Comments on: Talk to your target customer in 4 easy steps

By: Morvin

Morvin — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 20:22:15 +0000

Great Article,
I have been in the consumer research industry for the past 25 years, and today what I founding out is that companies rely very much on that computer survey information than concentrating on the consumer base knowledge. You will be surprised what valuable information and inside you can get by taking to the target consumer.
I have develop a great product and continuosly doing research by observing and talking to my target market and that is on a daily basis.

By: Shana

Shana — Sun, 17 May 2009 20:30:18 +0000

I totally disagree with this one.

Choice architecture is among the most complex worlds one could study. And is probably one of the most influential into the design and popularity of a product.

And the one most influential to market share.

If you are not actually sitting in people's rooms and observing, as was well observed by groups like Neilson- you know nothing. Reporting is not the same as actual behavior. For that, you actually need to go in and do focus groups, in person, behind one sided mirrors. And go into their houses, and work places.

It is how Viacom maintains such a huge chunk of market share of the youth market.

Lucky for you, Web 2.0 already is solving that problem for you:

http://www.trendguide.com/

By: Steve

Steve — Sat, 16 May 2009 13:34:58 +0000

Great post. I've found that you can start a customer relationship with a gift card, but many customers are willing to give feedback for free. You can invite them to be part of a 'customer advisory board" that you can gather informal feedback from everything from company policies to new products.

By the way, if you are on a budget, you can run a survey using FeedbackFarm.com. It is completely free.

By: Backpackerresources

Backpackerresources — Thu, 14 May 2009 00:11:16 +0000

I'm looking forward to the gift card (lol). By the way, your post is great and yes, very practical!

By: Lincoln Nguyen

Lincoln Nguyen — Thu, 07 May 2009 21:01:59 +0000

Ethnio is another good survey/recruiting tool. Its a dhtml lightbox that allows people to optin to do a study. Silverback is another one that we've used with success. It's used more for usability testing, but it allows you to capture a person's reaction through their webcam.

By: KenFromm

KenFromm — Tue, 05 May 2009 16:59:32 +0000

Good advice but be sure to bound the survey to prevent scam artists from inundating you with fake entries or after survey reports of non-payment.

The survey should be bounded by time and level of completion. It took an enormous amount of time to work through the same responses and emails and cost money not budgeted due to leaning on the side of generosity.

What also worked was using Craiglist to recruit people to come inhouse for user tests. It didn't take a lot of money (on the order of $20/$25 for an hour session) and the candidates that surfaced fit the target market we were looking at.

Ken

By: Vince Stevenson

Vince Stevenson — Tue, 05 May 2009 07:00:24 +0000

Great post and runs parallel with a project I'm currently working on.

Always lots to consider. Thanks for this – Vince

By: Michael E. Driscoll

Michael E. Driscoll — Mon, 04 May 2009 19:22:10 +0000

Andrew – I would add one thing: ask emotionally targeted questions. I ask customers: what are your biggest frustrations with your work? our product? a competitor's product? I've found I get a lot more information this way, and successful products often address these antipathies.

By: surfboards

surfboards — Mon, 04 May 2009 17:36:07 +0000

Awesome entry, I just loved it, you have really impressed me with your work, keep going like that brother!

Dave

By: partywedo

partywedo — Mon, 04 May 2009 17:35:27 +0000

Andrew, Thank you for these great suggestions. I will give your process a try.

I did one thing this last season that really helped me understand our user experience better. I wrote a simple How-to manual on the game without all of the details users will get on the official site.
I left them pretty much on their own to figure out a way to get their families involved in their own online party.
They muddled through using everything from email formats to Facebook groups.

After the season, I interviewed each of them to learn how things went for their events.
From this process, I learned several barriers that I had not thought of before and I got some great feedback on the engagement process.

It pays to ask and observe.

By: Jon Ziskind

Jon Ziskind — Mon, 04 May 2009 16:36:23 +0000

Great post. Customer driven products are the only way to go. It has to be a fundamental principal of the organization. Often, it's hard to stay true to it. Especially during product evolution periods. We have been working hard at our company initiating this method a standard procedure. You can't come to a product road map meeting without customer and user feedback on the topic.