>>>Email & Webpage Surveys

Email Surveys

Respondents for email surveys are recruited for participation through e-mail invitation. MaCorr can use client e-mail lists or draw respondents from the MaCorr Web Panel, a large, demographically representative, Internet-based panel, for e-mail studies.

Webpage Surveys

This type of surveys is, primarily, used for website evaluation, visitors' profile or e-shopping analysis. Website visitors are invited to participate in a survey using “banner” type invitation, "pop-up" window or weblink. If the person agrees to participate in the survey (clicks "Yes") then he or she is taken to an online survey. Webpage surveys are an ideal methodology for evaluating business issues such as customer satisfaction with the Web site, satisfaction with existing products and services, or the likelihood of new product success.

Pop-up survey methodology is also used for website tracking studies. These studies are specifically designed to evaluate visitors' experiences at Web sites. The technology presents a pop-up invitation to participate in a survey as a visitor enters a Web site, captures visitors behavior as they navigate the site (e.g., pages visited, time spent), and then presents a questionnaire as the respondent leaves the Web site. The approach combines behavioral data with the questionnaire data and provides a better understanding of the Web site visitor experience.

Webpage and e-mail surveys (client e-mail lists) are, primarily, used to gain opinion of your current customers or website visitors. They are an effective and inexpensive method to obtain the attitudes and opinions of a wide variety of respondents.

Advantages

• Web based surveys are extremely fast.  A questionnaire posted on a popular Web site can gather several thousand responses within a few hours.  Many people who will respond to an email invitation to take a Web survey will do so the first day, and most will do so within a few days.
• There is practically no cost involved once the set up has been completed.  Large samples do not cost more than smaller ones (except for any cost to acquire the sample).
• You can show pictures, video and play sound.
• Web page questionnaires can use complex question-skipping logic, randomizations and other features not possible with paper questionnaires or most email surveys.  These features can assure quality data.
• A significant number of people will give more honest answers to questions about sensitive topics, such as drug use or sex, when giving their answers to a computer, rather than to a person or on paper.
• On average, people give longer answers to open-ended questions on web page questionnaires than they do on other kinds of self-administered surveys. It allows you to combine the survey answers with pre-existing information you have about individuals taking a survey.

Disadvantages

• Sample size should be addressed specifically to match the general population in terms of age, gender and other demographics.
• People can easily quit in the middle of a questionnaire.
• If a survey “pops up” on a web page, you often have no control over choosing a specific respondent. Anyone from around the world may answer. This issue can be resolved by placing screening questions in the beginning of a survey.

Internet surveys can often meet the requirement for targeting population, business-to-business research or employee attitude surveys.