Thanks

The folks at Future Now are skeptical of surveys. They can annoy customers. The questions themselves tend to reflect the bias of the person or company asking them. At best, they offer directionally-correct information, which is often taken out of conte…

1. It clearly was branded to their site. There was no guessing that this was an advertising gimmick served up by someone else.
2. The survey is short and sweet. Asking four questions is brilliant. I will not answer long surveys, but a four question one from a website I trust — yes I’ll do that.
3. The actual survey itself was quick and easy.

Seems like a great service to me!

Just fielding this one for Jonathan. You’ve raised a great point, and it’s certainly a valid (and widely used) objection to doing website satisfaction surveys. That’s pretty much why we seek to obtain consent to participate upfront for a post-visit survey, rather than interrupting mid-session. We know that participating in a survey isn’t the world’s sexiest or most glamorous activity, but if the solicitation is clear and polite and the tone employed is one of brand-building, a solid proportion of visitors will jump in. And even if they are dis-inclined to jump in, just one click of the “no” button sends them back to the page they requested.

Hope this helps!

I have a question for all you readers. Let us say you are surfing a website and a survey window pops up – Would this affect your experience negatively? If you don’t want to take the survey, do you close the window and continue surfing? Would you click the back button because you don’t like pop ups? Would your answer depend on what the website was offering you?

It is great to be able to get feedback from visitors but if this service is going to be free, lots of websites will use it. I am wondering if this will reduce response rates and even have a negative impact on the user experience.

Sorry Jonathan (and Avinash). Just playing the devil’s advocate here.

1) 4Q is free! iPerceptions began with an enterprise level solution…and while we hope that a certain number of 4Q users will eventually upgrade to a full scale ‘webValidator Continuous Listening Solution’, we have no intention of ever charging for 4Q. It is what we call a ‘faith based intitiave’.
As per my quote in our 4Q Press release:

“With the web moving decidedly forward to meet the immediate needs of the end user, iPerceptions believes that all site owners have an intrinsic right to hear the voices of their customers,” said iPerceptions’ Vice President of Marketing, Jonathan Levitt. “4Q will allow the mass market to put their online customers front and center, which is exactly where they belong.”

2) In terms of a demo. In the next few days, we’ll be putting a 4Q survey up on the 4Q website. In the meantime though, I would be happy to have someone walk you through a demo of the product. I would also recommend that you take a look at Avinash’s video (which is pretty much a demo). Go to YouTube and do a search on ‘Voice of Customer’.

Thanks!
Jonathan

1. Why is this free? Just curious.
2. Can we look at a few demos? Would love to get this for Chillibreeze.

We are a leading MR firm specializing in gathering online user behavior.

Relying on site visitors to accurately report on their behavior risks false reporting. We assign a realistic task to survey respondents and then track their clickstream in pursuit of that task. We ask them if they were successful and gather their impression of their experience. By correlating their opinion with their actual experience we are able to see a very clear picture of what really happened. We do this without putting any software on the site or requiring any client-side download.

Marshall Harrison, CEO
RelevantView
http://www.relevantview.com

This is a very interesteing service, why do they provide it for free? Just for marketing exposure?

I was wondering if you had a few sample URLs of sites that actually use the system so I can view it directly before going through the whole proces of signing up? I couldn’t find any samples on their website.

Eric

I dont think its about either qualitative or quantitative. I think its about the integration of the two. Qualitative data provides the “why” to behavioral’s “what”. Through integration qualitative data contextualizes the quantitative base, providing true user led recommendations.

Surveying is a about methodology. It’s about invitation solicitation, the way you ask the questions, what questions you ask, and the way you analyze the data.

Qualitative data is another dataset in the ever growing analytics toolbox.

Again, this is about getting qualitative data, not quantitative data. That means that if a single survey respondent — just one person — tells you about something that’s broken on your website that you were previously unaware of, their comment then becomes actionable. You can fix it based on what they say.

If all the visitor tells you is that “Your site doesn’t have what I need,” that’s not actionable because the comment itself is of low quality. On the other hand, if the visitor says something more interesting — (”The product description for the Sony digital camera I was looking at doesn’t tell me how it’s any different from the older model, which you sell for half the price. Why’s it worth twice the price?”) — you then have something to take action on. Now you know you need better copy on at least two product pages because you’ve identified a question you weren’t addressing for that particular customer.

With any type of qualitative data, you should use your judgment. Just because someone wrote in to tell you that you should change this or that with your website doesn’t necessarily mean that you should act on their advice. But you should always listen to them.

Chances are that if someone’s taken the time to tell you about something your website could do better — or to thank you for what it’s already doing well — there are many others out there who feel the same.

Look for trends in the types of things people are telling you. If certain requests or comments are often repeated, track how often such comments are made.

Fortunately, your site’s current performance can be its own benchmark. What you must do is TEST any changes that are made based on the qualitative data you’re getting from customers. If things like conversion rate, average order value, form completions, and so forth, go up, then you’re on the right track.

If you’ve made changes based on this qualitative data and the site’s performance has been stagnant, then either the changes you’ve made haven’t addressed the real problem.

Keep listening to customers. Look for trends in what they say. See if it correlates with anything from your Web Analytics. And, most of all, TEST any new changes or assumptions you’re making.

Does that help?

Thanks for the article. It would be great if you could provide a benchmark ratio (or a method for one) for how many survey completions it takes for the data to be considered actionable.

Thanks,
Luis

Thanks for writing in. Sorry about that!

Many thanks for the piece.
Just wanted to point out a typo in your * and disclaimer: iPerspective

Thanks.
Jonathan