibility on an unreliable infrastructure. Instead, consider price, level of support, feature set, and server reliability. Those four criteria will help you find a reliable survey software provider that can meet your company's needs.

Template based web page development:
A lot of people get tempted by good looking web templates. Some template vendors even offer do-it-yourself kits to their customers. Web templates are designed by experts, using the latest designing software. They look stunning,compared to web pages developed by other means. While readymade templates offer several advantages, they have some disadvantages too.

Advantages of using templates:
1.You know how your finished site looks. You can choose the template that appeals to you. You need not rely on a web developer to get a good looking website.
2.Faster turnaround. You need not spend a lot of time on getting the colors and layout right. You can go straight to changing text and proceed with programming.
3.Templates are much cheaper than hiring a web developer. There are several sites that offer free templates as well.
4.Templates look much better than sites developed in traditional HTML Programming. Templates are designed by professionals that are creative and competent and experienced.
5.Templates can be customized by anyone with basic HTML knowledge. You can Customize the template yourself using a text editor.

Disadvantages of using templates:
1.You can get web templates for free or at a low-price. But these templates are not unique. Several people may have already bought or downloaded the template you have chosen. If you cant change the colors or layout a bit, your site looks like a clone of several sites. If you want a unique template design licensed only to you, you need to spend a fortune on it.
2.Often, templates don't look good if you stretch them a bit. For example, if there is space for 100 words in a block and if you try to insert 200 words in that space, the template layout may change. And this may not look good. This puts limitations on text you can place in a template based web page, thereby restricting you from optimizing text or being descriptive about your business . It is well known that the more verbose in a page the more attention it gets from search engines. A template doesn't come with Meta tags. You need to insert these meta tags.
3.Templates are good for static pages. If a site needs dynamic pages with a huge database to built, you need to opt for simpler templates.
4.If you are doing customization for yourself, always work on a copy of the template files. Templates are often done with simple HTML. But if you try to edit HTML tags instead of text between them, you might end up with bad page layout.
5.If there are template files with .tpl extension, locate the files where variables are defined. Then try to establish the logic behind the file system .

Using WYSIWYG editors:
Nowadays, several WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editors are available for creating web pages. With these editors it is possible to create good looking pages simply by dragging and dropping objects on the page, without any HTML knowledge. They come with a lot of menu options. If you are familiar with windows objects or windows based software, you can create a web page in time.

Advantages of using a WYSIWYG editor:
1.Its great fun to create web pages this way. You can do it yourself, experimenting with colors and layouts. The web page is likely to be unique, unless you are trying to clone another web page. You can stretch your imagination.
2.It's faster and easier to create web pages. You can make changes to a page layout by simply dragging the objects to their new positions.3.You can make changes to content (text or images) in WYSIWYG editor, instead of searching for and inserting between HTML tags, or using a complex content management system.
4.WYSIWYG software runs on any windows computer.
5.you can also create background images on fly.

Disadvantages of using a WYSIWYG editor:
1.A WYSIWYG editor produces files of large sizes. The web page may take a bit longer to download.
2.The HTML code generated may not be compliant with existing web standards. Some of these editors are meant for web sites to be hosted with particular servers. Some WYSIWYG editors even produce files with their own extensions.
3.You need to fill in a lot of details, such as Meta tags and link colors for each page. Some WYSIWIG editors support CSS while editing and some don't.
4.You need to preview the page in different browsers more often to see if the page is shaping up as you intended.
5.Web pages designed using WYSIWYG editors are rigid. They do not stretch if you put more text or images on a page. Instead they overlap on each other. Some WYSIWYG editors produce excessive div tags. It is difficult to edit these pages in an ordinary HTML editor.
6.Often these web pages are difficult to optimize for search engines.

Article Source : Pg. 16

About Author

Both Franklin Lucer & Jayakumar Patchala are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.

Franklin Lucer has sinced written about articles on various topics from Home Management, Surveys and Writing. SurveyGizmo is a leading provider of , for more great ways to use surveys to enhance your business check them out online. Franklin Lucer's top article generates over 8100 views. to your Favourites.

Jayakumar Patchala has sinced written about articles on various topics from Surveys. The author Jaya Kumar Patchala is a web hosting provider and freelance web developer. Author sites http://www.hotbusinesssolutions.com and http://www.getwebsitetemplates.com. Jayakumar Patchala's top article generates over 480 views. to your Favourites.