E-Marketing

Online surveys- an Internet based research approach is catching on. The big and the popular companies of the world like the Microsoft, Ford, AT and T, Compaq, use the online surveys to make various important business decision. For instance, British Airways uses an online survey to gather the opinions of over 9000 executive club members regarding the company services. Similarly, Leo Burnett the leading Advertising Agency used the online survey to test the advertising directed to the ‘kid’ market. It is estimated that in US alone 30% of the marketers will use online surveys as a research tool by 2005 and online surveys are projected to generate $3.1 billion (50%) of revenue for marketing research firms. And this trend is catching on in Nepal as well. Some of the companies mainly the ones which have an online presence are using mini-surveys to track the visitors’ response on some particular issue.

Online surveys – An Introduction   

The word ‘survey’ is used most often to describe a method of gathering information from a sample of individuals. This ‘sample’ is usually just a fraction of the population being studied. Survey provides an important source of basic scientific knowledge. Data collection in a survey is usually carried out by mail, telephone interview, in-person interview and questionnaires.

Online Surveys in the other hand are performed by sending questionnaires to the individuals via e-mail or by posing a survey form in the Web or an electronic bulletin board.

To carry out an email survey, an organization draws a sample of the email addresses from its database and emails its questionnaire. The respondents type their answers and send back the email. To answer an email survey, the respondent does not need to be online while filling the questionnaire. In the web survey however, the respondents visit a webpage and answer the questionnaire online. The links to the webpage where the questions are posted are usually sent by email to the respondents.

Benefits of the Online Survey

The increasing popularity of the online surveys is perhaps based upon its innate attribute of being a research approach, which for the first time has enabled the researchers/organizations to quickly and affordably understand the attitudes, behaviors and opinions of the current or target customers.

Online surveys provide one with the ability to acquire targeted, real time marketplace feedback upon which the business decisions can be confidently made. The growing use of the online survey also makes sense because consumers especially the younger generations who are spending more of their time in Internet prefer the quick online methods over the traditional research methods like telephone and mail surveys which consume more time and effort of the respondents. With the number of the internet users growing up even in Nepal no marketer will be able to able to ignore the online survey for long. Moreover the valuable feedback that is required for the purpose of creating a better website, a better online advertising initiatives, understanding customers satisfaction levels through web based services can perhaps be best identified with the help on online surveys of the targeted sample of the Internet users rather than by using the offline methods.

Advantages of the online surveys over the usual offline methods can perhaps be enumerated as follows:

1. Speed: Where it takes months to gather the feedback on the questionnaires sent by mail the online survey questionnaires can be delivered almost instantaneously worldwide via internet and there is no postal charges. In as little as 24 hours (or less) in one business day, you can have the necessary information derived from the feedback of the survey to guide your decision.

With the help of ‘adaptive ‘ questions in an online survey, the researcher can make it easy for the respondent to answer those questions, which are applicable for him/her thus increasing the speed of answering process. For example, if the respondents marks himself as ‘Single’ the computer will automatically skip say 3 questions related to his family size and their demographics. This reduces the complexity and the time of the respondent in reading and answering the questions related to his family.

2. Reach: Given the number and characteristics of the individuals who access the Internet, online surveys enable one to get the attitudes, behaviors and opinions of previously unreachable or illusive audiences.

3. Affordability: It would not be wrong to say that online surveys can provide the results at a fraction of the cost over other decision aids including mail, telephone, and in-person research methodologies.

4. Reduces errors: Web surveys reduce errors. Respondents’ entering answers into the computer eliminates data entry errors as there is no need for a person to key in answers from a pencil and paper questionnaire.

5. Honest response to sensitive questions: Researchers have found that respondents will answer the questions more honestly and openly on a computer than when an interviewer is present. In addition respondents answer very sensitive questions about private matters over the net. The reason may be that the computer is impersonal and no one is there watching what the respondents types.

Creating an online survey

A simple online survey can be created by just composing the questions, choosing bullets, drop downs or open-ended comment boxes for the answers in a document format or an HTML format and email the page or mail the link of the page if you have posted it in your website. As filled questionnaires are returned, you can input the data and analyze the information.

Another way is to use the available softwares like ‘websurveyer’. ‘Zoomerang’, SurveyMonkey.com’ ,’Insightxpress’ and many other similar softwares. Please note that the pricing and the features of these softwares vary. A number offer a free version while some offer a free survey with a limited number of questions (say 25 questions as in Zoomerang). Most of these softwares display the result of the survey in graphical form so you can observe the responses –in real time—as colored bar charts swell with responses.

Though online surveys sound easy one should be clear that online surveys and getting feedback on some issue are not the same thing. The two should not be confused. The former belongs in the category of ‘Don’t try it at home’. It requires a mastery of statistics, control variables, proper branching of questions and other practices of the classic market research. To design and write a survey that yields valid and clear results, one needs to plan clear objective prior to launching the survey. To define your objective, ask yourself ‘What problem an I trying to solve?’. At the end of the survey, the information obtained from the survey should be able to provide you with the solution for your question. ‘Because it is easy to ask question’ do not be tempted to ask a lot of questions which are nice to know but irrelevant to solve your problem. Therefore once you have defined your survey objective, you need to identify the information you need to reach your objective. Think of your questions as a conversation, the answer of one leading to another. As a general rule keep your survey short, simple and to the point.

While building your survey pay special attention to the amount of time it takes to display the survey on the browser. Although the use of graphics and embedded component is acceptable, overdoing it will increase the time it takes to download and increase the probability that potential respondents will abandon your survey before it I fully displayed in their browser.

If you send the survey out as an email attachment, or use an email message to invite people to your website to take the survey, make sure your email message is clear and compelling. A boring message will not get recipients to participate. In addition you can also

•  Always use the blind carbon copy (BCC) filed if you must send a single massage to an entire group.
• Never list more than one address in the ‘TO’ or ‘CC" fields since all recipients will see the entire list.
• Provide the URL that will take people directly to your survey.
• Provide a valid address for replying to you and tell the recipient how to contact you if you have a problem.
• Provide an option to the respondents to opt out of your survey.
• Mention the number of days that your survey will be active for the respondents to send their opinions.
• Consider sending a reminder by emails, postal mails or advertisements in both traditional and new media sources to remind the targeted sample to take part in your survey.

As the responses start to arrive, they are added immediately to a database. Unlike traditional survey techniques, the online nature of the web surveys make it possible to process results without human intervention thus minimizing the cost and he time taken for analysis. Once in database, they can be manipulated with a variety of tools, including statistical packages spreadsheets and presentations programs.

The key thing to remember is that you should always relate your analysis back to your objective.