Avenues for Online Research for your Target Market »

So, you have finished creating and testing your UX Design. Your website is up and running, and people are already trying out your service or your product. What do you do now? Well, you do continuous research about your audience and your brand to provide a better experience for your customers. Additionally, you also need to keep your current customer base engaged with your brand. Today, there are plenty of avenues for online research for your target market.

In the offline world, it can be a little bit tricky to find out what your customers and the rest of the world are saying about your brand. However, if your business is on the internet, it is almost effortless to do so. Thanks to the power of technology, you can now ‘listen’ to what others are saying about you.

As previously mentioned, there are now plenty of avenues for online research for your target market. Let us explain further the details below.

Online Monitoring Tools

There are plenty of online monitoring tools that can help you keep track of the conversations about your product or service. Thanks to technology, you no longer have to spend countless hours searching and researching, there are now services that offer to give you alerts whenever somebody mentions your brand name.

It is now easier to keep track of what others are saying about you. More importantly, it helps save you a lot of time that you can now focus on listening to what your customers are saying and using the data you gathered to improve your services or your product. Listed below are some of the best online monitoring tools. Some of these are so obvious, you won’t believe you skipped on the opportunity to use them!

Google Services

Google offers several bespoke search services that make it easy for you to see what conversations are taking place online. Some of these services are listed below.

Google Alerts

This service sends you an email when the keyword you chose is used in either a credible news item or a blog post. This way, you no longer have to do the search yourself, Google sends you an alert to save time and effort.

Google News

Next, we have Google News which gives you all of the related and most relevant news items for mentions of a keyword.

Google Blog Search

You can also use Google Blog Search to search all blog posts for mentions of a keyword in addition to Google News.

Google Video Search

If you want to see which vlogs and other videos are mentioning your brand, you can also use Google Video Search.

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Google Patent Search

Last, we have Google Patent Search which allows you to keep track of all patent filings related to an industry. This is usually done to see if there are already filed patents to avoid infringement.

Aside from Google, there are also other search engines that focus solely on tracking blogs, news and other social media as well as trends for searches. Check them out below:

Socialbakers: This search engine provides a series of social media listening options, you can check it out at www.socialbakers.com
Delicious.com: you can use this website to create RSS feed for URLs tagged with keywords for new bookmarking of a URL.
Flickr: this service offers RSS updates for searches on a particular keyword when a brand name has been used in tagging a photo.

Most of these are free tools, but if you are looking for premium paid tools, there are also some available. Paid tools offer more features and an easier process.

Other Avenues For Online Research

Observation or Online Ethnography

This one takes its cue from offline ethnography. Through this avenue, researches are required to immerse themselves in a particular environment. It gathers insights that are not attained or achieved through direct interviews. Online Ethnography is more subjective because they heavily depend on the ethnographer’s observation and interpretation.

Personal Interviews

Conducting personal interviews is also now achievable online. This is done through private chat rooms or video calling. Thanks to the power of the internet, researchers can now connect with a lot of people around the world. For the respondents, they can have anonymity should they wish. Time is saved with minimal effort. Offline, researchers are required to travel to where their respondents are, but online, you can reach plenty of respondents with just a few clicks.

Online Research Communities

There are plenty of communities online, and a lot of them are dedicated to online research. Some use online communities as a resource for secondary research. However, these have proven to be so valuable that it can also provide primary data.

For instance, let us take a look at the blog of General Motors’ Fast Lane. It is a good example of an online research environment that helps collect data from research. This blog is used to gather feedback from customers to a particular research problem. It is proven to be useful for the brand.

Listening Labs

Next, you can also use listening labs. This has been mentioned briefly in our Step-by-Step Guide to UX Design article. It is used when developing websites and other applications online. It is useful for vital processes such as usability testing and helps ensure that the website or the application is satisfactory and able to meet the consumer’s needs.

A listening lab is a testing environment set up by the brand or company. Consumers are then invited to test the website or online application and they are observed while they do so.

Optimisation of Conversion

To sum up, the goal of conversion optimization is to decide the factors that can be enhanced for an advertising, website or web page. The goal is to improve a specific website, web page or offer to help convert customers more efficiently.

You can test search adverts, email subject lines, color scheme combinations, shopping cart designs, and just about any factor you think will impact your customer behavior. These tests are set up in able to determine what variables are affecting your conversion rates.