Advanced Analytics in Formaly: Beyond the Bar Chart
Response counts are just the beginning. Here is how Formaly's analytics - sentiment analysis, geo maps, completion funnels, cross-tabs, and QC checks - help you actually understand your data.
Arindam Majumder
Founder, Formaly
Most survey tools give you a spreadsheet and a bar chart. That is not analysis - that is data transfer.
Real analysis is understanding why your NPS dropped this month, where in your survey people are abandoning, which respondent segments feel differently about your product, and whether the responses you collected are even trustworthy.
We built Formaly's analytics to answer those questions - not just count responses. Here is a full breakdown of every analytics feature we have shipped, why it exists, and what you can do with it.
How Formaly compares to standard form analytics
| Feature | Typical Tools | Formaly |
|---|---|---|
| Response counts | Yes | Yes |
| Response trend over time | - | Yes |
| Per-question breakdown | Limited | Yes |
| Completion funnel | - | Yes |
| Geographic distribution | - | Yes |
| Cross-tab analysis | - | Yes |
| AI sentiment analysis | - | Enterprise |
| QC / data quality flags | - | Yes |
| AI summary generation | - | Yes |
The full analytics suite
AI Sentiment Analysis
EnterpriseKnow how people feel, not just what they clicked
Every open-ended response your survey collects is automatically scored for sentiment, tagged with an emotion (joy, anger, sadness, fear, surprise, neutral), and broken down by keyword. Formaly surfaces this as a live dashboard - you see not just the distribution of positive, neutral, and negative responses, but the emotion breakdown, the trending keywords, and how sentiment shifts over time as more responses come in.
Why it matters
A 4/5 satisfaction score tells you something went well. A 4/5 with 'frustrated', 'slow', and 'confusing' appearing as top keywords tells you exactly what to fix. Sentiment analysis closes the gap between a number and an insight.
What you get
- Sentiment score distribution (Positive / Neutral / Negative breakdown)
- Emotion detection across 6 dimensions: joy, anger, sadness, fear, surprise, neutral
- Top keyword extraction from all open-ended responses
- Sentiment trend chart by day - see how responses shift over time
- Per-question sentiment scoring for targeted analysis
Response Trend Charts
All plansSee your survey's momentum over time
Formaly tracks when every response was submitted and visualizes it as a time-series chart. You can see exactly when your survey is getting traction - peak submission days after a send, drop-offs when momentum fades, and whether a reminder email actually moved the needle.
Why it matters
Most form tools show you a total count. Trend data shows you behavior. A spike followed by a steep drop tells you to send a reminder. A steady trickle tells you the survey is still circulating. Patterns you'd miss in a count become obvious in a chart.
What you get
- Daily submission trend over the full survey lifetime
- Response velocity - identify peak days and drop-off points
- Useful for timing reminder emails and knowing when to close
Completion Funnel
All plansFind exactly where people abandon your survey
The completion funnel shows how many respondents made it through each question in your survey. If question 7 has a 40% drop in completions compared to question 6, you have a problem at question 7 - and now you know exactly where to look. This is the single most actionable piece of analytics for improving a survey in production.
Why it matters
You cannot improve what you cannot see. Without funnel data, high abandonment is a mystery. With it, you have a prioritized list of exactly where to make changes - simplify the wording on question 4, make question 7 optional, move the demographic questions to the end.
What you get
- Per-question completion counts and drop-off rates
- Visual funnel view - see the largest drop-offs at a glance
- Identifies friction points for immediate survey iteration
Question Breakdown Panel
All plansDistribution, averages, and response detail per question
For every question in your survey, Formaly generates a dedicated breakdown: the distribution of answers for multiple choice and rating questions, average scores for NPS and rating questions, word clouds for open-ended responses, and individual response browsing. You can drill into any question to see exactly how respondents answered.
Why it matters
Aggregate analytics tell you the average. Question breakdowns tell you the distribution - and the distribution often reveals more than the average. Knowing that 60% rated you a 9-10 and 35% rated you a 1-2 means something very different than a 7/10 average would suggest.
What you get
- Visual distribution charts for each question type
- Average score, median, and range for rating and NPS questions
- Word frequency view for open-ended responses
- Per-respondent answer browsing for qualitative review
Geographic Response Map
All plansSee where in the world your respondents are
Formaly plots your responses on a world map, showing geographic distribution by country and region. If you are running a global survey or trying to understand the regional makeup of your audience, the response map makes it immediately visible - no exporting to Excel to pivot by country.
Why it matters
Regional differences often matter more than aggregate scores. A product that scores 8/10 overall might score 5/10 in one market and 9/10 in another. Geographic analytics surface these differences so you can take market-specific action instead of making decisions based on blended averages.
What you get
- Interactive world map with response density by country
- Regional drill-down for markets with high response volume
- Useful for global products, multi-market research, and audience analysis
Cross-Tab Analysis
All plansCompare how different groups answered differently
Cross-tabulation lets you segment responses by any categorical answer and compare how different groups responded to other questions. For example: how did respondents who said they use your product daily rate their satisfaction vs. those who use it weekly? How did mobile respondents answer differently from desktop? Cross-tabs answer these questions without needing a data analyst.
Why it matters
Aggregate data hides segments. A 7/10 average satisfaction score might mask a 9/10 from power users and a 4/10 from occasional users - two completely different product stories requiring completely different responses. Cross-tab analysis is where the real insights live.
What you get
- Cross any two categorical questions to see how groups differ
- Count and percentage views for each cell
- Sortable and filterable for fast exploration
- Exportable as part of the full response export
Quality Control (QC) Checks
All plansAutomatically flag suspicious and low-quality responses
Formaly runs automatic quality checks on every response. Straight-lining (selecting the same answer for every rating question), speed-running (completing a 5-minute survey in 30 seconds), incoherent open-ended text, and inconsistent contradictory answers are all flagged. You can review flagged responses and choose to exclude them from your analysis.
Why it matters
Bad data is worse than no data. A single bot submission or a straight-liner can meaningfully skew your results - especially in smaller surveys. QC checks protect the integrity of your data automatically, without requiring you to manually inspect hundreds of responses looking for outliers.
What you get
- Straight-lining detection on rating and scale questions
- Completion time analysis - flags implausibly fast submissions
- Text quality check - flags gibberish, single-character, or copy-pasted responses
- Contradiction detection across related questions
- QC status per response - review and exclude flagged entries
AI Summary Generation
All plansYour entire dataset summarized in 30 seconds
Once you have a body of responses, Formaly can generate an AI summary of the entire dataset. It reads every response, identifies the dominant themes, surfaces the most common pain points, highlights positive signals, and produces a concise executive brief - the kind of synthesis that would otherwise take hours of manual analysis.
Why it matters
Reading 200 open-ended responses takes most of a workday. An AI summary does it in 30 seconds and produces a structured output - themes, pain points, positive signals, and action items - that you can share with your team immediately. The summary does not replace reading individual responses for important decisions, but it tells you exactly where to focus when you do.
What you get
- Full-dataset synthesis from all response text
- Structured output: themes, pain points, highlights, action items
- Overall sentiment read across all responses
- Shareable summary for stakeholder briefings
How it all fits together
Each analytics feature answers a different question about your survey data. Used together, they give you a complete picture:
Did people actually finish?
Completion Funnel - see where they dropped off
Who responded and from where?
Geographic Map - see response distribution globally
What did they say?
Question Breakdown - full answer distribution per question
How did they feel?
Sentiment Analysis - emotion, keywords, trend over time
Do different groups feel differently?
Cross-tab Analysis - compare any two segments
Can I trust the data?
QC Checks - automatically flag low-quality responses
What is the bottom line?
AI Summary - key themes, pain points, and actions in 30 seconds
What is available on each plan?
Most analytics features are available on all plans - we believe good data understanding should not be gated by price. The exception is Sentiment Analysis, which uses AI processing to score and classify every open-ended response. Given the compute cost, this is an Enterprise feature.
All plans
- Response trend charts
- Completion funnel
- Question breakdown
- Geographic map
- Cross-tab analysis
- QC / quality checks
- AI summary generation
- Response export (CSV, JSON)
Enterprise only
- AI sentiment analysis
- Emotion detection (6 dimensions)
- Keyword extraction from open-text
- Sentiment trend over time
- Per-question sentiment scoring
- Media uploads & background customization
Why this matters for your surveys
The average survey tool was built to collect data. Formaly is built to help you understand it. There is a meaningful difference between a spreadsheet of responses and an insight that changes a decision.
The analytics suite we have built is designed around that gap. Every feature exists because there is a specific question it answers that a raw response list cannot. The completion funnel tells you where to fix your survey. The cross-tab tells you which segment to focus on. The QC check tells you which responses to exclude. The AI summary tells you the three things that matter most without reading 300 rows.
If you are currently running surveys and making decisions based on a download and a pivot table, we built all of this for you.
Try Formaly's analytics
Create a survey, collect responses, and see the full analytics suite in action. Free to start - no credit card required.