The Critical Importance Of Having A Customised Panelist Website

Engagement on the internet is challenging, with all of the various opportunities and stimuli competing for our attention.  A wide variety of techniques and tools are being used, and those who build and maintain custom panels/research communities should take note and also apply these best practices as much as possible.

Whilst it is unrealistic (and in most cases undesirable) to think or expect that a custom panel/research community is going to be a daily priority for its members, it is important that members can recall, and are reminded that they are a part of this research community and most important that they respond to the various survey and qualitative research invites as these are received.  This means that their impressions of this membership experience should be positive, professional and in general engaging enough to maintain their interest and make them feel valued as members.

With the main communication device  for panel owners being the panelist website where members are reminded of this relationship and can obtain information and interact with its content, having a customised panelist website tailored to the particular brand or category of interest is critical.

Some of the elements that should be included in a customised panelist website are:

• Custom Look & Feel - where the logo, style, colours and branding are consistent with the brand or category of interest
• Clear Call To Action – whether it is to join the panel or to login to update one’s profile information or check on incentives earned for their participation
• Quick Poll - where a member can provide an answer to a closed end question and immediately see how this answer compares with the answers of other members who have completed it
• News - members are interested in reading news items that are relevant to the brand or category and expect this information to be easily accessible within this environment
• Results - for both BtoB and BtoC panels, the sharing of results in order to demonstrate what insights are gained by their participation should be both interesting and rewarding to its members
• FAQs - these should be specific to the types of queries likely to occur across a host of different aspects of the relationship including who owns the panel, who operates the panel, how incentives are earned and redeemed, etc.
• Contact Us - often times, members will not want to take the time to review the FAQs or these will not have specifically addressed a question or concern they might have and will then want to use this information to get a response quickly and effectively
• Custom Pages & Elements - each panel and its website are different, depending on the audience plus the type of research that will be conducted with them, so there should be custom pages and elements specific to these needs.  For example, we recently built a chef’s panel for Premier Foods and the panelist website contains a “Chef’s Kitchen” page comprised of tips and advice from a professional chef, and a “Recipes” page containing a large and searchable database of recipes that could be downloaded and utilised by members.

Maintaining a high level of interest and engagement begins with having a well thought out customised  panelist website.  There are also other best practices worth mentioning related to the length of surveys, the way in which these questions are asked (i.e., interactivity) and the like but I will save this for another blog post.

Why Are We Trying To Create New Communities For Market Research Purposes?

I presented a paper earlier this week at the ESOMAR Online Conference in Berlin.  Below is a brief extract from it.   For more information and to purchase a copy of the complete paper, please contact ESOMAR.

There is currently considerable discussion and debate at market research conferences and online on market research forums, blogs, Twitter and the like regarding custom panels and communities.  Several themes and strongly held opinions emerge when examining this dialogue, including:

• Market researchers should be taking the lead in creating online communities to help brands get closer to their consumers and gain insights to better manage and grow these brands. The loudest voice here argues that market researchers are best suited to take the initiative because of their experience with insights and awareness of how best to listen to and interpret what consumers are saying, as well noting these communities touch all parts of the business so someone in the organisation needs to take the lead so why not the market research department. A minority voice argues that market researchers are not necessarily best positioned for this and that the appropriate place out of which the initiative should be driven is the Marketing Department.
• Online communities which are designed for market research only should be created to enable the opportunity to view and interpret the uninterrupted voice and exchange of ideas amongst consumers. The argument here is that these communities need to be constructed by the company in order for these dialogues to occur and be heard. The counter argument points to the vast array of online communities that already exist across various social media platforms such as Facebook, MySpace, and many others and asks why the company would need to construct (and fund) another community when there are already so many in existence from which to listen and learn.
• There are major differences between an online community and an online custom panel. Some argue that online custom panels are commonplace and something of the past, and do not enable theopportunity for uninterrupted conversations between and amongst consumers. This perspective suggests that online custom panels are somehow less useful than an online community. Another perspective is that online custom panels are not yet widely adopted and do not naturally occur and that these panels deliver substantial and clearly identifiable benefits to the companies who have them. Still others argue that both have their place, and they serve different purposes.

This paper seeks to explore these varying points of view and to shed light on the topic both through a detailed assessment of the research that has been published to date as well as a detailed examination of one company’s experience.

Going beyond the “buzz” to qualify and quantify online opinion

In partnership with Crimson Hexagon, EasyInsites has launched EasyOpinion.  This product will utilise the VoxTrot Opinion Monitor platform to not only listen to the opinions being expressed on the internet but also to systematically and intelligently categorise and quantify these opinions to determine the direction of the sentiment, the specific features or elements being discussed, and the likes or dislikes.

The technology to be used will allow EasyInsites to analyse the vast social internet (blog posts, forum messages, Tweets, etc.) by identifying statistical patterns in the words used to express opinions on different topics.  It then uses these patterns to calculate the percentage of all opinion for each opinion category, as defined by EasyInsites in consultation with our clients.  The underlying technology to be used has been developed by Dr. Gary King at Harvard University where he is the David Florence Professor of Government and the director of the Institute for Quantitative Social Science.

Competitive technologies, by contrast, simply count the number of mentions of different keywords or infer generic positive or negative sentiment.  Importantly, the margin of error with EasyOpinion is considerably smaller than these alternative approaches.

Marketing applications for EasyOpinion include:

• the ability to assess and adjust marketing for better resonance
• understand product performance to drive sales further
• influence new product development direction
• gain competitive insights
• determine where and how to start or respond to conversations

We believe strongly that our role at EasyInsites is not to create communities where opinions are expressed and monitored, but instead to allow for communities and opinion to form and occur naturally all over the internet.  Our approach in partnering with Crimson Hexagon is completely consistent with this belief and provides us with a systematic, quantifiable and highly accurate way to measure these opinions and deliver actionable information to our clients.  This approach is a perfect complement to our other services including custom panels.

For more information, please contact us at info@easyinsites.com.  Also, please let us know what you think of this new product introduction by commenting here on our blog.