Capture demographic data

Learn how to capture the most common types of demographic data from your responder.

Capturing demographic data

It’s likely that you’ll want to capture some demographic information from your users, such as first and last name, contact information, and any other identifying information that may be relevant to your business. Let’s build a couple steps that will capture basic information from your users.

Add a step

To start, we’ll want to add a step. A step can be thought of as a container for questions, and will render as a single “page” that the responder will see.

Click "add step"

Capture name

Now that we have the question container, let’s add some questions to it. The first thing we’ll want to know about a user is their name. Text components are the perfect tool for this since they allow users to enter text freely.

Check out some examples of how others capture first and last name in their flows.

The next two steps will apply to every question you create:

• Add a title to the question so the responder understands what the question is asking. As you can see in the gif below, this will automatically update the “Question Label” and the “Variable” sections in the question Settings.

Add a question in the question title

• Be sure to provide a useful variable name in the Variable section. This will be the name of the data value when an answer payload is sent. As a default measure, this box will automatically copy whatever you’ve put as the question title -- it’s probably necessary to rewrite this.

In the text component’s settings, you have the option to add placeholder text for the input box, to provide more clarity and direction for your users.

Add a placeholder for the input box

Capture phone and email

Next, we may want to capture their phone number and/or email. There are two components we can use for this: phone and email. Pretty simple!

Phone

Add a phone component and, same as the text component, be sure to title the question and rename the variable.

Create a phone component

Since the user is entering information into an input box, placeholder text can also be used here. Input mask will be on by default, which will automatically format the user’s response as [phone] . This setting can be turned off.

Email

Now, add an email.

Add an email component. Be sure to rewrite the variable

“Warn about common domain typos” is a setting that will be on by default, and will provide a warning for users if it detects an error in the email domain (e.g. gnail.com vs gmail.com).

It is generally good practice to give context as to why contact information is being collected, and what you plan to do with this information. A tooltip is a great way to add this additional context to a question, without adding more components to a page. Simply toggle "Has info text?" on, and add the text required to inform your users.

Capture date of birth

Oftentimes we may need to capture a user's date of birth - either to follow up for a birthday, or to tailor an experience based on the user's age using a calculated variable. The date component is the tool of choice here, which can be used for capturing more than just dates of births!

It's up to you where in the flow you'd want to put this question: you can add it to the list of demographic questions on the first step, or - if you'd like the flow to feel more conversational - you can add it to it's own step.

Adding a Date component to a new step

There are a number of options to be toggled with this component, and the list may be worth experimenting with if a date component is going to be used for any other reason. For the purposes of capturing someone's date of birth, it is suggested to at least toggle on "Only allow dates in the past?".

Capture address

Since we've already captured some of the basic contact information for our responder, we might want to capture their address. The address component can be used for this, and will automatically provide the fields required for a complete address.

First, we’ll probably want to create a new step for this, since the address component may take up some real estate if "Use single field?" is not enabled. It also helps the user feel the progression in the flow, and helps to break up the sense of monotony that comes with filling out a long list.

Add a Step, and an Address component

There are several options for an address component, like formatting for International addresses, or Validating US addresses using a USPS integration. It is worth reviewing the detailed address docs page to get a better understanding of what you can do here.