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Branching sends each respondent to the questions that apply to them, which keeps surveys short. Rules run only when the survey shows one question at a time, in the Step by step and Chat layouts; a survey that shows all questions at once keeps its rules but doesn’t run them. In a chat survey, a rule that goes back to a question already answered works like changing that answer: the questions after it are removed, and the visitor answers again.

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Add a branching rule

1

Open the question

In the Content tab, open the question whose answer decides the path, and find Branching by answer.
2

Add a rule

Select Add rule, choose a condition on the answer, and under Go to: select another question or End survey. A rule that goes back to an earlier question shows a warning.
3

Set the fallback

Under If no rule matches, keep Continue to next question or choose another question.
The conditions depend on the question type: Equals, Does not equal, Contains, Does not contain, Greater than, Less than (and their “or equal to” forms), Answered and Not answered. A choice question branches by its options, including Other. An NPS question branches by its score, and the answer picker marks each score as Detractor (0 to 6), Passive (7 or 8) or Promoter (9 or 10): Less than or equal to 6 covers detractors, and Greater than or equal to 9 covers promoters. Equals and Contains on text ignore upper and lower case and extra spaces, and a text answer with a screenshot or file attached is compared by its text. When several questions share a page, the rules on that page are checked from the top when the respondent selects Next, and the first rule that applies decides where the survey goes.

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Example: an NPS follow-up

  • Question 1 asks for an NPS score from 0 to 10.
  • If the score is Less than or equal to 6 (a detractor), the survey goes to “What was missing for you?”
  • If the score is Greater than or equal to 9 (a promoter), the survey goes to “What do you love most?”
  • Everyone else continues to the general follow-up question.
Detractors are asked what went wrong, promoters are asked what works, and neither group sees the other’s question.

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How rules run

  • Rules run in the respondent’s browser, so there is no delay between questions.
  • Rules work on every channel: the website widget, the hosted link and QR pages, and the page an email answer opens.
  • The progress bar accounts for skipped questions, so it never moves backward.
  • The editor’s live preview follows the rules, so every path can be tested before publishing.
One or two levels of branching cover most surveys. Deeper trees are hard to follow and rarely change what you learn.