Building your client questionnaire
Every client answers your questionnaire before their program is built. Their answers decide what they get, so this is where personalization happens.
5 minute video · Plan 20 to 30 minutes to get it right
Chapters (9)
Create your first questionnaire
Go to Programs and click Build questionnaire in the Getting started bar, then Create your first questionnaire.
Start from a template or a blank canvas
Experly recommends a template for your main category and shows templates for your other categories below it. Each one is written for that kind of expert, so a fitness coach and a business strategist see very different questions.
Pick one and click Use this template, or choose Start from scratch to build your own.
Name it and review the questions
Give the questionnaire a title and a short description. Below that is the question list and a row of buttons for adding new questions.
Question types
Mix formats to keep the questionnaire quick for clients while still getting the detail you need:
- Text: a single line answer.
- Textarea: a longer written answer.
- Multiple choice, with or without an Other option.
- Yes or no.
- Rating, scale and range, for anything you want measured.
Edit a question
Click Edit on any question to change its wording, options, or minimum and maximum values. Tick or untick Required.
Making some written questions optional saves busy clients time. Keep required the questions you truly need to personalize the program.
Show questions only when they apply
Open a question and tick Only show this if. Choose an earlier question and the answer that should reveal this one. For example, only ask about funding if the client answered Pre-revenue to "What stage is your business at?"
Conditions can only look at questions that come before, so order matters. Use this to build separate paths for different kinds of clients. It takes longer to set up, and it is the single biggest thing you can do to make programs feel personal.
Scale questions
A scale question has a minimum and a maximum, for example "How many hours a week can you commit?" from 1 to 40. You can add several conditions to any question and choose whether all of them or any of them must match.
Reorder questions
Drag a question by its handle or use the arrows to move it. Put the questions that other questions depend on near the top.
Test it, then save
Turn on Test mode to see the questionnaire exactly as a client will. Check that conditional questions appear when they should. When it looks right, click Save questionnaire.
Why it is worth the time
Your questionnaire matters as much as your content. It is how Experly knows what each client needs right now, and it is the difference between a program built for them and generic material.
Once it is saved, the Getting started bar moves on to Generate demo program.
Good to know
- Templates are matched to the categories you picked during setup.
- Conditional questions let one questionnaire serve very different clients.
- Use Test mode before you save.
- The Free plan includes one questionnaire. Pro includes up to three.
Read the transcript
0:00Create your first questionnaire
So we're going to click Build Questionnaire here, and then create your first questionnaire.
0:05Choose a template
Okay, so there's different categories. Since we went into Business & Strategy, it has already chosen the Business & Strategy template for you, but you can go in here and choose another template. These templates are all under the categories that you chose. So if you chose a category like fitness or recipes or whatever, that would bring up different templates. But here you have a choice of five templates based on the categories that you chose. So it highlights business and strategy, but you can go and do AI, tech and software, personal growth and mindset. These are the ones that I chose from entrepreneurship, leadership and management, or you can start from scratch and create your own template. I'm going to stick with the template that it chose for me. There's 10 questions on
0:47Title and question types
it. So I'm going to click Use this template. And now you can put an actual title for it. You can create a description, and now you can go down and start creating your questions. So under questions, there's all different types of questions. You could have a text question, a text area question where they have to fill in text information, multiple choice, yes or no, rating, scale, adding a range. There's a lot of different options that you have. It's already chosen a bunch of ones for us here. It's got a multiple choice. It's got a text one, a text area one, multiple choice, scale, multiple choice, but we can go in and edit any of them.
1:21Edit questions and set required
So if we click the first one, it's a multiple choice, what stage your business at and hit edit, we can see it's chosen idea, pre-revenue, zero to 100k. It's just a multiple choice one. I'm fine with that. The next one is what industry are you operating in? It's a text question required. You could choose not required. So they don't have to answer if they don't want to. Some people don't want to put in text. It takes time and they don't want to waste their time. They it's up to you what you want to do. What's your biggest strategic challenge right now?
1:55Only show this if
We can edit that. And then we can also add only show this if. So we can send people down certain funnels. So if they choose what stage is your business at and they choose 10 million plus, then we can create a text thing that if your business is at 10 million plus, then this question is for them. Or if it's at pre-revenue, then this question is for them. So you can change questions that come down the road for different users depending on what their first questions were. And this can really hone a client down to the exactly what they're looking for. It takes more time to set up the questionnaire as a result. But the more specific you are in your questionnaires, the better your programs are going to be for that specific client when they're
2:43Scale questions and more conditions
completed. So here's another example of scale. So how many hours per week can you commit to strategic work? And then it will show a choice of 1 to 40 hours. Again, always gives you the option if you want to show this to a specific type of user. If they answered, not answered, what they said, and what their idea was for revenue, you can add a condition. So we can choose how do you make decisions today, gut, data driven, advisory input, mix. So you could add different kinds of conditions. Right now it's got two options because there's two questions before this. You see that it's all by the order of questions. So if we move one of these questions
3:20Reorder questions
up to the top, like what's your runway financial pressure, and we move this up to the top, very easy to move stuff around and make that the first question. And then we save the questionnaire. And now we can go back and edit that questionnaire and go down and we can click this same question here, you're going to see the four questions before so you can hone your questionnaire down based on what your client answers for each question to really get an idea of what they're looking for, which would then make their programs more specific to their needs. When
3:59Test mode and save
you're done creating and then go up here and click test mode, and it will show you what your questionnaire will look like to the user. A text entry box is just one line like this. A text area is a bigger one. So that's the difference between the two. If you're satisfied with how your questionnaire turned out, then you can click save. And then you can move on to the next step.
4:20Why the questionnaire matters
I'm just going to emphasize here that I suggest that you spend a lot of time on your questionnaire. This is just as important as the content that you upload, because it's really what's going to individualize these programs to your individual clients. And it's what makes Experly what it is, is that you're not giving each client the same thing. You're building specific programs for them, for each client for what they need at that time in their life. And that is an ideal system for what we have today's world where everybody's looking for specifics, and they're just getting generalized content. So once you're satisfied with this section, now we can see that the build questionnaire is done, and we can move on to generating a demo program.
Questions about this step
Every client answers it before their program is built, and their answers decide what the program focuses on. A specific questionnaire is what turns your material into a program built for one person instead of generic content.
Most templates start with about ten, which is a good balance. Ask what you genuinely need to personalize the program, use multiple choice where you can to keep it quick, and use conditional questions so each client only sees what applies to them.
It hides a question unless the client gave a particular answer to an earlier question. For example, you can ask a funding question only to clients whose business is pre-revenue. Conditions can only refer to questions above them, so put the deciding questions near the top.
Yes. Open it from Questionnaires and click Edit. Changes apply to clients who start the questionnaire after you save.
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