Website Evaluation

The website as a marketing channel: are you using its potential to the full?

Aims

Company websites and e-commerce solutions are fundamental communication and sales media. However, companies frequently develop such solutions without having the necessary professional know-how to exploit their potential to the full. It is therefore crucial to gather information from the customer’s point of view. This can only be achieved by carrying out an onsite survey, where visitors to a site are recruited via layer or pop-up technology.
Since the Internet is a completely normal marketing channel, it should be covered by market research.

Results

• Who visits a website? Customers, potential customers, investors, competitors?
• With what (varying) expectations do they visit the website, and are these expectations fulfilled?
• How is the website assessed overall?
• How are technical implementation and content of the site assessed (e.g. in terms of navigation, design, loading speed)?
• Are processes such as “search-order-payment” clearly, logically and conveniently structured?
• What are real obstacles for the user?
• Where can a competitive advantage over rival companies be gained?
• Why are potential customers not becoming actual customers?
• How strong is customer loyalty? How can it be intensified?
• Is there a coherent message? Is it leading to the making of a strong brand?

Applications

• Website screening: survey of user structure, requirements and interests. This information aids planning of a re-launch.
• Website satisfaction: measurement of how satisfied users are with what they are being offered.
• Website monitoring: regular surveys of website satisfaction. These serve to detect trends, recognise diminishing levels of satisfaction and monitor quality, in order to counteract potential problems at an early stage.
• Website benchmarking : onsite surveys on several sites of the same type, in order to make comparisons with the competition.
• Surveying of visitors to corporate websites (image, message).
• Surveying of shop visitors (purchasing behaviour, conversion).

Process

• Each visitor to the website is contacted according to a specific, definable degree of probability.
• Random recruitment via layer or pop-up technology.
• Contact probability is defined on the basis of field time and hit rates.
• The random sample generated in this way prevents people from taking part more than once, e.g. in order to receive more than one incentive.
• Questionnaires contain open and closed questions.
• We are able by experience to estimate:
  • the proportion of those taking part in the interview,
  • how termination behaviour varies during the survey,
  • whether there are any critical questions which lead to increased termination rates.
• Sample size: approx. 60 – 100 per sub-target group / a total of roughly 200 – 1,000 respondents.
• Result: chart report with management summary and recommendations for action.