Friedbeef’s Tech

Marketing without research is like trying to find your way in the dark, and I’m not just saying that because I have a research background!

With low fieldwork costs, and high revenue potential, the online market research industry is a booming one judging from the number of companies springing up left and right.  

Why Online Research?

If you’re thinking of trying out online research for your company consider the following benefits and drawbacks as described by the UK Market Research Society

Advantages:

1. Large numbers of respondents can be surveyed at one time
2. International boundaries no longer need to be an obstacle to research - worldwide surveys can be conducted at the click of a button
3. Inexpensive way to conduct large surveys - it is possible to get thousands of responses for just a few thousand dollars
4. Rapid turnaround – research can be undertaken and results received within a few days. Already, some US companies are offering same-day delivery of results

Disadvantages:

1. DIY surveys (where the clients put the questions directly to the respondent without a researcher as an intermediary) compromise objectivity of questioning and impartial interpretation
2. The fact that the internet is a limited medium from which to draw a truly representative sample. Research conducted via internet surveys can only target internet users and, more specifically, it can only target internet users who are prepared to answer on-line questionnaires – currently still a small percentage of the population

Is Isalient up to the Mark?

Isalient is an online survey service which asked me to profile them so here goes:

I found Isalient powerful but extremely unuser friendly.  Right from the start, I had great difficulty copying my questions to another page, and was tearing my hair out because of slow server speeds.  Having said that, I did make an effort to check out Isalient’s competitors (see end of post), and I have to concede that Isalient’s package is very comprehensive in comparison to the rest.

So how can they improve?  Well they can start by following these set of rules…

5 Things Any Online Research Company should Implement

1. Make it easy to build and modify a question - TO be faster - AJAX EVERYTHING please

2. The system should be smart enough to weed out blank options - If my question has 5 choice options by default, but I only use 3, it should remove the surplus choice options automatically.  On some platforms I had to delete the blank options one by one.  The picture below should never happen.

 3. Allow import and export of the survey - Poor interoperability makes porting a questionnaire over to and from another service a pain.  Some companies see that as locking in a customer.  I see that as scaring them from trying out the service for the first time. Update: Isalient supports XML import/export.

4. Provide template questionnaires - Many people don’t know how to even start to design a basic questionnaire.  Have some questionnaires on popular topics good to go, so readers don’t have to struggle. Update: Isalient provides templates.

5. Allow publishing on another site - I don’t fancy popups and redirects to another site to do a survey as I would rather my readers stay on my own site.  Let me put it on my own page or in a blog post.

Like most online survey companies out there, Isalient has a free package you can try before you buy (Limited to 50 responses).  Meanwhile consider checking these other popular online survey sites out as well…

1. QuestionForm
2. WuFoo
3. Survey Monkey
4. Zoomerang

Overall, Isalient has a lot of the basics in place, which gives it great potential, but my experience was marred by the user experience.  Many of the features I looked for were present but were so hard to find, they might as well not have been there.  This product is almost there, but definitely needs work.

What has your experience been with online surveys?  Tell us in the comments!

Disclaimer: Isalient has paid me to review their service, and to give an honest opinion.  Please note that all opinions expressed in this post are completely my own, and have not been influenced by Isalient in any way.

[tags]surveys, isalient, market research, [/tags]

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