“We want our clients to succeed as much as they want to succeed themselves.”

This quote stood out to me as I was recently reading a blog post about Market Research Client/Vendor relationships by Michaela Mora titled Market Research Vendors and Clients: Let’s Be Partners.

Every day here at the Revelation Customer Experience Department, we strive to create success for every project that crosses our path. Our Helping Hands service is designed to lighten the load and burdens of project setup and management for our clients as they undertake new studies.

Our clients’ success is our success. We are partners.

Over time, we’ve identified a few common (but easy to avoid!) road-bumps that seem to put a cramp in the experience of being an Online Researcher. In this post, I’d like to share a few of our top “tricks of the trade” for conducting successful Online Immersive Studies based on our understanding of what these road-bumps can be. A few minutes spent to consider these concepts about online work can save a world of worry down the road:

Avoid waiting until the last minute to get an Online Project up and running

Ah, the Online world. It all seems so fast, so easy, and so simple to engage with.

Launching an Online Project is similar in scope to prepping for In-person work or a Quantitative Study. As we all know, project management has its own method of preparation, timelines, overlapping deadlines, all of which need adherence no matter what. We suggest starting early, planning well and engaging end-clients into a reasonable timeline/deliverables expectation. The rewards will speak for themselves.

Steer clear of conducting other research or having a heavy workload on the first few days of the Online Study

It’s hard to tell someone who hasn’t experienced it yet how intense launching his or her first Online Immersive Project can be.  Often, our new clients are overwhelmed and thrilled to discover how engaged, forthcoming and downright wonderful participants’ online work is.

In our experience, engaged moderators translate into very engaged participants.   Imagine you are the participant.  Perhaps, you’ve participated in online panels before, but this online study is different.  The researcher is asking you to post photos of your life, talk about your personal processes and create a blog-like post each day.  Online immersive studies empower participants to share and when the moderator is responsive, especially during the first few days; the participants feel validated because they know someone is listening and responding to them. This engages them to move forward with the study – in full force.

We recommend that you schedule time appropriately to ensure that you’ve given yourself the headspace and mindspace during the first few days to connect with participants and to start sifting and organizing the incoming responses.

Take the time to learn and understand the features that the Online Tool offers

Take it from someone who’s been there…it’s easy to be so focused on the methodology, the goals and the setup of an Online Project that  “Oops! – It’s Day 1 and I forgot to attend the Training Demo that I saw a reminder float by for about 2 weeks ago. Now, how do I sort and report again?...”

Online immersive capabilities are wonderfully easy, intuitive and well designed. Most vendors offer regular training demos that can familiarize new users with the tool.

How To manuals, Help Menus and Training Videos are also excellent places to find information to support you as you start your Online Project. Having a big-picture understanding of all the features available to you can not only stave off Day 1 stress, but will also set you up for some great study-design and analysis practices.  In practice, I have noticed that certain features will inspire researchers to set-up certain types of questions (i.e. choice questions vs. open-ends). 

Above all, prepare for Engagement and Discovery. And don’t forget to have fun!

See you Online! 

By Elizabeth MacLaughlin, Customer Experience Manager