Online Research- what we have so far (The QuestionPro Blog)

The model of engagement on the internet is evolving and so are the means for conducting market research. These are currently the 5 main channels for getting research done online:

Online Surveys - Surveys are and will most likely be the core of conducting research online for the foreseeable future. They are an efficient and cost effective manner for collecting quantifiable data.

Blogs - This is your avenue to harness some casual back and forth banter with your customers. This is a perfect opportunity to initiate the conversation and start to gauge interest. Much of the data coming out of blog comments will be somewhat anecdotal, but nonetheless may help to shape the direction of other research initiatives.

Communities - Communities are probably the fastest evolving space on the online research front. Communities in the research world are evolving into a means to capture the thoughts of your customers. They present your customers with a space for making their voice heard. The key to making communities a viable option for gathering feedback is a mechanism to measure the buzz of the community. Ideascale (http://www.ideascale.com) is our first take on the community platform. The concept is simple, give customers a way to voice their ideas, give them a way to quantify these ideas, and the winners get what they want. The value is in the crowdsourcing model. The challenge is controlling the chaos.

Online Panels - A survey panel is basically a structured online community. A researcher is essentially pre-screening these customers and asking questions, soliciting comments , and/or testing ideas through surveys or online focus groups. The demographics of these users are usually known so the data collected from a panel will have quite a bit more structure than a freeform community. The advantages are in the structured data. The huge disadvantage of online panels is the overhead that it takes to manage this panel, which includes keeping panelists engaged, preventing professional survey takers, managing incentives etc etc etc...

Web Analytics - How are my customers actually reacting to promotions via email? What products are getting more traffic than others on my site? Are my customers reading reviews and are these reviews influencing their buying habits? These are the questions that web analytics are answering and providing yet another clip of data to add to the mix.