We may be a little late for Christmas, but we don’t think you’ll mind when you hear what we have in store for you!

We are proud to announce the addition of Concept Clouds to the webValidator and 4Q Suite feature sets, offering advanced text analysis capabilities at the mere push of a button.

Word Clouds are already a valuable part of webValidator and 4Q Suite, providing a quick and easy way to visually quantify open-ended feedback. However, Word Clouds do not group together common misspellings, typos and synomyms, and as a result, words with similar meanings appear separately. For example, the words “info”, “information” and “informative” appear as three separate words within the Word Cloud. This seperation can hide the importance of larger concepts and result in erroneous analysis.

Our solution is both simple and elegant. Using concept libraries, words that belong to similar concepts are grouped together. With Concept Clouds, the words “info”, “information” and “informative” appear under the concept “INFORMATION”, giving appropriate weight to the themes within the feedback.

All webValidator, 4Q Plus and 4Q Premium users now have Concept Clouds included in their subscription, with no increase to the standard rates or fees. What’s more, the Concept Clouds are loaded with 3 months of historic data (going back to October 1^st). If your account hasn’t been updated yet, check back in the next day or so.

Happy New Year everybody… 2012 is starting off great!

For the past 6 months, iPerceptions has been distributing its 4Q Suite Newsletter, which includes a section dedicated to ‘Tips and Tricks’ to improve survey collection and analysis. Below is a compilation of all of the suggestions we have dispensed thus far, with links to the 4Q Support & Community Forum where more detailed explanations can be found.

Manage your survey invitation rate:

Managing your invitation rate is half art and half science. Set your rate too high and you’ll hit your collection limit too early in the month; set it too low and you might not meet your sample needs.

On average, about 1-2% of visitors who receive the invitation go on to complete the survey. If you require 250 respondents per month and you assume a completion rate of 1%, you will need to invite 25,000 people. If your monthly (unique) traffic is 50,000, then you should set your invitation rate at 50% (25,000/50,000).

However, website visitor behavior differs from one site to the next. Lower engagement sites generally have a lower completion rate, whereas sites with a more engaged audience will have a higher completion rate. You will need to monitor your survey for the first few days to see if you’re over or under sampling. Once you’ve established the average completion rate for your site, you should be able to set your invitation rate such that your sample is evenly distributed across the month.

Link to this tip.

Include the email question:

Choosing to include the email question in your survey can provide a fantastic opportunity to build brand loyalty and really connect with your visitors.

There are many changes and suggestions made by your site visitors than can be accomplished in a very short time. From adding a couple of extra links on a landing page that help visitors locate previously hard to find content, to making an action button more obvious, “low hanging fruit” should be a development priority.

Everyone wants to feel like a consultant, and an email check-in when changes are made will help make your visitors feel valued and important; both positive emotions that will be directly associated with you and your site.

Link to this tip.

A red upside down triangle:

A red upside down triangle where the online /offline button would normally be (on the My Surveys page) means that you have reached your collection limit for the month. The system automatically stops sending out new survey invitations when the limit is reached, essentially setting the invite rate to 0%.

You can choose to simply wait until the next month rolls around – the collection counter will get reset and you’ll have a fresh quota of survey responses for that month. Or you can choose to upgrade your 4Q Plan and take advantage of the higher collection limits.

Link to this tip.

Consider flash heavy pages:

Depending on the website, it is possible that the 4Q Suite invitation may conflict with flash elements on a given page. To avoid these conflicts, visit your survey’s “Publish” section, then click into the “Get Survey Code” subsection.

Ensure the box marked “Flash” is checked off, then grab the updated script from the box on the page and paste this new version of the script onto your website.

Now, when an invitation is served on a page with flash, the flash elements are disabled. When a user responds to the invitation and the invite disappears, the page will reload with the flash elements re-enabled.

Link to this tip.

Modify your cookie settings:

Depending on the type of website you have, your surveying needs will vary widely. Sites where content changes more frequently will require visitors to be surveyed more frequently – but perhaps you don’t want to increase your invitation rate.

One option is to reduce the cookie settings on your invitation scripts. Visit the “Get Survey Code” page in the “Publish” section and toggle the “Cookie Expiration” box. You can then modify the cookie expiration length from the 90-day default and survey your visitors more often, without increasing your invitation rate.

Please note, however, that you will need to replace the old scripts on your site with the new, shorter-cookie script. If you change the cookie length but don’t replace the scripts currently on your site, no change will take place.

Link to this tip.

Keep your Purpose of Visit choices relevant:

The Purpose of Visit (PoV) question is a great way to identify and profile your website visitors. However, determining which choices to include in your PoV question may take some trial and error.

If one of your current choices is less than 3-4%, consider modifying or replacing it. For hints on what to replace it with, download your datafile and review the answers to your ‘Other, please specify’ choice. Consider those answers that keep getting repeated, but end up “lost” in the aggregation of the ‘Other’ choice.  

It may also make sense to get more granular on broader groupings or to combine smaller groupings into larger ones. For example, if one of your choices is ‘Learn about products and services’ and represents 60% of your traffic, it might make sense to break it into two groupings: ‘Learn about products’ and ‘Learn about services’. Conversely, if ‘Sign up for the weekly newsletter’ and ‘Sign up for the monthly newsletter’ are both at 1-2%, perhaps rolling them up into ‘Sign up for a newsletter’ is the best option.

Link to this tip.

Add Satisfaction and Task Completion to your Google Analytics:

Follow these simple steps to create a 4Q-based widget on your Google Analytics dashboard.

1. Click on “Home” in Google Analytics, and then the “+ Add Widget” button.
2. Create a “metric” widget, as opposed to a “pie chart”
3. In the “add a metric” space, select “Avg. Value”
4. Click on “Add a filter”, and in the green “Dimension” box, select “Event Action”
5. In the field following “Exactly matching” write “IPESAT” to display the satisfaction score, or “IPETask” to display the task completion rate. Note that this part is case-sensitive.
6. Name your widget accordingly… i.e. “Satisfaction Score” if you chose to use IPESAT in the previous step.
7. Check out the “Add a Widget” screenshot, located below, for the final product of steps 2-6.
8. Satisfaction scores will display as a number between 0.00 and 10.00, in accordance with the 0-10 satisfaction scale in the survey.
9. Task Completion scores will show as a number between 0.00 and 1.00, and can be referred to as a percentage. In other words, Task Completion of 0.68 can be referred to as 68%.

Link to this tip.

Share your success:

You work hard on your business and your website, so why not toot your own horn?

Use the positive feedback from your 4Q Suite survey to help your social marketing campaign by posting choice comments to your Twitter or Facebook accounts.  Just add “via @4qsurvey” at the end of your tweets to help identify that your tweet comes from your users, and let the positive feedback you receive contribute to the betterment of your brand.

Link to this tip.

Use 4Q Suite with your A/B testing:

A+B testing is a powerful web optimization tool, where two versions of the same page, feature or site are run in parallel with the most successful alternative being selected.

Include 4Q Suite in your A+B testing program by creating a second identical survey within your account. Each survey will have its own invitation script, and you’ll have data for each option kept in separate and secure databases. Use Satisfaction and Task Completion scores, along with data from providers like Google Analytics, to help you choose the winner.

Link to this tip.

Every month, we provide additional tips and tricks in our 4Q Suite Newsletter. Sign up for the 4Q Shite Newsletter for fresh tips, along with new product announcements, limited-time promotions, upcoming webinars, industry events, and more.

A short time ago I was contacted by Software Advice regarding a blog by Jaime Brugueras, discussing what he feels is lacking in the current crop of Business Intelligence (BI) tools. I was asked to provide my feedback via blog post and hopefully start up a discussion.

Everything which Brugueras describes in his blog would comprise the ultimate BI tool. He clearly highlights key pain points felt by all levels of user and creates the framework by which these could be addressed. In spite of his observations, I feel that the nature of the market and current BI tool landscape prevents these recommendations from being realized.

The core argument of Brugueras’ blog can be summed up as follows: Business Intelligence tools need to be easier to use, more comprehensive in nature, predictive of future outcomes and cheap enough that even the smallest businesses can afford it. He goes on to advocate for tools that are more sophisticated than a team of IT professionals could program, but simple enough for a lay person to configure.

He notes that “tools available today are relatively complex and require some level of programming”, yet a few lines later declares that “an effective BI tool allows for seamless integration of data across… CRM, accounting and point-of-sale software”. He laments, however, that current BI tools are “unable to integrate data from all sources”.

While multiple tools may output into similarly-formatted CSV files, the database from where these exports originate don’t all have the same schema. There exists no universal key to link multiple data sources, and few companies are willing turn themselves into information providers by facilitating others usage of their data.

Many would rebut my previous statement by calling my attention to APIs; how companies like Google, foursquare and Twitter make their data available to the outside world. They would be correct, save for one key point: the user accommodates, as opposed to dictates, the format of the API. If you don’t like how Twitter has named a particular variable, then too bad for you. A company like Google isn’t going to change their data structure simply because you ask nicely.

When you consider that every company out there has their own special flavor of API, the dream of “an effective BI tool (that) allows for seamless integration of data” simply goes up in smoke. Every time a provider comes along, you will either need to adapt your BI tool to accept their data, or ask them to conform to your standard. The former is far more likely than the latter, but doing the former requires programmers and programmers cost money.

It is not difficult to see the relationship between cost and compatibility. Being more compatible requires a larger programmer base, which in turn requires more capital. The resulting tool would have to be heavily ad-supported, or sell at a price point sufficient to cover ongoing development costs. Very quickly you enter into the realm of enterprise-level solutions, where even the traditionally free Google Analytics has started charging $150,000/year for a Premium service level. This price point is clearly far outside the realm of affordability for the majority of small businesses.

The author advocates for an all encompassing, low-cost solution aimed at the SMB market. He wants a tool that is user friendly, inexpensive and easy to use, featuring automatic integration with multiple data sources that is predictive of future outcomes. He acknowledges that end-users “are not likely to be able to program their needs”, yet advocates the development of modular software in anticipation of every possible need. These BI tools must be action oriented, distilling complicated tasks like customer retention, inventory management and social media communication down to the simple click of a button. While wonderful in concept, I don’t believe that all will ever be within a single tool.

Apple products, be it the iPhone, iPad or iPod, are famous for working well together. Apple accomplishes this by controlling every step of the process, and knowing exactly what goes into every piece of hardware. They can then perfectly tailor their software to work within the hardware’s specifications, producing a very attractive product offering. However, a Mac falls flat when trying to run software originally written for a PC. With Apple reticent to license out their iOS to third party developers, don’t expect to see this product-line unity augmented or replicated anytime soon.

There are only two ways that Brugueras’ ideal BI tool could come to pass: A unifying open-source project of unprecedented scope or one single (for profit) company willing to take users cradle-to-grave for all their business software needs.

While I don’t think that a massive open-source project could appear, I make a point to never say never. The cynic in me just doesn’t see it, though. A single company creating a full-feature, A-to-Z Business Intelligence tool isn’t very likely, either. The barrier to entry isn’t so high that somebody wouldn’t try and come up with a “me too” product offering.

I’m not here to preach about what my ideal Business Intelligence tool would be, because I don’t believe that there can ever be a one-size-fits-all tool. You’ll never get enterprise-level features in a cheap/free product, either because of the associated development costs or due to the simple inability for small businesses to devote the required time to such a far reaching tool.

Take your prototypical small business as an example, where employees generally wear more than one hat. It’s likely that your “web guy” will not only be responsible for website design and SEO, but also for PPC and SEM and possibly copy writing for both the online channel and traditional corporate communications. Ask yourself, will this overworked individual be able to devote the time required to use a highly-sophisticated BI tool?

Much like clothing, creating something that is one-size-fits-all typically results in a garment which is a poor fit for 99% of the population. When you buy a suit, most people require that the pants be hemmed or the jacket taken in. Few people are truly “off the rack”, so why do we expect the same from our BI tools?

There exist tools that work very well for small business, which scale well and can accommodate the business as it grows. They don’t have the features of an enterprise-level tool, but small businesses don’t have the bandwidth to use all those features anyway. Rather than devote time to chasing the dream of the perfect tool, end-users should focus on better expressing their BI tool needs. The corporate world has been quite successful at recognizing needs and designing products to meet them. I have every confidence that several different vendors will step up and provide targeted solutions, provided the requirements are clear and properly documented by the eventual end-users.

Orignally posted on Digital Soapbox – Christopher Pam’s personal blog.

Most online visitors to e-commerce sites categorize themselves as shoppers not buyers. Online shoppers are no different than retail shoppers – significantly interested but obviously not willing to purchase every item at every store they visit. Shopping is the precursor to buying, before product specifics or emotional reactions (or both) dictate conversion. Online shopping requires the same patience as retail shopping with the same opportunity for finding the perfect item at the perfect price (including shipping). However, it is less about crowds and renewing energy at the food court and more about organizing a vast array of information wearing comfortable slippers.

Online is a deal hunters’ paradise and for the last three Black Fridays online sales growth has exceeded retail results. Compared to 2009, online sales have increased by 9% on Black Friday vs. an increase of just 0.3% for retail sales*. With easier access to deal information, competitive comparisons, selection comparisons, product specifications, and product reviews, online shoppers are better equipped to maximize their dollars either directly online or during their retail excursions. Sites are clearly responding. Online shoppers claiming to have completed their purposes of visit are in much greater proportion than in November 2009. This increased usability, availability, functionality and sensitivity to shoppers needs will continue to drive online shopping and buying. 

For many online shoppers, the shopping process begins before the big day, with shoppers driving up online traffic up to a month in advance and representing over half the traffic on Black Friday (2010 results). Looking at stated purposes of visit in the 2010 lead up to Black Friday, the proportion of shoppers grows steadily, with a peak on the Saturday prior, and then dominating the traffic on Black Friday itself. For etailers and retailers alike, this supports an information strategy focused on creating buzz on the days when shoppers are online. Properly sequenced trailers and teasers will build the pre-shopping momentum, driving increased online conversion and/or a greater push to retail stores with consumers sporting strong purchase intents.

* http://www.comscore.com, http://www.bloomberg.com

Written by Lane Cochrane

For many years, eCommerce took a mass market, broad strokes approach. Marketers would throw idea after idea against the wall, just to see what would stick. Black hat SEO teams would abuse meta tags, keyword stuff by using white text on a white background, and generally try to game the search engines that were bringing them traffic. More “uniques” contributed to your eEgo, and all levels of the organization focused obsessively on traffic numbers.

In short, internet marketing was taking a telemarketing approach. Conversion percentages were low, but if you called (or served) enough people, eventually you would make a sale. With the ever expanding internet frontier, combined with relatively few businesses selling in the online space, this dragnet or mass-market approach seemed like the best way to go.

Then things changed. Not only did search engines begin to smack down the black hat SEO practices, but the online marketplace became just as crowded as brick-and-mortar. Shortly thereafter, online quickly surpassed brick-and-mortar as the costs of maintaining a digital storefront are significantly lower than even a single physical location. And thanks to the world-shrinking nature of the digital domain, businesses now faced stiff competition from relative no-names half a world away.

Business Intelligence began to transition away from the raw “visits” data, delving into more sophisticated metrics like CPC, Keywords, and Impressions. The available toolset expanded, with seemingly every consulting agency publishing their very own SEO guide. Landing Page and Keyword assessment tools began cropping up left and right, and “examining your funnel for leaks” became more than something you did before a university kegger.

The adoption curve for all of these new metrics was relatively flat. Business people understand fractions and ratios, and metrics provide easy ways to measure the performance not only of your website, but also of the staff you hire to manage and market your website. Everything is neat, tidy, and fits nicely on a dashboard.

However, these formerly “advanced” analytics and marketing practices are being adopted by the masses, and I’ve no doubt that “SEO for Dummies” can be found on many digital marketing bookshelves. The next frontier of web marketing focuses less on the macro and more on the micro, and while the masses bring themselves up to speed on the “advanced” analytics, industry leaders are taking things a step further.

The entire purpose of a website, the only reason that a company has a digital presence, is to meet the needs of their customer. Be it a product, a service or simply content (i.e. Wikipedia), customers visit websites to have their needs met. The next major metric for business to measure online success has to be Needs Fulfillment.

Current business intelligence doesn’t do very well at measuring this. You can figure out where they came from, how many pages they viewed and how they interacted with your site… but you can only infer the motivation (the “why”) behind their visit.  The only way to get at Needs Fulfillment is to ask.

It is here many businesses shy away from measuring. The second you start asking people for their feedback, you get away from the comfortable realm of facts and figures. Verbatim feedback doesn’t easily fit on a dashboard, and too often requires a significant investment in manpower or hardware/software. Businesses see it as “soft science”, or simply too complicated.

What is just seeping into the collective consciousness is something that the thought leaders have known for a few years now – Needs Fulfillment is directly linked to Loyalty. Put plainly… why would anyone go to a competitor when their needs are being met on your site?

The future of business intelligence is not one of action, but of thought and feeling. The company that is best able to understand the thoughts and address the feelings of their target audience will be the one that is best positioned to succeed in their specific domain. Dashboards won’t ever go away, but I think that you’d be surprised as to how they’ll change as the importance of Needs Fulfillment spreads from the thought leaders to the web at large.

Re-posted from Digital Soapbox, Christopher Pam’s personal blog.

We’re thrilled to have won the Google Analytics Partner Summit ‘Third-Party Application’ competition this past September, but we realize that a 5-minute presentation may not have provided you with sufficient information to aquire 4Q Suite.

To this end, we would like to invite you to attend a 30-minute webinar where we’ll review some of the top-rated features and functions of 4Q Suite, including: 

• Google Analytics integration for advanced analysis and understanding
• Automatic alerts of significant changes in 4Q and Google Analytics data
• Scheduled email reports of alerts and open-ended feedback
• And more!

Register for the webinar.

One of Avinash‘s favorite expressions is “data puke’, which goes a long way to describing the vast majority of charts, tables and graphs that I’ve seen over my relatively short (but I like to think illustrious) career in web analytics. I’m no “PowerPoint Picasso”, but I believe that I can put together slides in a manner that imparts knowledge, disseminates data and tells a coherent story.

Evidence indicates that I and my colleagues are in the minority. Perhaps this accounts for why many big corporations seem so very keen on the concept of web analytics, yet so very reticent to actually do anything with their data. They’ve either paid big money for an analytics suite that comes with a consultant, or they’ve used a free solution like GA or 4Q and hired someone as a web analyst. You’d figure that they would take advantage of all the available data, considering the money they’ve spent gathering it.

Personally, I think this corporate inaction can be tracked back to three key things.

Data Overload

Collecting a database of all your visitors’ on-site activities generates a pile of records that is nigh on impossible to parse through, even with highly-paid analysts dissecting every keystroke. Even when you think you’ve reached a conclusion, a simple re-segmenting of the data can show you something different. Everyone thinks that all this data will highlight the Yellow Brick Road that the company should follow, but more often than not you simply end up standing at a 4 way crossroads, spinning in place and wondering which way to go.

Quicksand

Related to the above, all this data keeps everyone stuck in the same place, unable to move in on direction or another. You’ll get everyone in the company agreeing that something has to be done, but all the time will be spent trying to figure out what. Typically, you’ll end up with two camps, each with opposing conclusions that are backed up from data drawn from the same source. The net result is that decisions take forever, if they come at all.

Corporate Concrete

Certain things in the corporate world are set in stone. Deployment schedules are one of those things. While they may have been put in place to keep the company running smoothly, they typically ensure that all the company does is play catch-up. When you receive feedback, you have a very short time to respond – yesterday’s news is old news, and if you are forced to wait 2 months for the next release date, an opportunity will pass you by.

Whether its too much data, indecision or corporate procedures, data obtained from various web analytics sources is not acted on quickly enough. Delayed action results in reduced returns and the perception from many corporate higher-ups that web analytics just isn’t worth it.

Deployment schedules need to be thrown out the window for smaller items – with releases coming weekly, if not daily. Quicker turnaround will offer greater rewards, and increased ROI isn’t something that needs to be explained to the HiPPOs upstairs.

This is a repost from Christopher Pam’s blog. The original can be located here.

Looking back across the last ten years working with analysts in a variety of industries, I realize how much has changed in the environment. As with any evolutionary process, this change in the environment means analysts have had to adapt accordingly. Three changes in my mind have had the biggest impact.

More data! Despite the increased strategic importance of analysts, there is a lot more data to contend with. Like doctors who loathe the internet due to the increased time they must spend un-diagnosing for their patients what a clever online algorithm proclaimed, analysts must fend off misinterpretations of myriad data points brought to them by those perhaps unaware of the pitfalls of a lack of research rigor. Data is now everywhere, in various formats, of various types. This provides analysts with much more data with which to create their stories, and it doesn’t always line up. This can be paralyzing for the perfectionist trying to back up every implications or forces analysts to put some value on their inclination which is not something condoned by the industry accepted analyst personae. This glut of data also has a lot of analysts tied up in complex integration projects that continuously chase a moving target and don’t represent what analysts love to do, which is draw mighty implications that change the world (or at least the department). However, analysts complained for decades they wanted more data, so perhaps a lesson in being careful what you wish for.  Today’s analysts don’t want data, but more tools to consolidate and integrate to make interpretation simpler and faster, due to the next point.

Less time! Whereas it is debatable whether some data needs to be real-time, it is a cool marketing stamp that data suppliers love, so real-time data is growing in volume. Consequently, real-time implications are becoming expected. Systems to create real-time data are rampant, but systems to process and interpret them have not quite caught up. Not so long ago, analysts could spend months as part of the strategic planning cycle making sure their implications and recommendations were thought through, reviewed, stakeholder approved, and even polished for beautiful presentation by artistic graphic artists. Today, yesterday’s results require interpretation today so implications can be presented tomorrow and action plans can be executed by end of week. Statistical models are flourishing, algorithms are flooding, and sexy BI tools are growing in the market, but they are still trying to catch up with all the data.  And like all wonder drugs, they seem to come with that warning to check with your analyst first before believing all the automated conclusions.

More importance! You will hear everywhere that corporations are putting more of a focus on fact-based decision making. This nomenclature must be anathema to the ageing baby boomer, making it seem like decisions back in the day were based on gut and emotions. However, there is an increased expectation that decisions be defended with rigorous metrics and that all goals and objectives have clear measures attached to them that must be monitored often. This dramatically increases the power of the owner and manipulator of the data (the analyst), who is the expert at assembling the data into an implication that ideally drives action.

Overall the opportunities for analysts to influence important decisions are growing. And what every analyst wants is to influence decisions based on sound interpretation of solid data.  Analysts can now find themselves in the middle of the big show, often holding the balance of power by being the owner and interpreter of the facts.  But like dynamic orators skilled in the art of rhetoric back in the first senates, all analysts know that the selection and presentation of the data can easily lead to many different conclusions based on what is chosen to show or not show. With great power comes great responsibility. The opportunities are better than ever, but a need to stay objective, as unbiased as we can, and to consider all strong challenges is paramount.  We must be ready for the hard debates and not become that expert witness ready to defend any point for a fee.

This blog was produced as part of the very first Analytics Blogarama – a one day event where bloggers share their individual views on a common theme.  

Today’s theme is The Emerging Role of the Analyst. To read other viewpoints, please visit the blogarama navigation page.

Written by Lane Cochrane

At iPerceptions, we live and breathe web analytics. The conferences and trade shows we attend all have an analytics focus. We position our analytics solution against other similar solutions. We partner with other analytics providers and interact with our clients’ analytics teams. It seems like everyone has analytics on the brain. But when you take a step back, you realize we’re all just drinking the same Kool-Aid.

In reality, web analytics hasn’t permeated the greater corporate culture. It is still a niche discipline that very few companies have truly embraced. Sure, most companies have that one guy (or gal) generating reports based on clickstream data, but the reports don’t end up on the CEO’s desk and the results don’t often inform business decisions. It’s a cyclical process whereby analysts try to make sense of ambiguous numbers, end up producing limited insight, and consequently don’t receive the financial resources to acquire the sophisticated tools that could really make a difference.

The majority of analysts recognize the potential benefits of various tools such as Voice of Customer (VoC) analytics, session-replay data, multivariate testing, and the power of integrating these datasets, but they end up at the mercy of cautious executives and “more tangible investments”. Too many analysts see their role reduced to piecing together disparate data points, putting forward either too-broad or unsubstantiated conclusions, all the while trying to prove the value that analytics can bring to the company.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that most analysts don’t have it easy. There are the few that happen to work for a company that has come to realize to what extent a thorough web analytics program can boost conversion, build engagement, increase sales, lower costs and help them stay ahead of the competition. But for the most part, they are fighting traditional metrics and the status quo, which can be a daunting endeavor.

This blog was produced as part of the very first Analytics Blogarama – a one day event where bloggers share their individual views on a common theme.  

Today’s theme is The Emerging Role of the Analyst. To read other viewpoints, please visit the blogarama navigation page.

When you say the word loyalty in the context of online business, many people automati­cally think loyalty programs. While loyalty programs are indeed a popular and effective way to encourage repeat business, there are myriad other ways to ensure that visitors come back to your site.

Loyalty is a direct function of customer satisfaction, which is built on a lot more than points or rewards. Customers care about, and react to, the goods and services available on a site, the ease with which they can accomplish their purpose, and the type of service they receive, etc. Below is a list of activities, by no means comprehensive, which will significantly increase customer loyalty.

Make your site navigation simple and intuitive: Online shopping is about saving time and money. If visitors have to struggle to find the goods/services they are looking for, then your site hasn’t accomplished its goal. Incorporate the navigation basics: an effective search tool, categories and sub-categories, and a site map so that visitors are never more than three clicks away from the home page.

Fix the bugs: A reliably glitch-free ex­perience is essential to building loyalty. Customers want to know that when they come to your site, they don’t have to worry about technical malfunctions, which not only erode trust, but end up wasting their time. Commit to monitoring the website and network performance and fixing the bugs on a regular basis.

Create an engaging experience: Beyond site usefulness, many visitors are seeking enjoyment when they shop. Top websites recognize this and aim to incorporate a mix of photos, videos, and community aspects such as comments, ratings and reviews, to make visitors feel connected to the site and to the brand.

Charge a fair price: New visitors shop around; loyal visitors know where they can get a fair price without shopping around. Keep a close eye on your competitors and how much they’re charging for the same or similar items. Highlight the differences between similar items and don’t shy away from competitive comparisons.

Maintain your inventory: There is noth­ing more frustrating than visiting a site only to discover that they are out of stock on the item(s) you wanted. Insufficient inventory will drive away visitors, who may never return.

Offer customer support during and after: Timely customer support during the purchase process is critical in retaining customers. Live support is best. If your site doesn’t have the answers to customers’ questions, they will quickly seek them somewhere else. After sales support is equally important as it dem­onstrates to visitors that you are invested in keeping them happy.

Invest in mobile technology: Mobile shop­ping is exploding. Companies that don’t have an accessible and convenient mobile site are losing potential new customers. But what’s worse is that current customers are abandoning their once-favorite sites in favor of mobile-friendly ones.

Integrate social media: While research has shown that social media sites don’t lead to direct sales, they certainly keep your site top of mind among customers. By integrating the most popular social media outlets, including Facebook and Twitter, you can keep many of your customers up-to-date on new products, promotions, etc., and they will be more likely to develop loyalty in the long run.

Solicit and act on visitor feedback: There is no point in guessing what your visitors want. Customer satisfaction and loyalty are achieved by asking visitors directly—pro-active survey solicitation works well—and responding to their needs.

Strive for continuous improvement: Customer needs and expectations evolve with the competitive landscape. Keeping your site effective and relevant is essential in to­day’s online business world. But don’t do anything drastic. Radical changes will often confuse visitors and make them reluctant to return.

It isn’t always about earning points or receiving a free gift with purchase. Often, the best tactics to increase customer loy­alty to your site involve getting to know your visitors and offering them a useful, easy, and pleasant experience. Customer abandonment is an unfortunate, often avoidable occurrence, but the more of these loyalty-boosting activities you manage to incorporate, the better off your site and your brand will be.

If you are me 2 days ago, you are asking yourself, “What the heck is a Klout Score?”

While still in Beta, the Klout Score measures influence based on your ability to drive action, as opposed to potentially misleading metrics like follower or friend count. Every time you create content or engage, you influence others. The Klout Score uses data from social networks in order to measure:

• How many people you influence (True Reach)
• How much you influence them (Amplification)
• How influential they are (Network Score)

Your True Reach is the number of people you influence. It filters out spam and bots and focuses on the people who are acting on your content. When you post a message, these people tend to respond or share it.

Your Amplification is how much you influence people. When you post a message, how many people respond to it or spread it further? If people often act upon your content you have a high Amplification score.

And finally, your Network indicates the influence of the people in your True Reach. How often do top Influencers share and respond to your content? When they do so, they are increasing your Network score.

It makes sense. And big name companies are buying into it. Klout has analyzed over 85 million people on major social networks, and is used by over 3000 brands and applications, including Nike, Audi, HP, Disney, P&G, Subway, Fox and Paramount.

So how did iPerceptions do? Check it out:  

Score Analysis (You are effectively using social media to influence your network across a variety of topics) 

True Reach (You have built a good size network that is highly engaged)

Amplification Probability (You are more likely to have your message amplified than the average person)

Network Influence (You engage with a good mix of influencers and friends)  

But the real question is… is a Klout Score of 34 any good? And the answer is, it depends. In the social media sphere, your reach, or “clout” is dependent on the reach or clout of your closest competitors. If the other VoC analytics providers out there have Klout Scores in the 20′s, we’re in good shape; if they are producing scores in the 50′s and 60′s, we’ve got some work to do.

Another thing Klout tells you is what topics you are most influential about. In our case, they were, in order of influence: Branding, Web Analytics, Journalism, Magazine, YouTube, E-Commerce, Search Advertising, Agencies, Dell and Social Media Measurement.

Although the list seems a bit disjointed, when you click on a topic, you can see the top influencers for that topic. Since Web Analytics is the topic that iPerceptions identifies with the most, I wanted to see who (or what) was leading the way in this area.

In the past 90 days, the top ten influencers in the web analytics space were:

Avinash Kaushik – Klout Score: 78

Google Analytics – Klout Score: 63

Stephane Hamel – Klout Score: 58

Jim Sterne – Klout Score: 52

Dennis Mortensen – Klout Score: 50

Emer Kirrane – Klout Score: 48

Anil Baltra – Klout Score: 47

Web Analytics Association – Klout Score: 45

Adam Greco – Klout Score: 44

Yahoo! Web Analytics – Klout Score: 43

It was interesting to note that only two of the top influencers provide web analytics services. All of the others were authors, bloggers and associations. And ones that we associate with! Avinash Kaushik collaborated with us on our 4Q survey solution, both our webValidator and 4Q survey solutions are fully integrated with Google Analytics, Stephane Hamel created WASP – a product we now own, and Jim Sterne is the organizer of eMetrics – a global conference that we sponsor every year.

All in all, I’d say we’re doing alright.

And we have some major social media initiatives lined up for 2012, so it will be exciting to see what our Klout Score is 12 months from now! 

Want to calculate your Klout Score? Do what I did! Visit their website at www.klout.com and provide your Facebook and Twitter login information to generate a report in seconds! You’ll be shown your Klout Score, as well as what topics you influence, who you influence the most, and who are the top influencers by topic. You can also see your Klout Style (we’re a “Conversationalist”), create lists and earn achievements. And, like any good metric, you can trend your results over time.

What is GAUGE?

GAUGE is a two-day event, featuring a Google Analytics User Conference on the first day and Google Analytics Training Workshops on the second day. The User Conference day of GAUGE is designed to connect people who love Google Analytics. The day is filled with ample time for attendees to network as well as choose from a dozen sessions on various Google Analytics topics.  

This year’s event is taking place in New York City, on October 17 & 18.

What Makes GAUGE Unique?

The event provides valuable insights through expert-led, user-to-user collaborative sessions that are insanely practical. This is not a “come and be spoken to” conference but rather an opportunity to learn from Google Analytics pros and peers and share your experience and knowledge.

The action-packed agenda include a morning keynote, learning sessions and a 1-on-1 expert Helpdesk throughout the day, an afternoon Q&A session with the Google Analytics team and an evening reception. A bonus training day will follow with classroom-style instruction for those interested in basic, intermediate and advanced Google Analytics training.

Key Benefits

• Meet Google Analytics pros and peers
• Share your experiences with Google Analytics – get help and help others
• Meet and interact with members of the Google Analytics team and certified Google Analytics partners
• Improve your skill with Google Analytics through learning practical knowledge from other GA users that you can put to use immediately
• Deepen knowledge with the bonus GA training day
• Raise professional credibility with the Google Analytics Qualified Individual test – test vouchers will be provided to each attendee

What Past Attendees Have to Say

“Loved having the whole GA team on-site. Very cool & valuable.”

“The best part was networking – being able to ask questions and get real answers.”

“I learned something from every event I attended. The presenters were very knowledgeable and give points everyone could take away. It was a welcome change to see knowledge vs. sponsorship/sales pitch.”

“Day 1 was great! I learned several actionable tactics I can take back to my job to improve performance!”

“Great place to get tips from the experts – under roof.”

“Excellent from those who want the content in Google Analytics and state-of-the-art apps and add-ons.”

“The speakers knocked it out of the park. Excellent content, fun presentation style, and contagious enthusiasm.”

For more information, visit http://gaugecon.com/

Brafton News, an online publisher of news, blogs and articles, picked up on iPerceptions’ Retail / E-Commerce Industry Report for Q2 2011, which found that 26% of people visit an e-commerce website to learn about a business before making a purchase. This finding prompted the following thought piece suggesting that businesses ought to re-focus their online initiatives.

Market research firm iPerceptions recently released its Retail / E-Commerce Industry Report for Q2 2011 and found lack of site information can hinder buying. This suggests that brand journalism has an increasingly large role in the success of ecommerce websites.

With the growing number of purchase options available for consumers on the web, information is emerging as a clear differentiator for effective ecommerce websites. According to the study, 26% of people visit ecommerce websites to learn about companies and their products before making any purchases. As this trend continues to evolve, businesses should assess their current web content and alter their strategies accordingly.

The study also demonstrated that web visitors who go to an ecommerce website and leave without making a purchase often cite a lack of product information as the motivation – especially those who eventually buy the same product from another site. Other factors certainly contribute to failed purchase completion. However, a quality content marketing strategy that weighs both timeliness and accuracy is an easy way for businesses to improve sales completion, according to iPerceptions.

Content writing can also help businesses with SEO, which is especially useful as iPerceptions found that the amount of website visitors who land on a given page from a search engine remains strong at 21%. From there, 66% of page visitors end up converting, iPerceptions found in its study.

Aside from brand journalism, websites often provide users with the ability to leave reviews regarding products and services on their website. User-generated content, paired with branded content marketing, can help businesses ensure their website remains timely and dynamic.

David Meerman Scott, marketing author and industry expert, delivered the keynote address on Wednesday morning at Content Marketing World, and named real-time, up-to-date info as a key component of any content marketing strategy.

iPerceptions’ Retail / E-Commerce Industry Report for Q2 2011 caught the attention of Cynthia Boris, a freelance writer, social media consultant and firm believer that content is still king. In the following article, published by Marketing Pilgrim, Boris infuses iPerceptions’ industry report data with her own personal online shopping experiences.

More people than ever are shopping online. That’s the good news. The bad news is that customer satisfaction is dropping and shopping cart abandonment is on the rise. (Don’t hate me, but I abandoned two just this weekend.)

iPerceptions has a new report that looks at post shopping experience feedback. What they found was that overall customer satisfaction was down from 73% last year to 70% this year.

The biggest concern is that only 60% of customers who came to buy walked away with what they came for. Says iPerceptions,

“For a business that does $10 million per year in online sales, a 60% Task Completion rate among buyers means $6.7 million in business is simply walking away.”

For the small business owner, losing even one sale can really hurt, let alone 40%.

Why did shoppers leave unhappy? 42% said they couldn’t find what they wanted and 30% said the product wasn’t available. Lack of product info and unclear pricing also played a part in the walk-away.

Technical issues, which used to be a big barrier, only came in at 2%, so that’s good news for e-commerce as a whole.

I shop online a lot and there are two big reasons I walk away from a shopping cart. One is add-on charges. I shop at a webstore that has a very bad habit of showing a cheap shipping rate on my cart up until the moment I go to pay, then it socks me with a number three times that amount. I also use a lot of coupon codes, and intensely dislike stores that don’t allow me to enter them upfront so I can see my discount, or make it so hard to enter them that I give up.

Another reason I walk away is because of an embarrassment of riches. I recently started shopping at an online scrapbook store that simply has too many items. Each category has multiple categories and every item I click shows me ten more items. I often get overwhelmed by the choices and leave. iPerception says that a lack of focus is a big problem for e-commerce sites since customers constantly demand more, more, more. The trick, they say, is to eliminate the “tiny tasks” and focus in on what it is the majority of people want to do and find when they hit your website. Easier said than done, but it’s something to think about.

Confession time. When was the last time you abandoned a shopping cart and why?

We won!

iPerceptions’ 4Q Suite won the Google Analytics Partner Summit third-party application competition this past Wednesday, September 14, 2011.

The competition involved each of the ten finalists, pre-selected by Google, presenting their applications to an esteemed panel of judges and all attendees. They were judged on (1) integration or use of GA data, (2) user experience and design, (3) customer appeal and utility and (4) overall quality of design and functionality. 

What gave 4Q Suite its advantage was a sophisticated integration with Google Analytics, in which companies can analyze individual customer experiences, including their open-ended feedback, based on the combination of 4Q and GA data. This multi-perspective, session-level analysis provides a broader and more accurate view of the customer experience, which often unveils surprising insights and requires a different company response. 

As the winner of this event, 4Q Suite will be featured as the “App of the Week” in the Google Analytics App Gallery.

This year’s Google Analytics Partner Summit, which was held at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, attracted over 500 certified Google Analytics experts from around the world who were eager to learn about the latest Google Analytics features. Usually this event is reserved only for Google Analytics Certified Partners, but this year, ten of the most accomplished third-party application developers were also given an opportunity to present their tools, client success stories and meet the partners in an exclusive exhibition area.

iPerceptions’ Retail / E-Commerce Industry Report for Q2 2011, which identified the most important issues and trends facing the online retail industry based on the analysis of post-experience feedback, captured the attention of journalists and analysts across North America. Among them was Laurie Sullivan, a writer and editor for MediaPost, who pulled together data from multiple sources, including iPerceptions’ industry report, for an article which suggests that online content needs some good old-fashioned TLC.

According to Sullivan, marketers know paid-search ads on Google, Bing and Yahoo click through to landing pages, and many times those landing pages connect with websites. And sometimes, yes — static and boring content. A recent study suggests consumers have become less impressed with websites. Sometimes static works. Other times, marketers may want an interactive Flash object that looks like a video on that landing page greeting visitors and demonstrating products or services to engage, grab and convert visitors into leads and sales.

KnowledgeVision calls that app the Talking Landing Page, but think of it more as a video without borders that simultaneously zooms in and out of several screens. The presentation runs alongside the talking presenter. While a talking head can put viewers to sleep, the ability to combine a presentation with an informative narrative just might do the trick.

Video content continues to grow in popularity, but company budgets may not keep up with the pace. This tool from KnowledgeVision integrates video with marketing automation and CRM platforms such as Salesforce, Marketo, Eloqua, Pardot and HubSpot. It’s done through web cameras and video presentations, explains KnowledgeVision CEO and Co-founder Michael Kolowich.

Kolowich said the ability to zoom back and forth between the talking head and presentation provides an engaging experience that takes marketers on average 25 minutes to create. Tests continue to return higher conversion and engagement rates with video and information graphics, he said.

Optimizing paid-search landing pages is important, but the websites found through paid-search ads also need care. It turns out that website satisfaction is falling, although e-commerce continues to rise. A report released Wednesday from iPerceptions points to data from the Census Bureau of the U.S. Department of Commerce that estimates U.S. retail e-commerce sales for the second quarter of 2011 rose 3% to $47.5 billion, sequentially. The data shows that second-quarter 2011 e-commerce rose 17.6%, compared with the year-ago quarter.

Based on a scoring system, overall satisfaction for website visitors fell to 70 in Q2 2011 — from 73 in Q2 2010, according to iPerceptions. The Retail/E-Commerce Industry Report for Q2 2011 study, released Wednesday, reveals that the share of visitors who came to compare product features and prices rose from 22% in the second quarter of 2010 to 29% in the second quarter of 2011. Only 22% — down from 39% in 2010 — came to gather initial information. The share of visitors who came to make a purchase declined from 22% to 16%, quarter-over-quarter; among them, 42% could not find the information. The share of visitors who came for support rose from 4% to 16%, sequentially.

Analysis also shows that Self Service, Discovery, Ease of Use, Relevancy and Trust had the greatest impact on visitor satisfaction. Self-service, which had the lowest rated Attribute at 6.41 out of 10 — along with Discovery — were the most critical attributes, suggesting that improvements in these areas will have the greatest impact on satisfaction.

The iPerceptions report analyzed real-time feedback from more than 170,000 people visiting nearly 370 retail and e-commerce sites to identify the most important issues and trends.

Thursday, September 1, 2011 1:30 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. EST

Wondering whether or not to upgrade to 4Q Premium? Just upgraded to 4Q Premium and wondering how to take full advantage of your new plan? Curious about 4Q in general?

Whatever the case may be, this is the webinar for you.

Join us for a 30-minute session to review the features and functions exclusive to 4Q Premium, including:

• Pushing 4Q data into Google Analytics for advanced integration and analysis
• Automatic alerts of significant changes in 4Q and Google Analytics data
• Scheduled email reports of alerts and open-ended feedback

Watch as iPerceptions’ Duff Anderson shows you examples of the kind of insight that can be gathered with 4Q Premium features and stay tuned for a Q&A after the presentation.

REGISTER HERE.

Great news!

iPerceptions was selected from a pool of applicants to exhibit its 4Q app at the 2011 Google Analytics Certified Partner Summit.

This year, over 500 certified Google Analytics experts from around the world will come to Mountain View to learn about the latest Google Analytics features. Usually, this event is reserved only for Google Analytics Certified Partners, but this year they are giving their 10 most accomplished third party application developers an opportunity to present their tools, client success stories and meet the partners in an exclusive exhibition area.

Says Jess Nichols, Partner Program Manager at Google:

“We really appreciate the hard work that iPerceptions has put in to produce a great product that enhances the Google Analytics experience.”

The summit will be held from September 14th-15th at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, right next to the Google Headquarters. It will feature a special exhibition area for iPerceptions and the 9 other third party app developers outside the main conference room where each will have a booth and be able to demo their solutions.

There will also be an exciting competition called “GA Developer Idol” on the evening of September 14th in which all of the third part app developers will have 5 minutes to present their solution to an esteemed panel of judges (GA Product Leadership) and all attendees. The winner will get a valuable prize, and will be a “featured app” in the Google Analytics App Gallery.

Best of luck to Pierre Tetreault and Christopher Pam, who will be representing iPerceptions at the event.

1. Define and sell a compelling vision, but be ready to back it up with a solid business case. Everything can be measured, even if you have to come up with new measurements to do so. Don’t sell the vision on faith alone or it will not inspire the same commitment.
2. Reinforce the idea that by bringing the voice of the customer into your decision making processes, you’re really allowing your customers – your ultimate product experts – to innovate on your behalf and at an unbeatable cost.
3. Use anecdotes to illustrate, use trends to drive decisions and guide strategy. The voice of a few very vocal customers, and sometimes that of your senior executives, should not automatically override the trends and insights that come out of rigorous measurement and analysis.
4. Leverage market-tested partners and solutions. Don’t try to save money by building most tools yourself, these will likely be costly ‘savings’ in time and distraction, and the output is likely to be at parity, if that.
5. Never underestimate how willing your customers are to tell you how to improve. It’s up to you to stop talking to them as much and start listening more. What they have to say can chart your path to earning their loyalty for life.

The breadth of Dell’s VoC initiatives would be impressive for any large consumer business. They believe what sets them apart is the exponential scale of their initiatives once you factor in the diverse customer segments they serve across 25+ languages in dozens of countries on every continent: gamers, students, homemakers, retirees, etc. in their Consumer segment; lawyers, dentists, graphic designers, engineering firms, textile manufacturers, hotels, retail outlets and many more in their Small & Medium Business segment; local/state/national governments, military organizations, K-12 school districts, universities and colleges, hospitals, doctor practices and others in their Public segment; and multinational corporations spanning all industries in their Large Enterprise segment.

Beyond the scale of their VoC efforts, they believe another key differentiator is the spirit of transparency with which they operate their VoC programs. Transparency exists internally, where VoC data and insights are shared broadly and in timely fashion within the organization, and externally, especially in social media, where they engage with their customers in open, unstructured conversations, not always with predictable outcomes.

Last, they like to highlight their willingness to break new ground and innovate right alongside their customers so as to amplify their voice further still. Planned innovations like real‐time feeds of unedited VoC data directly onto Dell.com are examples of things to come.

Web analytics is becoming more and more complex as online business strategies mature. As a result, analytics page tags need to include more data and thus it is important to ensure that this information is being captured accurately. This is not isolated to web analytics, but also any other online solution that relies on JavaScript tags. With all of the solutions available that are being implemented and numerous business people wanting a piece of the resulting online behavioral information, it is imperative that the information be correct and timely.

Given all of these factors, it is vital that the requisite tags are present and accurate to ensure that the resulting analysis best reflects every web page.

It quickly became clear to IBM (Unica) that a product was needed to quickly and accurately gauge what tags are running on any given web page and exactly what data is being reported to not only analytic vendors but also advertisement networks and other online marketing solutions. The typical technical knowledge required to diagnose tagging issues is usually beyond the needed knowledge of a marketer and therefore it is what prompted IBM (Unica) to bring WASP to its clients. 

An IBM-Flavored WASP

Extending the value of WASP by working closely with IBM (Unica) to build out additional features and functions created a unique benefit to Unica NetInsight customers. As an example, when a WASP client visits a page that is running NetInsight page tags, the Unica branding appears on the WASP interface and offers product specific variable identification. WASP clients also receive in-application notifications, based on IBM (Unica)-defined rules, if the NetInsight tags are not formatted or executing properly. There are also detailed descriptions and categorizations of NetInsight variables to avoid dealing with variable names that may not be clear at first view.

IBM is offering customers a special WASP license for FREE to take advantage of all of these valuable capabilities. To sign up for the special WASP license unique to IBM go to: http://webanalyticssolutionprofiler.com/unica.html

Dell was founded 27 years ago on the premise of direct-to-customer relationships, and today this legacy is as strong as ever. Everything they do is not only driven by customer needs, but measured in terms of customer outcomes. The purpose that drives every Dell team member is to deliver technology solutions that enable customers everywhere to grow and thrive.

As the company has grown, so has the breadth of their Voice of Customer (VoC) programs. Today they have a variety of programs that allow them to guide the long-term direction of the company as well as address tactical customer needs on a daily basis. Their customers have benefited from many specific improvements to their experience with Dell that can be directly attributed to their feedback and input. Some recent examples include: 

• Reduction or elimination of trial software (‘bloatware’ as some customers call it) on many of their client systems, including all business systems. 
• Complete redesign of the Dell online configurator experience. 
• Redesign of support.dell.com this year based on customer input to make it easier to use. This change also included the simplified driver download tool. 
• Availability of U.S.-based phone support for higher-end system buyers. 
• Revamping of Dell extended warranty offering to align with customer demand. 
• Offering pre-configured ‘Fast Track’ systems that can ship the next day from date-of-order. 
• Reduction of concurrent promotions, elimination of confusing rebates and reduced use of coupons to take advantage of online offers. 
• Streamlined experience to download drivers and maintenance updates from Online Support site. 
• Internal policy changes to reduce need for call transfers when contacting Dell Customer Service or Technical Support.
• Streamlined process for order cancelations and returns.

From October 17-21, online marketers and web developers will converge in New York for the eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit. This is a wonderful event for anyone in online sales, marketing, or communications interested in advancing their knowledge of marketing optimization and web analytics.

iPerceptions is a gold sponsor and will be presenting its ‘Make Yourself  Heard’ lab on Wednesday, October 19, from 4:15 pm to 5:00 pm. 

Check out the complete list of sessions here.

Get a 15% discount off the registration price by entering code IPERNY1115 when you register online.

The saying: “garbage in = garbage out” is very relevant, especially when it comes to the noisy online research medium. Results are limited in confidence by solicitation and collection interface methodology, as well as design and type of questions posed.

Capturing the experience of visitors in the context of self-initiated situations is the key to defining VoC business intelligence. The main factor effecting the quality and reliability of VoC intelligence can be broken into 4 main areas.

1) Solicitation on arrival – response rate

Passive, exit, and conditional solicitation bias results as the experience itself affects the choice to participate. A balanced view of the total visitor experience can only be accessed when opt-in occurs before the experience occurs, ideally on arrival.

iPerceptions gets a positive response to participate in feedback of between 2-5% of visitors who are solicited on arrival to the site, who complete their feedback immediately after their visit.

2) Collection interface – completion rate and respondent fatigue

Completion rate is the number of respondents who complete a fixed number of required responses to the survey compared to the number who start answering the survey. A low completion rate suggests that your survey is too long or badly designed.

Our research suggests that survey fatigue, dropping out of the survey before completing the required number of questions, is driven more by the number of screen interactions required by the collection interface used to answer the questions, than simply the number of questions itself.

A screen interaction is any mouse click or scroll required by the respondent while completing the study.

Average completion rate for first 25 screen interactions is ~90%. Exponential drop out starts at about 35 screen interactions. Ideally design a survey so that any respondent, regardless of skip logic (question flow), can complete the survey in no more than 40 screen interactions.

iPerceptions’ collection interface, with auto progress to proceeding questions, requires only 1 screen interactions per data point collected (using single select question format), providing industry best completion rates. Using iPerceptions’ collection interface allows for more questions to be asked before survey fatigue is notable. Our collection interface provides the opportunity to get maximum information and value from your engaged visitor without causing irritation or affecting completion rates.

3) Type of questions and number of response choices

Questions designed for ‘Single select’ format require the minimum screen interactions (1) to complete and automatically proceed to the next question. For this reason a ‘single select’ format is the preferred data type for questions when possible.

The number of possible responses for a ‘single select’ question is ideally 6 or less. More choices require much more reading effort by the respondent and can make it difficult for the respondent to choose the appropriate answer.

Multiple select (select all that apply) type questions are sometimes required based on the decision support needed. When using ‘select all that apply’ format for questions ideally limit the number of items listed to 9 or less.

‘Open-ended’ questions, where respondents type in their response in their own words require the greatest effort to complete. Excessive use of open-ended questions can severely affect completion rates. Ideally ask open-ended questions at the end of the survey and always make them optional.

4) Number of questions

The optimal number of questions asked varies based on type of questions used, as well as survey flow (skip logic). As mentioned above, you should count the number of screen interactions required to complete the survey as designed not simply the number of questions to determine optimal survey length.

To maximize the amount of information you can get from the overall study and from the valuable commitment your visitors are providing ask certain questions only to select groups based on what the respondent has revealed.

For example, it is possible to have 40 questions in field, 20 that all respondents answer, as well as 4 sets of 5 unique questions to four different respondent groups. In this case no individual respondent answers more than 25 questions, however, you are able to collect answers to 40 questions from the study

Question flow i.e. 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,23,14,15,16,17,18,19,20 stream
A) 21,22,23,24,25 stream
B) 26,27,28,29,30 stream
C) 31,32,33,34,35 stream 
D) 36,37,38,39,40

Use branching and skip logic when possible to maximize value.