Online methods to help you better know your customers

Thousands of valuable opinions and loads of indispensable customer feedback are right at your fingertips. In the same way the Internet has revolutionized personal and business communications, it's also revolutionized market research.

Research that used to take months now takes days, or as little as 24 hours, allowing you to react quickly to your customers' needs and avoid missteps. Whether you're looking for quantitative or qualitative results, here are some ways to get them that save you time, money and hassle.

Get it cheaper, faster, better

Online research typically costs a fraction of traditional methods. Conducting a survey through e-mail, for example, saves you printing and distributing costs, as well as the cost of entering and compiling the results by hand. You can make the system automated, adding results immediately to a database where you can analyze them for faster results. Connecting with respondents via the Internet also allows you to access hard-to-reach audiences such as doctors, lawyers and students.

Count on good quantitative research

When surveying, you can either e-mail surveys or post them on your Web site.

E-mailing surveys works best if you need many responses in a short time. Make sure to keep your survey small to minimize download time and be sure to follow Internet ethics — don't list everyone's name in the "To:" field and list your company in the "From:" field.

Placing a survey on your Web site works best if you need more-targeted respondents, since that's where your customers already go (hopefully). Be sure to explain its purpose, since your site is accessible to everyone — even non-customers. If your site gets a lot of traffic, simply place a link to the survey on your home page. If you don't get much traffic, you may have to e-mail an invitation.

When creating your online survey:

• Avoid a huge, scrolling survey with page breaks. Also, avoid one question per page.
• Use logical branching so that answers to questions automatically route the respondent to the next appropriate question.
• Limit survey-taking time to less than 5 minutes.
• Take advantage of streaming video and other media if appropriate.

Improve the quality of your qualitative research

Online technology makes focus groups easier and cheaper to conduct. There are some drawbacks, however. Since the moderator is not in the same location as the participants, he or she may miss body language or interpersonal cues that would be more obvious close up.

You can use the Internet to conduct streaming video focus groups, online focus groups and bulletin board groups.

Stream video to your desktop

Using live or delayed (on demand) Webcasting, the focus group still happens in a facility, but instead of traveling to view the groups behind a one-way mirror, you can watch live and communicate with other observers over an Internet chat room.

Advantages include:

• Watching a group from any location — including your desktop.
• Saving money by not having to travel or rent a dedicated studio.
• Putting the session on a CD-ROM, or e-mailing it to others, with verbatim extracts available for presentations.

Chat in online focus groups

These use an Internet-based text chatbox rather than a central facility or room. Each respondent logs onto the system and connects to a remote moderator from his or her own computer. The moderator types in questions and the participants answer them by typing in their answers.

Advantages include:

• Integrating participants and a moderator from anywhere around the world.
• Saving money vs. traditional focus groups because you don't need to travel or rent a facility.
• Letting different types of people "attend" the same group simultaneously, such as boys and girls.
• Getting more candid responses, since participants are relatively anonymous.
• Reducing various "group effects" such as the tendency to seek agreement and compromise or a single respondent dominating the group.

There are a few disadvantages to keep in mind. For example, moderators cannot demonstrate products or distribute samples. Lack of face-to-face contact means you can't read facial expressions. And text of responses cannot be saved for later reference.

Check out bulletin boards

Bulletin boards work similary to online focus groups, but rather than being conducted in real time, they are conducted over the course of days, weeks or months. Participants sign on whenever they want, view other's responses and spend as much time as they want leaving their own responses.

Advantages include all of those for online focus groups, plus:

• Reaching busy audiences and providing convenience for people in different time zones.
• Getting more depth of research.
• Following a specific thread to look at only a specific issue.
• Saving text of responses for future reference.
• Not requiring the moderator to be present.
• Allowing you to ask fewer questions — or just one.

Need better results? Online marketing research is just one business communications solution we've provided over the past 25 years. To explore some innovative ways to reach your specific research goals, e-mail Matt Harlow or call 800-800-9547.

Ideas are our product. We work to analyze your markets, isolate your key brand benefits and send clear, focused messages right to your target audience. Messages that build your brand image and achieve what you're really looking for … measurable results. We call it Communication with insight.^sm