Registration Optimization – An Absolute Must Do

Written in Collaboration with Charley Spektor

During the past several months, we have examined several website registration forms. Different businesses have different registration needs, but we must all grapple with a similar website registration problem: High and sometimes extremely high drop off rates once website visitors reach the registration page.

In many cases, we have seen more than 90% of the visitors abandon the registration forms on a site. Registration for these and all sites is the lifeblood of their business and in some cases it is the business – selling completed registrations to outside vendors as sales leads.

Optimizing Your Registration Forms and Pages
During our years working with online products and services we’ve committed our share of registration page blunders. Here are three key problems and three remedies that have improved performance.

1. Eliminate extraneous registration form fields
Ask yourself, “Do I really need all of the information I am currently gathering? What are the essential data points I need to capture?” Scratch the rest. One site we examined had at least six form fields you could eliminate immediately, with no loss of quality, including two “create password” fields and four (4) “never-to-be-used” postal-mail fields.

2. Eradicate extraneous non-form-field content from the registration page
When a website user reaches your registration page, you want to provide just enough non-form information to help facilitate the completion of the form. Get rid of all the non-essential and redundant material that prevents the user from focusing on the task-at-hand. For example, at the top of the registration page of one form we reviewed were two text lines that said essentially the same thing. They simply employed a different syntax of words.

One line of text read, “You’re requesting information from Vendor X.” Right underneath this line the reader confronted this text: “Vendor X Requested Information.” To add a bit more confusion, a third line under these two asked the reader if they are a “member” of the site (less than half of 1 percent of previous visitors had bothered to become members). However, there was a fourth line of text which asked the user to “Log-in to pre-fill” the form. If you’re the typical reader, you’ve already spent five to 15 seconds reviewing (and thinking about the meaning of) these four lines. What a colossal blunder!

3. Eliminate extraneous website navigational routes that prevent successful registration-form completion
This last tip should be a no-brainer, but it occurs all too often. The journey many sites force you to take to really complete your registration and information request is round-about to say the least.

For example, after users click the “Submit” button on one of the sites we visited, they don’t get the PDF they’re interested in. Instead, a “thank-you” page is triggered, informing users that ‘a confirmation email’ has been sent to their email address. When users click on that email link, they still don’t get the material. The users are sent to the site’s home page, where they have to log in with a password, and then, to rub salt in the wound, they’re left on their own to find the proper navigational path to the PDF they had originally expressed interest in via a search query. Because of the poor navigational links from the home page, most readers did not find the PDF – talk about an unfriendly experience!

Are you thinking, “Wow I’d better go check my site?” Or are you still feeling “It can’t happen here; not on my site; not on my watch.” Just for kicks, take a fresh look at your registration pages and let us know what you find.

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Perspectives on Forecasting – Basic Challenges and More….

Written in Collaboration with Dr. Ralph Finos

This is a short collection of quotes related [in some cases loosely] to market forecasting. Forecasting is a difficult and challenging endeavor. It can be a dirt job, but someone has to do it!

We’ll kick it off with a quote from Mr. Churchill, he is always to the point.

The Basic Challenge
The future is just one damn thing after another. – Winston Churchill

Prediction is very difficult.  Especially when it’s about the future – Anonymous

Our business is prophecy and if prophecy were certain, there would not be much credit in prophesying – Max Radin

Never mind the noise in the market, pay attention to the price of the fish – Bahamian saying

Forecasting Tools and Processes
Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly – GK Chesterton

If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn’t be called “Research” [or in our case forecasting!] – Albert Einstein

Sources and Data Quality
Every tool carries with it the spirit by which it has been created –  Heisenberg

Torture the data long enough and it will confess – Anonymous

Staying on Top of Your Forecast
None of us really understands what’s going on with these numbers. –  David Allen Stockman, Director US OMB, on the U.S. Budget, 1981

Every model, no matter how detailed or how well conceived, designed, and implemented, is a vastly simplified representation of the world, with all the intricacies we experience on a day-to-day basis. – Alan Greenspan

Be Open to Novel Outcomes
We do not know what the future will bring, except that it will be different from any future we could predict –  John Maynard Keynes

Normal science often suppresses fundamental novelties because they are necessarily subversive to its basic commitment. –  Anonymous

We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them – Albert Einstein

We make progress in economic theory one academic funeral at a time.

While it is easy to poke fun at ourselves as we endeavor to create useful forecasts, the forecaster’s job is a difficult one. Fortunately, there are best practices and a body of work we can draw upon.

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Project Management Defined

Written in Collaboration with Andrea Lacroix

Simply put, project management is the process of completing a project from beginning to end within a specified budget and timeline. Without proper planning significant details are easily overlooked and projects can get off track or worse; such as missed deadlines, budgets exceeded, and/or not meeting intended project goals. These are all possible outcomes of poor project management.

Good project management is the key to a successful project of any size, especially one that is complex or launched across numerous geographic regions. In addition, high quality project management will ultimately have a positive impact on the entire research organization.  By using good project management techniques and tools, an organization can track trends and costs, which will help to plan for proper resource allocations on future projects.

For organizations that handle a large number of projects at one time, the most efficient way to do this is with a packaged project management solution such as MS Project Manager or Fast Track9.  These and other software programs allow you to track the individual tasks involved in the project, the number of days to complete each task, resource allocations, and milestones that affect deliverables. 

Because these packages are typically server-based, they allow all who need project planning access to use the information to manage resources and client expectations. Project management software varies in features and functions. The best software package “fit” will also vary from company to company. 

Whether a project is conducted by an individual or by project teams the concepts of project management are the same. However, the use of structured project management becomes increasingly necessary as the size of a project and the team conducting it expands.

We will explore other aspects of project management in the future so stay tuned to this channel!

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A Method to the Madness of Reporting Results

Research results are usually delivered as a presentation and/or report per the requirements of the project’s stakeholders. However, the form factor is typically less important than how the information is organized. An executive summary is typically required, but if not it is an excellent idea, one we highly recommend. All executives and managers are busy professionals who want the bottom line. Afterward, they are likely to entertain the results that support the conclusions.

Executive Summary
An executive summary typically consists of text, tables, graphs, images, and figures that allow the research team to offer its insights. Documentation to support the insights, implications, and conclusions should be available to provide further detail and to show how higher-level implications were derived.

The presentation would do well to start by answering the questions posed by stakeholders, when they decided to fund the study – seems obvious, but often not the focus of the presentation.

Address the objectives of the study and organize the results around the answers that speak to these objectives – these could be divided into the sections of the questionnaire, but often to tell a good story some reshuffling needs to take place.

Using the Questionnaire as a Guide
The questionnaire architecture is a good starting point. You already made decisions about what is important and that’s what the questionnaire content covers.

Since the questionnaire was designed hopefully to address objectives, using it as a guide to organize your results can be a good short cut. However, the goal is to provide insight to clients so look for market changes, trends, and themes that will help clients prepare for what is ahead.

Therefore, you are not limited to the structure of the research instrument and you can certainly move sections around to tell a clear story, which is exactly what you want to do. The format you choose is less important than the story you tell. You need to guide your readers through the evidence once you have stated the implication or conclusion.

Ex. “Gaming habits in the youngest cohort studied are likely to change direction next year, they are moving to …..” Then give the supporting evidence.

Permission to be Wrong
Give yourself permission to be wrong – some of what you say won’t come true. The market will change after the study is complete and you cannot report on what happens next only on what you observed. Take some risks (not crazy risks) based on the data and plot a course to attach the market that your clients can readily use.

Telling them what people in their target market are doing is a great start (ground clients in the facts about the market), but that’s not enough. You have to tell them what people are likely to do in the future too. Remember, they are typically trying to make business decision, give them direction and support it with facts and if possible, a few sound bites from the open-ended questions that fit your assessment of the direction of the market.

Researchers should “listen for direction” from the data. What seems to be changing and what seems to be static (at least for now)? Examine the data for convergence, i.e., two or more trends that create a theme. Listen for agreement within and across groups or market segments. Your clients want to know what to do so tell them how market conditions are changing or might change. Tell them what messages are likely to resonate best with each age group (or another market segment view, e.g., male vs. female).

Summarizing
Summarize the results within each section – put the summary (a.k.a. the conclusion) first and then the supporting data. Use representative quotes in the summary sections to make your points come alive – if you have qualitative data use sound bites to punctuate your points.

Finally, use short paragraphs, be succinct – you know the saying “if I had more time I would have written you a short letter.” It’s your job to write a short letter!

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Demystifying the Panel Creation Process

Panels are not all created equal. Three of the most important questions you need to ask about the panels you use include (but are certainly not limited to):

How were panelist recruited?
Recruitment is typically conducted online in spite of the claims companies may make. However, the best panels use some form of verification (e.g., telephone interviews, IP address tracking, and always a double opt-in with CAPTCHA, which stands for Completely Automated Public Turing Test To Tell Computers and Humans Apart). These confirmation methods are actively managed and panelists’ profiles are updated using a systematic and scheduled process.

Are panels more than a database of emails?
All panels are housed in some form of database. However, the sophistication of the database structures and capabilities to manage the panel vary. The best of the panel management practices track panelist activity across studies and include a process for updating panelist profiles. The management process should be capable of de-duplication of panel members selected for a study when panel providers use partners (many panelists are registered with more than one panel provider). Without a de-duplication process the same person can respond twice [or more] without your knowledge.

Some panel providers use a community approach to supplying sample. The profiles and refresh cycles of names and emails is likely to vary from community to community, which presents a challenge for the providers and for you as a researcher. The Community Model is gaining momentum and reasonably sophisticated software is available to handle the duplication problem. However, the issue of how representative the communities are of a defined market remains a serious concern.

If your goal is to better understand a specific community this issue may be mitigated or not exist. If on the other hand you want to generalize beyond the community, it would be best to know the demographic parameters of the community and the target markets to which you want to generalize. Making comparisons to explore whether significant differences exist is an important part of sample quality. If there are significant differences, you may need to be cautious and perhaps consider a weighting approach to compensate for differences.  

Does the Panel Provider Profile?
The idea of profiling has become associated with terrorism and the geo-political arguments for and against practicing profiling. We are not talking about that form of profiling. Panel providers’ efforts to profile panelists have two major objectives:

1. Send panelist to complete questionnaires they are qualified to take
2. Pre-qualify panelists to improve the incidence rates for clients

These are clearly complementary efforts. Profiling is used to understand better each panelist. The more you know about a panelist or more precisely the panel as a whole the better you can target a specific group of panelists to meet the objectives of a project.

Invitations to complete a questionnaire are sent to panelists who “appear” to qualify. Screening questions are then used to identify and qualify respondents with greater specificity. However, screening questions are not a panacea, but that’s a topic for another time.

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Nothing Is Better Than a Good Argument

Written by Roger A. Straus

Facilitating Focus Group Discussion
Perhaps the two most obviously important skills a moderator must master are (a) getting the most reluctant individuals to talk, and (b) facilitating group discussion. You do this principally through your own two-way communications with each participant, which you use to both query and probe individual group members and to facilitate interaction among group members. Competent moderators learn to do this, even if she or he follows the focus group guide religiously, asking questions and probing appropriately. Nobody likes a moderator who talks too much, who fills in the silence with her or his own voice. However, you can also be too quiet, which is often perceived as being “too passive.”  Every moderator must find his or her own balance in this regard.

Try Creating a Good Argument
Your goal is to have group members forget they are in a marketing research focus group. You want them to be so involved in the emerging discussion that they drop their social “masks” and other usual defenses. You want them to say what they are really thinking, reveal what they really do and feel in everyday life. You want them to “get real,” in other words. To accomplish this, you want them to take sides, create ad hoc alliances, either try to get you to understand what the world looks like from their perspective or to reveal and defend their perspective to one another.

The very best way to make this happen is to foster what amounts to an argument. A polite, friendly one, to be sure, but an interaction in which group members focus on one another and struggle to get a point or way of seeing things or doing things across, take issue with what the others say, and try to get others to see things their way.

This may sound a little unconventional but it can work – just keep it polite and friendly – it can even be fun!

This is an excerpt from Roger’s four-part eBook series on Focus Groups find it at  www.atheath.com/mrrc

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Implementing Your Project’s Analytical Plan

If an analysis plan is in place, the analytics you intend to use to conduct the analysis are already spelled out at least conceptually. Thus, this phase of the process is about execution or doing the work. A researcher or research team that has the appropriate professional statistical training and uses analytic tools such as SPSS or SAS should conduct data analysis.

This phase will commence with database clean up and data file manipulation (e.g., creating and recoding variables as needed). Once the data file is properly prepared, the research team can begin running the descriptive, univariate, and multivariate analysis required.

Additional analysis beyond the work planned is often conducted in response to new relationships uncovered in the data during the formal analysis. Allowing some time for data exploration can benefit the work. It gives analysts an opportunity to get comfortable with the data and at times find patterns serendipitously.

Elements of an Analysis Plan
If you have not created an analysis plan you can use these five steps to write one. These five (5) steps are straightforward and your work will proceed easier and faster.

1. State the key study objectives clearly at the beginning of the analysis plan (AP) and refer to them throughout the process.
2. Describe the major comparisons for the analysis (e.g., Major cross tabulations for the study include: Customers versus Non-customers, Companies by size, Customers that are Satisfied, Neutral, or Dissatisfied).
3. State how each question will be used to answer a specific objective of the study either on its own or in combination with other data points. Think through how results from each question will be presented and what statistics, if any, will be used in the analysis. Identify the independent and dependent variables.
4. Write a clear justification for including the information from the question in the study and perform a section by section “So what” litmus test (this works best if you do it while writing the questionnaire).
5. When the analysis plan is finished make sure each key study objective has been addressed.

These five steps are the basic approach to creating an analysis plan all you have to do now is think critically about what the study was truly designed to examine an apply your analytical skills..

(For more details on creating an analysis plan: See Analysis Plans made Easier, an AtHeath publication)

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Six Tips on Avoiding Project Failures

Of all the ways to make sure your project fails, poor communication tops the list of things that will derail your efforts. Stated more positively, strong communication practices are the best insurance against project failures! Moreover, investing in communication will not only help avoid failure it will pay dividends related to project excellence.

Tip # 1 – Use your communication skills to keep everyone “In the Loop Please.”

While this is good advice it is not enough, you must do more. Communication must and does go in all directions and much of it may not cross your desk. You need ways to channel and foster discussions.

Tip # 2 – Create communication mechanisms and use them consistently to develop positive and active communication within your team and across the spectrum of people involved your project.

This can be as simple as weekly [or daily if needed] meetings, regularly scheduled conference calls, and an email list created for use with the “reply to all” button. Online meetings and document sharing can also be very helpful.

Tip # 3 – Make sure you use meeting agendas.

No one likes to go to meetings that don’t have a clear purpose. Make sure everyone knows what the meeting is about. If they know the agenda ahead of time you can expect them to be prepared. If someone’s attendance is optional let them decide whether to attend or not.

Tip # 4 – Focus on tasks and solutions not complaints [complaints can be heard, but they should not dominate the communication].

Problem solving, expressing new ideas for consideration and other positive discussions are welcome – going down a rat hole is not! Learn to tell the difference so you can foster the positive contributions and squash the others.

Tip # 5 – Stay attuned to the project requirements.

Drifting more than a few inches from the requirements can waste time and de-focus a project. Keep the requirements front and center for everyone and make sure all activities have a clear path back to the objectives of a project.

Tips # 6 – Don’t try something new that you have not tested and do not understand completely the risk of using.

Projects have deadlines and deliverables, do not put them at risk by trying a new technology or process unless you can do so without risking project failure.

These are only six among a very long list of the Do’s and Don’ts of project management. They apply well to both research and marketing projects [and probably other areas too].

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An Odd Couple – Buyer’s and Seller’s Perspectives

Sellers naturally focus on their products (especially technology vendors and other producers of pricy products). Buyers on the other hand, quickly move to “what will the product (or service) do for me now and next?” This “gap” can, and often is, as wide as the Grand Canyon and as deep as the Mariana Trench (deepest point on earth located in the Pacific Ocean). Okay, I admit it I am being just a little overly dramatic, but I believe I’ve made my point!

Sellers is seems believe that the buyers are as excited as they are about the “wonderful engineering” and some probably are. However, at the end of the day even the most enthusiastic Corvette buyer just wants to feel the raw power and get on with having fun – and if the car doesn’t deliver he or she is likely to walk to a different dealership [although as a “Vette” owner I think that would be highly unlikely].  

In some cases, the gap can be leveraged especially when the customer is asking “What’s coming next?” This is a perfect opportunity to engage in a dialogue [better than a monologue] that focuses on changes and shares the future strategic direction (or enhancement specs) of the product. Find areas of shared interest with your customers. Get them excited before the product launches. This pre-launch buy-in perhaps soliciting and using ideas customers have provided is a wonderful approach. Microsoft is using it – watch their TV ads!

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A Key Differentiator – Sample Development

Are you planning to deploy an online survey, conduct telephone interviews, or recruit focus group participants? A key differentiator for your team is the ability to manage the process of providing a sample frame that is appropriate to the research objectives.

Explore the various panels of respondents available as well as the list options at your disposal. You may want to tap one or both for sample development. To make the process as effective and efficient as possible, provide clear parameters and as much information about screening and estimates of incidence rates as you can.  

Thinking through the specifics related to the sample parameters ahead of time will help create a clear request for quotes (RFQ). The bids you get back will be based on your specifications and completeness and clarity are the best tools you have to avoid surprises.

If you need help creating an RFQ I highly recommend our eBook titled “Fast Track Your Web Panel RFQ”, an AtHeath Publication.

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Put More Punch in Your Surveys and get the “Fast Track Your Web Panel RFQ” eBook FREE!

Purchase  “Questionnaire Design for Business Research” it will help you create questionnaires using innovative best practices.

Find it at our dedicated website where you can read excerpts and get a special offer (two bonus eBooks valued at $59.90).   http://questionnairedesign.tatepublishing.net/

Just want the book go to a bookstores or to www.barnesandnoble.com   or www.amazon.com