WEB SITE RESEARCH NEEDED TO KEEP PACE WITH DISCERNING VISITORS

The Internet has radically transformed how organizations market and advertise their products and services.

Yet, the sophistication of Web site visitors has made it more difficult to leave the right impression. The web-savvy public has become highly critical of the look, feel, and operation of web sites.

Increasingly, organizations are conducting web site research programs to learn if the right people are visiting the site and how they feel about the site. Four basic research techniques can be used to gain answers to these questions: installing a registration process; conducting a survey; establishing a panel; and conducting focus groups.

Through visitor registration, companies can gain a better understanding of who is visiting their sites. Registration requires visitors to answer a series of questions before receiving a password that grants them access to the site.

But, registration has its shortcomings. People might leave the site because they decide it is not worth the time to register. Or perhaps they perceive a risk in revealing personal information.

A survey is a convenient and less biased research method for improving a web site. It can be used for exploring not only who is visiting the site, but also why, and how they feel about it.

Visitors are invited to click on a hyperlink to gain access to the survey. To learn who is visiting, a survey can ask demographic questions such as geographical location, age and job title. To learn why people visit the site, it can ask them to rank order the major reasons they visited.

How visitors actually feel about a site is critically important. Visitors will lose interest quickly if they feel the site does not meet their needs or has been created for someone else. The survey should therefore be used to ask questions about its usefulness and relevance.