Would you like to monitor the effectiveness of your Web site? Do
you want or need to know whether customers are going to like the
new product you're thinking of developing?
One of the best ways to get answers to these questions is to do
a survey. But don't bother with traditional polling via phone
or mail if you want results. You can ask everything you need of
your customers through your Web site. "The biggest reason
companies survey online is because it's fast and
efficient," says Chris Anne Wheeler of marketing research
company ActivMedia. "You can automatically calculate results,
and if you [run into] problems, you can fix the study and relaunch
quite painlessly."
Furthermore, online surveys are inexpensive. According to Tim
Lee, co-founder of WebCMO.com, a site for Web marketers, and editor of
the Journal of Marketing Research, most online surveys
qualify as do-it-yourself projects. That means you don't need a
professional firm to conduct market research surveys for you.
"After all," he says, "you understand your market
better than anyone."
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To conduct a successful online survey, be sure to keep the
following tips in mind:
1. Do the survey yourself. Just because you forgo hiring
an expensive online research firm doesn't mean the results will
be any less effective.
2. Determine the survey's goal. Focus on gathering
the information most important to you, such as navigation
satisfaction, product and service needs or price expectations.
3. Keep the survey short and only ask questions that
pertain to the topic at hand. If the question won't yield
insight into the topic, eliminate it.
4. Select your survey channels. Will you collect
information from visitors right on your Web site, or will you send
e-mails asking for information? Both options are effective.
5. Test the survey before launching it fully, and
evaluate the results you receive. You'll then be able to modify
any questions that aren't returning the expected results or
that people skipped because they were worded poorly.
6. For quantitative answers, don't overlap the survey
categories. (For instance, 1 to 99, 100 to 199 and so on).
Also, keep the number of items within each category the same to
yield more statistically valid results.
7. Always give the person the option to check
"don't know."
8. Keep it simple and avoid complex questions that
require too much thought.
9. Ask for personal data last. By doing so, your
respondent will be more at ease, and you'll more likely obtain
that critical information.
10. Offer an incentive related to respondents'
interests. That way, they're more likely to complete the
survey.
11. When selecting incentives, keep them unrelated to the
survey questions. For example, if you're trying to measure
your customers' attitudes about price, offering a discount as
an incentive will attract people who seek out low prices-which will
return biased results.
12. Keep your target audience in mind. If you want to
understand your current customers or site visitors, conduct a
survey on your site or use your mailing list. If you want to
understand online consumers in general, buy banner space on other
sites or use outside mailing lists to get respondents.
13. Remember simplicity. Though sophisticated marketing
research requires advanced analysis, less complex techniques
(cross-tabulation, for example) can also provide valuable
information.
14. Do market research for the right reasons. Conduct a
market research survey because you need key information to make
your marketing decisions. That way, rather than just having a stack
of tables with numbers, you'll have research results you can
use to improve your business.
Giving in to the temptation of getting help from an online
research company could cost you $15,000 to $100,000. Doing an
online survey yourself keeps that money where you need it-in your
business.