Re: Questions about Internet focus group vendors?

From: Luca Meyer <luca_at_lucameyer.com>
Date: Fri 26 Jul 2002 10:57:33 -0500

Dear Simon,

> Do any of you know of a vendor that specializes in focus
> group research of specific web sites that we could
> recommend to a client?

There are several suppliers that can do a good job at implementing a
qualitative analysis of web sites. A few references you may want to check
out are:

1) http://www.esomar.nl/directory_internet.html, a list of istitute that
offer Internet market research services associated to the European Society
for Market and Opinion Research classified by country.
2) http://www.worldopinion.com/news?cmd=item&id=6912, a review of several
market research suppliers
3) http://www.quirks.com/source/search_geo.htm, an advanced search interface
that allows you to specify several parameters to identify one or more of
7300 possible market research suppliers

> What's the typical process?


+++ Get very clear about the objectives of the research.

That is, try to outline not only what the research should accomplish. What
are the aspects of the web site that your customer want to test? usability,
branding/imaging, communicating, etc...? What are the actions that can
associated to the research results? redesign, continuous improvement,
content management support, etc...? Are there more than one target market
for your customer's web site? If so, which of the targets you believe is
more important and for which one your customer needs more information?

Without a clear strategy about what your customer needs to achieve with the
research, the research budget can be badly spent - and sometimes even
wasted!

+++ Get a good understanding of how much the research is worthed to your
customer

Make sure that your customer is adviced to buy a research that cost less
than the current expected value the information it will deliver. Are the
information sought mission critical? Are they already available somewhere or
should they be collected from scratch? Can the data that we have in-house
(eg. log file) tell us something about what we need to know?

> Should
> we develop an RFP and invite bids?

I think you should, but make sure you have your objectives clear in mind and
that you translate them properly in the RFP. It is way too much easy to make
mistakes in the planning of the research. The errors that originate in this
phase may be much more important that sampling errors....

> Any idea how much we
> should spend to have one site evaluated and compared to
> comp set of 8-10 other sites?

It depends on:

1) the segmentation of the target - normally at least two group for any
specific target market are needed.
2) the markets you want the focus groups to take place - some cities are way
more expensive than others
3) the size of the groups - there is a fixed cost plus a variable cost for
each participant
4) the specifity of the target - the more specific is the target, the longer
and more expensive will be the recruiting

In my opinion, any estimate at this stage of details can really be too
variable...

HTH,

Luca
www.lucameyer.com








Received on Fri Jul 26 2002 - 10:57:33 CDT