Online Surveys

[Peter Francis]

Hi All,

Does anyone have any experience of using online surveys as a market research tool before launching a product website? It seems to make sense to do some direct research rather than purely relying on third party research. I was thinking of using something like Survey Monkey and trying to get people to complete it by offering some sort of discount/offer when the website is launched but I'm not sure how practical that is...

Anyone got any experiences/stories to share?

 

[Greg Black]

Hi Peter

That is a great idea, I encourage everyone to survey their audience before launching anything, I do both surveys and I am currently doing 1to1 calls too.

If you know where your target market hang out you can use a tool like survey monkey to design a questionnaire, I use question pro, buy survey monkey is probably good enough for most uses.

If you are looking to survey a general consumer market, you can use a service like Toluna, where they already have a large audience of people who will give you feedback.

Cheers
Greg

 

[Liybpg]

Testing the product which was not launched yet is a bit tricky. Few factors would matter:

1) is your product very new and will customers understand exactly what features it has?

2) what kind of audience are you asking to complete the survey? If it is completely irrelevant - you might get too positive or too negative feedback from customers, which is not going to help.

3) in what circumstances are you asking to complete them? if you are asking them to 'help you out' then you will probably get too positive responses; if you are giving them a prize, will they care to give an informed answer?

I also think offering a discount from a product is a bit odd, as the idea of testing is that it will help you make the 'go/no go' decision on the product, meaning that you are potentially offering cusotmers discount from nothing. You can instead offer some amazon vouchers.

If you don't have a good budget to do those things, I would probably treat any results with a lot of scepticism. Alternatively, there are some survey companies such as toluna etc who are providing a platform for customers to test products, which I haven't tried and can't really comment on whether it works.

If you decide to go with reasearch yourself make sure that you are targeting the rigth audience (btw survey monkey is offering that option, but for $3 per response, I think); then ensure that questions are worded in a way which does not persuade people to answer in one way or another; and that your incentives & the way you position the research is appropriate to ensure that customers do give useful feedback.

 

[Peter Francis]

Testing the product which was not launched yet is a bit tricky. Few factors would matter:

1) is your product very new and will customers understand exactly what features it has?

Hi...sorry I probably should have been clearer. I am specifically looking at a retail market segment and want to know more about potential customers.

 

[Liybpg]

So you are launching a website where you will sell some type of products and you are looking to understand who would be your target audience? or have you defined your target audience and want to see if they are interested in the website / products?

In these sort of situations I would always ask myself: what sort of answer do I need to get to convince me that I should not proceed with this idea?

For example, will 50% of respondents saying that they are not interested convince you? Or will you be able to post-rationalise it as, for example, the target market chosen not correctly (possibly quite rightly so)? If you can't think of what will convince you not to do it, then probably the research is not going to help. Alternatively it may help you define your proposition a bit better.

 

[Peter Francis]

So you are launching a website where you will sell some type of products and you are looking to understand who would be your target audience? or have you defined your target audience and want to see if they are interested in the website / products?

In these sort of situations I would always ask myself: what sort of answer do I need to get to convince me that I should not proceed with this idea?

For example, will 50% of respondents saying that they are not interested convince you? Or will you be able to post-rationalise it as, for example, the target market chosen not correctly (possibly quite rightly so)? If you can't think of what will convince you not to do it, then probably the research is not going to help. Alternatively it may help you define your proposition a bit better.

Initially I am interested in the demographics of the potential market niche...level of interest, spending patterns etc. There is quite a lot of information available for the market as a whole but not for this segment.

I think I know what the demographics are but I want to validate it plus gather additional information on their interests and spending habits. e.g. 20-30 year old men are the biggest spenders but would the prefer to buy from a major retailer whereas 40-50 year old women spend less but are more interested in buying from a specialized retailer.

 

[Greg Black]

Hi Peter

There isn't too much available for demographics info, not that is freely available at any rate.

I would start with Quantcast - you can put in the URL of sites that are in your market and it will give you traffic estimates and even demographic information, you can filter by UK only too, though the data isn't as complete as it is for US sites.

Also you may find a post I wrote useful, it has a bit in there about research for eCommerce http://www.etailalliance.com/343/where-should-i-start-when-planning-ecommerce-website/

In the post it includes info about how to size a market using Adwords, which is a really useful exercise for any new site.

Cheers
Greg

 

[Peter Francis]

Thanks Greg. Funnily enough I'd already read your article, very useful information.

 

[Liybpg]

Some good advice above, I would try to exhaust free tools that are available online. Then if you don't feel that you can find anything else, I have tried Marketest (http://www.marketest.co.uk/) before and they have been pretty good. You can get feedback from about 400-500 people for a decent price.

The problem with conducting your own research is that you will struggle to get this many people - the most I could gather myself was about 180.