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Posts Tagged ‘feedback’

By conducting effective market research what you can learn?

Know your customers – Market research will help you better understand your customers in a number of ways including demographic information such as their age, gender and geographic spread. The better you know your customer the easier it is to fine tune your product or service towards the target market.

Know your target market – Who exactly are your existing customers and where do they live? Does your service or product appeal to specific age groups? Do you know who your potential customers are and where they live?

Know your competition – Market Research will help you measure your service compared to others. What are the strengths and weaknesses of your organization and are you improving in the right areas?

Products and services – Do you have the products or services that people want? Are your products and services value for money? How do your products and services match up to that of your competitors? Can you, do you, should you deliver?

Ease of doing business – Do your customers find it easy to deal with you and when they visit your store and/or website do they find what they want? Is there sufficient advice and assistance on hand be it in the form of notices, leaflets or human assistance? Do you make it easy for your customers to buy? Are all your staff properly trained, knowledgeable, helpful and available?

Marketing – Is your marketing reaching the right people and is the marketing message clear and effective. What marketing channels are available to you, which ones should you focus on and which, if any, should you drop?

Is the marketing message understood? Does all your marketing correctly embody your brand? Do you use the right channels to advertise? Are you reaching your target audience?

With the power of the Internet it is now very easy to conduct market research using one of the many online survey software sites that make conducting surveys and collating good market research intelligence quick, easy and extremely cost effective.

For any business that wants to offer products or services that are highly focused and well targeted market research is important. Business decisions based on good market research can minimise risk and pay dividends. By making market research part and parcel of the business process and conducting market research throughout the life cycle of a product or service market research will bring the following benefits:-

• Market research will help you better communicate – Your current customers experiences are a valuable information source, not only will they allow you to gauge how well you currently meet their expectations they can also tell you where you are getting things right and more importantly where you are getting things wrong. By consulting with the customer you not only show them that you care but the guesswork is taken out of customer services.
• Market research helps you identify opportunities – If you are planning to launch a new product and want to know how people will react then market research will help, not only in predicting how well the product will be received, but also by testing the marketing message to see if that needs to be adjusted.
• Market research will minimise risk – Market research can identifying what is needed for a new service and product and ensure that the development of a product matches demand.
• Market research creates benchmarks and helps you measure your progress – By establishing a benchmark you then have a useful reference to allow you to measure your progress – If you do not measure you will not be able to properly gauge how well your business is performing. Early research can identify where improvements need to be made to a new service or where there are flaws in a product, by conducting regular market research it will identify if improvements are being made and, if positive, will in turn help motivate a development team.

Considering the benefits that market research will bring to any organization it is perhaps surprising how few businesses invest sufficient resources to gather good intelligence that will help them improve business. Many may think that market research takes too much time and effort but that is just not the case anymore as through the power of the Internet online survey software is readily available and vital market research data can now be gathered in a quick, simple and cost effective manner.

Market research is an essential element of any organization that wants to offer products or services that are focused and well targeted. Business decisions that are based on good intelligence and good market research can minimise risk and pay dividends. By making market research part and parcel of the business process and conducting market research throughout the life cycle of a product or service market research will bring the following benefits:-

• Market research will help you better communicate – Your current customers experiences are a valuable information source, not only will they allow you to gauge how well you currently meet their expectations they can also tell you where you are getting things right and more importantly where you are getting things wrong. By asking you take the guesswork out of customer services and demonstrate to the customer that you care.
• Market research helps you identify opportunities – If you are planning to launch a new product and want to know how people will react then market research will help, not only in predicting how well the product will be received, but also by testing the marketing message to see if that needs to be adjusted.
• Market research will minimise risk – Market research can identifying what is needed for a new service and product and ensure that the development of a product matches demand.
• Market research creates benchmarks and helps you measure your progress – Unless you measure you will not be able to properly gauge how well your business is performing. Early research may highlight glaring holes in your service or short falls in your product, regular market research will show if improvements are being made and, if positive, will help motivate a team.

Market research brings considerable benefits and it is perhaps surprising how few businesses invest sufficient resources to gather good intelligence that will help them improve business. Many may think that market research takes too much time and effort but that is just not the case anymore as through the power of the Internet online survey software is readily available and vital market research data can now be gathered in a quick, simple and cost effective manner.

It is fairly easy and even free for a webmaster to use tools to analyse their website traffic, monitor the number of visitors, report of the web pages that have been accessed and the length of time each visitor spends accessing the website.

However, despite the vast amount of detailed information that can be collected what will always be missing is information that will tell the webmaster exactly what the visitor was thinking. Did they like the website? Was the layout clear or confusing? Was navigating the website easy and did they find the information they wanted?

A website may be generating sales but why are there some people that are visiting the website and not buying anything? Was the reason because they didn’t like what was being offered, or was it that they couldn’t find what they wanted even though it was there?

Website surveys provide webmasters with an excellent and accurate method of answering these types of questions. Direct feedback from the website visitors cuts to the chase, no need to guess, just ask the visitors themselves how they found the site and if they found what they were looking for.

With an online survey webmasters can find out:-

• How often do people visit the website?
• How did they reach the website?
• Are they interested in the website for business or pleasure reasons?
• Was the information they were looking for found on the website?
• How easy was it for them to navigate the website?
• Would they recommend the website?

A good website survey will be brief and will gather information that once analysed will provide valuable information to help improve the website.

An alternative to a more traditional customer survey would be to ask just one or two questions at strategic points. One example would be to ask visitors at the end of the registration process if they found the procedure quick and easy; another example would be after ordering an item the customer could be asked if they found the ordering procedure and payment methods to their liking. To make sure that the questions do not become repetitive to regular visitors the website can be programmed so that the questions are only asked once per registered user.

Website surveys take the mystery out of working out what visitors think of a website and using Online Survey Software they are quick and easy to design and once implemented will really become the webmaster’s assistant.

To see a sample website survey please follow the link: Sample Website Survey

It is fairly easy and even free for a webmaster to use tools to analyse their website traffic, monitor the number of visitors, report of the web pages that have been accessed and the length of time each visitor spends accessing the website.

However, despite the considerable data available what is missing is anything to tell the webmaster what the visitor was thinking. Did they dislike the site? Was the layout easy to understand or confusing? Was navigating the website easy and did they find the information they wanted?

A website may be generating sales but why are some people that visit the website not buying anything? Was it because they didn’t like what was being offered or they couldn’t find what they wanted?

Website surveys provide webmasters with an excellent and accurate method of answering these types of questions. Direct feedback from the website visitors means that there is no longer the need to guess, just ask the visitors how they found the site and if they found what they were looking for.

With an online survey webmasters can find out:-

• How often do people visit the website?
• How did they discover the website?
• Are they interested in the website for business or pleasure?
• Was the information they were looking for found on the website?
• How easy was it for them to navigate the website?
• Would they be prepared to recommend the website to others?

A good website survey will be concise and will collate information that once analyzed will provide valuable information to help improve the website.

An alternative to a traditional survey would be to embed one or two survey questions within the website after specific procedures. For example, ask visitors at the end of the registration process if they found the procedure quick and easy; or after ordering an item ask if they found the ordering procedure and payment methods straightforward. To ensure that the questions don’t become repetitive to regular visitors the website can be programmed so that the questions are only asked once per registered user.

Website surveys take the mystery out of working out what visitors think of a website and using Online Survey Software they are quick and easy to design and once implemented will really become the webmaster’s assistant.

To see a sample website survey please follow the link: Sample Website Survey

There are many tools available to a webmaster to analyse website traffic allowing them to monitor the number of visitors, see what pages have been accessed and even the length of time each visitor spends accessing the website.

However, despite the vast amount of detailed information that can be collected what will always be missing is information that will tell the webmaster exactly what the visitor was thinking. Did they dislike the site? Was the layout easy to understand or confusing? Did they find it easy to navigate and maybe the most important thing, did they find the information they wanted?

A website may be generating sales but why are there some people that are visiting the website and not buying anything? Was the reason because they didn’t like what was being offered, or was it that they couldn’t find what they wanted even though it was there?

Online surveys provide webmasters with an accurate method of answering these types of questions. Direct feedback from the website visitors cuts to the chase, there is no longer any need to guess, just ask the visitors directly how they arrived at the site and if they were able to find what they were looking for.

With an online survey webmasters can find out:-

• How often do people visit the website?
• How did they reach the website?
• Are they accessing the website for business or pleasure?
• Were they able to find the information they were looking for?
• How easy was it for them to navigate the website?
• Would they be willing to recommend the website to others?

A good website survey will be short and to the point and gather good intelligence that once analysed will help improve the website.

An alternative to a traditional survey would be to embed one or two survey questions within the website after specific procedures. For example, ask visitors at the end of the registration process if they found the procedure quick and easy; or after ordering an item ask if they found the ordering procedure and payment methods straightforward. To ensure that the questions don’t become repetitive to regular visitors the website can be programmed so that the questions are only asked once per registered user.

Website surveys take the mystery out of working out what visitors think of a website and using Online Survey Software they are quick and easy to design and once implemented will really become the webmaster’s assistant.

To see a sample website survey please follow the link: Sample Website Survey

There are ample tools available to a webmaster to enable them to analyse website traffic and monitor the number of visitors, see what web pages have been accessed and even the length of time visitors spend accessing the website.

However, despite the vast amount of detailed information that is available what is missing is anything to tell the webmaster what the visitor was thinking. Did they like the website? Was the layout easy to understand or just plain confusing? Was the website easy to use and did they find the information they wanted?

A website may be generating sales but why are some people that visit the website not buying anything? Was the reason because they didn’t like what was being offered, or was it that they couldn’t find what they wanted even though it was there?

Using online surveys webmasters have a simple and accurate method of answering these types of questions. Direct feedback from the website visitors cuts to the chase, no need to guess, just ask the visitors themselves how they found the site and if they found what they were looking for.

With an online survey webmasters can find out:-

• How often do people visit the website?
• How did they arrive at the website?
• Is their interest in the website for reasons of business or pleasure?
• Did they find the information they were looking for?
• How easy did they find navigating the website?
• Would they recommend the website to their friends and/or colleagues?

A good website survey will be short and to the point and gather good intelligence that once analysed will help improve the website.

Another alternative to a traditional survey is to embed one or two survey questions within the website after specific procedures. For example, ask visitors at the end of the registration process if they found the procedure quick and easy; or after ordering an item ask if they found the ordering procedure and payment methods straightforward. To ensure that the questions don’t become annoying to regular visitors the website can be programmed so that the questions are only asked once per registered user.

Website surveys take the mystery out of working out what visitors think of a website and using Online Survey Software they are quick and easy to design and once implemented will really become the webmaster’s assistant.

To see a sample website survey please follow the link: Sample Website Survey

For any business that wants to offer products or services that are highly focused and well targeted market research is important. Business decisions that are based on good intelligence and good market research can minimise risk and pay dividends. By making market research part and parcel of the business process and conducting market research throughout the life cycle of a product or service market research will bring the following benefits:-

• Market research will help you better communicate – Your current customers experiences are a valuable information source, not only will they allow you to gauge how well you currently meet their expectations they can also tell you where you are getting things right and more importantly where you are getting things wrong. By asking the customer you can take the guesswork out of customer services and show them that you care.
• Market research helps you identify opportunities – If you are planning to operate a new service and want to know the preconceived attitudes people have then market research can help, not only in evaluating the potential for a new idea, but also by identify the areas where a marketing message needs to be honed.
• Market research will minimise risk – Market research can identifying what is needed for a new service and product and ensure that the development of a product matches demand.
• Market research creates benchmarks and helps you measure your progress – By establishing a benchmark you then have a useful reference to allow you to measure your progress – If you do not measure you will not be able to properly gauge how well your business is performing. Early research may highlight glaring holes in your service or short falls in your product, regular market research will show if improvements are being made and, if positive, will help motivate a team.

Market research brings considerable benefits and it is perhaps surprising how few businesses invest sufficient resources to gather good intelligence that will help them improve business. Many may think that market research takes too much time and effort but that is just not the case anymore as through the power of the Internet online survey software is readily available and vital market research data can now be gathered in a quick, simple and cost effective manner.

There are many tools available to a webmaster to analyse website traffic allowing them to monitor the number of visitors, see what pages have been accessed and even the length of time each visitor spends accessing the website.

However, despite the considerable data available what is missing is anything to tell the webmaster what the visitor was thinking. Did they dislike the website? Was the layout easy to understand or just plain confusing? Was it easy to navigate the website and were they able to find the information they wanted?

A website may be generating sales but why are there some people that are visiting the website and not buying anything? Was the reason because they didn’t like what was being offered, or was it that they couldn’t find what they wanted even though it was there?

Website surveys provide webmasters with an excellent and accurate method of answering these types of questions. Direct feedback from the website visitors means that there is no longer the need to guess, just ask the visitors how they found the site and if they found what they were looking for.

With an online survey webmasters can find out:-

• How often do people visit the website?
• How did they discover the website?
• Are they interested in the website for business or pleasure reasons?
• Were they able to find the information they were looking for?
• How easy was it for them to navigate the website?
• Would they recommend the website?

A good website survey will be concise and will collate information that once analyzed will provide valuable information to help improve the website.

Another alternative to a traditional survey is to embed one or two survey questions within the website after specific procedures. One example would be to ask visitors at the end of the registration process if they found the procedure quick and easy; another example would be after ordering an item the customer could be asked if they found the ordering procedure and payment methods to their liking. To ensure that the questions don’t become repetitive to regular visitors the website can be programmed so that the questions are only asked once per registered user.

Website surveys take the mystery out of working out what visitors think of a website and using Online Survey Software they are quick and easy to design and once implemented will really become the webmaster’s assistant.

To see a sample website survey please follow the link: Sample Website Survey

Even public transport operators who already use passenger surveys may not fully appreciate the multiple benefits that surveys can bring. Gathering market research is only one use for surveys, a second is the ability to measure the effectiveness of new initiatives as they are introduced and a third is to help promote the new initiatives to the customers.

Establishing a Starting Point

When embarking on any change management programme it is always good practice to establish a base line before any changes are made. This baseline survey can serve four purposes, it will:-

• allow the proper targeting of investment
• allow measurement of the effect of change
• assist in the moral of those implementing change
• ensure that new issues are kept separate from the original plan and budget

Targeting Investment

There are many areas of any public transport system that can cause passenger dissatisfaction all of which need to be monitored to ensure that the service being provided meets, and where possible, exceeds, performance level targets.

Issues that can be of concern to passenger include:-

• safety and security
• punctuality
• fares and ticket types
• capacity and overcrowding
• quality and design of vehicle
• cleanliness
• facilities at stations and terminals
• facilities for passengers with disabilities

Often limited resources and budgets means that investment needs to be carefully planned and properly targeted.

With passenger surveys operators can identify those areas that are of most concern to their customers. By analysing passenger feedback the operator can ensure that their improvement and investment plans are in line with passenger demands and concerns. Issues can be classified by priority and if they can be addressed in the short or long terms.

Major capital investment such as the building of infrastructure for example new terminals, runways, laying new track or upgrading air traffic control or rail signalling equipment may take many years to implement. However, it is also a high possibility that the initial survey may identify some main passenger concerns that can be resolved quick and for minimal cost.

Measuring Change

From having established a comprehensive programme from an initial survey the objectives for running periodic surveys are twofold.

One objective will be to confirm that passenger concerns have been addressed by any changes and initiatives that are implemented. A second objective will be to promote and advertise the initiatives that have been implemented and also inform and educate passengers of ongoing improvements and future plans.

Passengers may be more tolerant if they can see that improvements have been made and more accepting of outstanding problems if they know that the remaining issues are being addressed.

Keeping Moral

Those implementing change can often develop a siege mentality. Not all changes that are made have an immediate effective, some take time before they prove effective and passengers may not appreciate the changes until much later.

By canvassing passenger opinion and measuring the results against earlier surveys a successful change programme should see passenger issues change over time, some issues that were problems will no longer be raised.

The general public is often very impatient and implementing improvements can take time, those working to make improvements can often become demoralised when they receive constant criticism. It is essential that a team implementing change can see clearly the effects of their efforts.

Identifying New and Old

In any long term change management programme issues can change over time. The situation can change instantly so that due to an event what was important, is no longer important and what wasn’t an issue, is suddenly an issue.

A baseline survey will make sure that the passengers concerns are chronologically documented. The needs of passengers evolve over time, individual requirements change, fashion changes, life styles develop along with technology, low cost budget carriers now compete with luxury travel and there is a clear demand for both, in some cases even form the same set of people depending on whether their travel is for business or pleasure. Regular surveys will allow changes in passenger attitudes to be monitored.

Online Surveys Make It Easy

Online surveys can reach a broad cross section of any travelling public. They are quick and easy to design and implement and they provide feedback in a format that is ready for detailed analysis. A main features of online surveys is their low cost and flexibility that allows operators to publish multiple surveys that will target individual groups who may have specific concerns.

Online surveys provide operators with a quick and easy method to collate good market research data while at the same time provide a platform to advertise and promote a commitment to passenger satisfaction.

The passengers themselves benefit greatly by having an effective channel to raise issues and through periodic surveys will begin to appreciate the operator’s goal to continually invest and improve the service. The following are links to samples of Passenger Surveys

Sample Passenger Survey for an Airline Carrier: Airline Passenger Survey

Passenger Survey for a Train Operator: Train Operator Passenger Survey

Sample Passenger Survey for a Bus Operator: Bus Operator Passenger Survey