Analytics Basics: Visitor surveys – Part 1

This article, written by Neil Mason, was originally published on Clickz.com and is republished here with permission.

One of the trends over the past couple of years has been the growth in the number of organisations who are using some form of visitor survey tool on their websites. It wasn’t so long ago that when running workshops I would be asked how many people were running surveys on their websites, and maybe 20% of people would put their hands up, these days its probably around 50%. That crude survey itself is indicative of the wider adoption of visitor feedback mechanisms as part of the digital analytics toolkit.

This adoption has been caused by two main factors I think. First of all there has been the growth of availability of online survey capabilities across all levels of sophistication and these surveys have become more “productised” which makes them easier for organisations to buy and deploy. Examples within the customer satisfaction measurement space include 4Q at one end of the spectrum, which is a limited but free survey tool, through to more enterprise level products such as Forsee Results and iPercpetions.

The second driver of growth I think has been the realisation by organisations that they can’t measure the effectiveness of their digital marketing strategies by purely looking at clickstream data. Web analytics tools can tell you what happened in terms of visitors’ behaviour and when it happened, but they are not necessarily the best tools for telling you who did what and why they did it. That’s where survey data comes in by providing this different perspective. By asking people questions about themselves, why they do what they do and what they think, it’s possible to fill in some of the blanks left by the volumes of clickstream data at our disposal.

As with all measurement and analysis tools and systems, the amount of thought and preparation put into configuration and deployment pays dividends later on in terms of the quality and robustness of the data. Survey tools are no different. There are various approaches that an organisation might take to developing and launching a survey.

First of all they may choose to outsource the whole thing to an agency to manage on their behalf. Here the agency would be responsible for designing the questionnaire, scripting the questionnaire in whichever survey tool they use, deploying the survey, collecting the data and analysing the results. This is the approach that most organisations take when doing offline market research and there’s nothing wrong with using the same approach online. The main concern of the organisation commissioning the research is to ensure that the research objectives are clear and aligned to their business objectives, to agree the questionnaire and also to ensure that the survey is fit for purpose and holds up to the brand values. This last point is particularly important as there is evidence that suggests that poorly executed online surveys do potentially damage the brand whether they are launched on the site or when people are invited to take part via email. I have certainly been on the receiving end of some surveys where I’ve thought that the style of the survey was completely at odds with the brand.

The second option for an organisation is to choose to design and manage the survey themselves. Certainly these days there are no end of free or cheap survey tools that allow you to run surveys of varying complexity. Quite often a provider will provide a basic version for free or at a low cost which has limited functionality and data capture limits, they also offer a higher end tool which allows more complex questionnaires to be designed and more responses to be captured. However just because the tool itself is free, it doesn’t mean that the survey doesn’t require the same sort of diligence in its preparation and deployment than you were using a more complex, enterprise level product. One of the dangers is that surveys deployed using cheap tools with little effort put into them look cheap themselves and may have a negative impact on the user experience and their perception of the brand.

In my next article I will outline some tips for maximising the effectiveness of your survey efforts.