Tracking Tourism: The Tourism Research Blog Archive for the ‘Research tools’ Category

When in doubt decisions get made based on our own gut instincts.  Or on those instincts of the loudest or most influential people in the room. Somehow, the voice of the customer doesn’t always get the hearing it deserves.

Website interfaces, marketing messages, service propositions - all things that impact the customer absolutely - typically get created from the inside out.  With rumbling guts leading the way.  But you, me, the boss, the consultant - we are not the customer.  The perspective that the customer brings - whether gathered through research in advance, testing during the process or feedback after the event - takes some of the randomness and risk out of second guessing.

How do you ensure the customer doesn’t get left out?

1. Don’t optimize for the hippo

Everyone has a hippo in their life - it may be the HIghest Paid Person’s Opinion, or a Highly Influential Person’s Personal Opinion.  The hippo knows just how a website should look, or just what makes a great advert and they are not about to keep that opinion to themselves.

In lieu of stronger evidence from the customer, the hippo holds great sway!

But, our roaring, mud loving, opinionated hippo friends are not the people the website, marketing campaign, or interior layouts are ultimately designed for - theirs isn’t the only significant opinion.

Which brings me to the second point.

2. If in doubt, ask… (the customer that is!)

Just how many hours of speculation, doubt and opining could be saved by talking to the customer?

User testing, for example, can stop dead a circular debate that has run through a company for months.  In the space of just a few hours the customers themselves reveal what is really in their mind.

Testing different content side by side and tracking the comparative results (right through to overall revenue) is another way of asking the customer “which of these works best for you”.  Tools such as Google’s free weboptimizer allow you to easily test any combination of web content to find out what leads to the most conversions.  The customer speaks with their attention and actions.

And of course, asking the customer can also mean good old research in the form of focus groups, site visits, follow homes, surveys, customer diaries, user testing and formal or informal interviews.

3. But, don’t start research sure of the answer - you’ll only prove your self right

Keep your mind open, listen and learn.  Biased research is no better than gut instinct.  I’ve written before about how easy it is to influence the results of your research.  For example by unwittingly encouraging people to tell you what you want to hear, or by being so sure of “the answer” that you hear it despite what your customers tell you.

Instead, see if you can prove yourself wrong.

4. Test, analyse and make decisions based on evidence

If you have the evidence, act on it - don’t let the customer in, then ignore what they tell you when it comes to decision making.

But sometimes, despite the fact that you’ve talked to the customer and gathered your facts, the hippo can come back for a final roar - still convinced that their personal opinion trumps the evidence.

Keep the hippo at bay with voice of the customer data (the customer in their own words really works here). And remind them of the financial costs of inaction or inappropriate action.  Better still, help the hippo realise it was all their idea in the first place and that they are one smart semi-aquatic mammal!

5. Out of sight, out of mind?

Highly successful businesses typically know that the customer is genuinely at the centre of their universe. And many go to great lengths to keep the customer presence there in the decision making process.  I saw a presentation by eBay recently, where they talked  about how people throughout the organisation participate in follow homes, to observe customers using the site in their own context.

Microsoft have done a lot of persona work and have created life size representations of key customer personas who are taken along to meetings. At the other end of the scale I have seen tourism businesses whose offices are full of cards and notes from previous visitors from all over the world - also a visual representation, if they choose to use it, of the customers’ role in key decisions.

So, you are not the customer and neither is the hippo - make sure you don’t simply second guess what your real highly influential opinion holders think!

So…we’re all open minded, liberal in outlook and, above all, lacking in prejudice aren’t we? Well, as with many things, the answer isn’t perhaps what you would like it to be and is more complex than it first appears.

The bottom line, in my experience, is that people are prejudiced and you need to be aware of this when marketing your destination.

When I say prejudiced, it should be understood that I don’t mean bigoted or chauvinistic (although there is a part of the market that is). What I mean instead is that we all have preconceived ideas about destinations that mean we unconsciously use these prejudices as filters in our decision processes.

But how do you discover what people’s prejudices are and, more importantly, how can you change them?

Well, the answer is, in the first place, to really get under your potential customer’s skin. And I don’t just mean doing a quick survey but really getting into their way of thinking because a glibly expressed prejudice (”I don’t fancy a holiday in Germany” for example) can actually be just the visible expression of a complex set of ideas.

We’ve just finished an evaluation of a UK wide marketing campaign for an overseas destination and its reminded us of how powerful qualitative research is at revealing the kinds of small preconceptions we all carry that act as barriers in our decision to choose one destination over another.

I’m not going to name the destination and I’m not going to discuss specific results - the clients paid me to deliver the work to them and not broadcast it openly on the internet, so you’ll have to bear with me on that one! But I can use heavily disguised fictitious examples of the kinds of the insights we received to illustrate the points.

Before I do, I do appreciate that a lot of people remain wary of qualitative research – the term ‘focus group’ especially seems to provoke some pretty sceptical reactions. It seems to have connotations of flimsy insight, people telling you want you want to hear, management fads and slightly distasteful associations with unprincipled political processes.

Handled badly this is indeed what you will get for your money. Handled well, however, and you start to gain a richness beyond bare numbers.

So, lets look at some of those disguised examples:

“I like the marketing campaign image of the jet skiing – I just thought the area was rainy and grey but the blue sea makes me realise that it could be a warm beach destination as well!” 

Note that the original intention of the image being discussed in the example above was to convey a more active and sporty image for the destination, not one that was suggestive of the climate. However, it revealed that other people in the target group had the idea that the destination was cold and grey – this was their prejudiced view of the destination.

Now, before we go further, perhaps a little more about prejudice. As I suggested above, prejudice is one very human way of making decisions quickly. I’m not saying that the decision is rational (a suspicion of someone based on skin colour is clearly irrational in a modern person for example) but just because it is an ‘unthinking’ response, it doesn’t mean that it is an irrelevant response. Lets go back to the example above to illustrate that point further.

People who go on holiday with young children know that climate plays a much more important role in the experience than it might for a childless couple. If a destination is too hot, your children need to be protected. If it’s too wet, they need to be entertained. And you can’t just go to the pub/museum/cinema/shops with them – they need appropriate attention for young children. So, reassurance that a destination has a good climate is ticking an unconscious box in the minds of parents, despite the fact that the message contained in the original image was aimed at someone different (hedonistic 20-30 year olds for example).

In our example, the parents’ prejudice expressed as ‘cold and grey’ was a mask for a more complex and rational set of deliberations they employ when making a decision about the right destination to take children to.

“It’s great to experience local culture but a good hotel offers a sense of real sanctuary from all that – there comes a point when you want to shut the door and relax and know you will be safe and unhassled”

Now, a statement expressed in terms like this is probably not one that would not be made in every part of the world, although a variation of it might well be universal. The underlying desire is for security and a sense of ‘circling the wagons’ in order to catch your breath at the end of the day. But would you necessarily express it like that if you were holidaying , say, in North West Scotland? My guess is that it more likely to be something said by someone who expects to experience a vibrant but slightly chaotic culture destination. There are positives in this person’s statement (they think they can interact safely with the local culture) but it should also be recognised that they think there is a slightly wilder element and so need reassurance that they can (literally) shut the door on all that.

So what?

The examples above both demonstrate that certain market segments have preconceived ideas about an area that mean that they quickly discard some options without serious consideration. Understanding the reasons behind these notions means that you can start to answer them head on. In the examples I used above, the person speaking needed reassurance that their discomfort and bother would be minimised, and even though they received this tangentially, the destination’s marketing did tackle their concerns.

The point is, however, that you won’t know what really makes your customer’s tick unless you listen to them. And it’s not just about listening – it’s also about hearing what isn’t being said and what is being said, but in a disguised way.

Quick! Call the police!

There’s probably another blog post altogether in this observation but I’ve often been struck at how the techniques used by the police in interviews and techniques used in a focus group are similar. I’ll stress that I’ve never been interviewed myself by the police but policemen I know have described their interview methods to me and there are a lot of similarities – you’re both interested in peeling away the outer layer of stories to see if there is anything more underneath.

So, if any of you know policemen or women, ask them about ‘softly softly’ interview techniques – they might just come in useful when listening to your customers!

We tend to assume that other people think the same as we do. That they see things the same, even use the Internet the same.

There’s a wonderfully simple way of challenging that idea. And that is to watch (quietly!) as other people use your website. Sounds simple, doesn’t it?

I’ve spent much of the last week travelling to people’s homes and offices, observing as they use a specific website to try and achieve certain tasks. I’ve been researching what information is important to people as they explore the site, where they look for this information, the weaknesses of the site and the problems visitors have in achieving their tasks.

And even though I’ve done this kind of research many times, it still fascinates me how different people undertake the same online tasks in such different ways.

It is even more illuminating to discover how even well planned, well tended websites can still completely confound the typical visitor on a mission. You quickly discover that what is obvious to me may not be obvious to you (and vice versa).

Often I work with survey data, web analytics data and online search trends, trying to figure out what it was that the visitor was up to. But when you’re sitting in the home of a real potential customer, the realities of the problems people experience as they use a site suddenly become all to clear.

Suddenly you see how the words on your navigation tabs just don’t mean the same thing to everyone and that in-text links have this Alice in Wonderland like ability to make people click, even in the middle of a task.

Research like this is a quick sanity check that allows you a privileged glimpse of your site through the eyes of your website visitor.

You can do this yourself

So here’s a recipe for a brain tingling, eye opening research activity that will change the way you see your website forever. Just be warned - if you thought your website was perfect, you’re in for a rude awakening.

1) Identify some key aspects of your website you’d like to explore with visitors and think of some realistic tasks that relate to those aspects of the site. Think of a pretty open task (like choose a holiday that appeals to you and gather all the information you need to book it on this site).You may also want to a few very specific tasks that push people towards searching for specific facts (find out about hiring a wheelchair, or whether you can bring your dog for example). Finally, pin down a small handful of wrap-up questions you’d like to learn from people that use your site.

2) Find five people who are unfamiliar with your website. You can use five random people, however in my experience, its really worth putting the effort in to find five people that represent different segments of your web visitors. For example a trade contact, a family booker, an international customer etc. There is no point doing this with 20, 50, 100 people – five is enough for your reality check.

3) Arrange one to one sessions of up to an hour with these five people (you’ll be best to spread it over more than one day if you’re conducting the research alone). Decide whether to visit people at their home/work or in a neutral place with reliable web access and be prepared to compensate people for their time.

4) Dig out a web cam, note pad and if you have one, a voice recorder. It gets tricky trying to simultaneously listen, note what people say and check what they look at on screen, so a web cam lets you review the session afterwards (just make sure it points at the screen!)

5) Run your research session, ensuring that you do not pressure your test subjects by appearing personally invested. You’ll need to ask your participant to narrate what they’re thinking, what they’re looking for, how they’re responding to the site. That means no commenting, correcting, tutting or pointing out the obvious. If people get so lost and confused that the research is breaking down, be flexible enough to prompt them in a new direction – but the point is there is no right answer. Don’t be tempted to point out where in the site they should be looking – spend your effort trying to really see what they’re doing and hear what they’re saying.

6) Get your notes written up quickly after the session – if you’re doing five they’ll soon get confused in your mind. I like to make little pen portraits and capture information about characteristics and emotional responses, not just what they did. After all, this is qualitative research, not simply technical user testing.

7) Now the fun starts! You’ll probably have enough illumination to keep you glowing for weeks. Don’t put your notes away and think job well done – the difficult job starts here. Look at what you have discovered and start thinking of them in terms of short term quick fixes and medium to long term strategies.

Keep your five people in mind when making future decisions about your site – because you’ll know for a fact that other people don’t see things the same as you do.

I’ve noticed that when you mention the name Tripadvisor to accommodation providers, the vast majority give an involuntary shudder.

Due to some genuine bad experiences, there seems to be a widespread assumption amongst businesses that Tripadvisor reviews accentuate the negative.

Yet I am an avowed Tripadvisor user and I have only ever given two negative reviews. I have chosen accommodation I wouldn’t have otherwise heard of based on the glowing reviews of other users - and I’m sure I am not alone.

So is there more than my anecdotal experience to demonstrate that the user reviews on Tripadvisor are not bad news for good businesses? It just so happens there is!

I’ve done some quick research for this post by looking at the user ratings of 108 local Inverness area accommodation providers reviewed on Tripadvisor. Where available, I cross-referenced these user-generated scores with the Scottish industry quality assurance/star ratings for those same businesses, using other data sources.

What I found is that Tripadvisor reviewers are not only far more generous than you might think (the most common score is four out of five) – but fewer than 20% of accommodation providers are rated lower by visitors than their quality assurance rating would suggest.

Not only that, but it’s the little guys that fare best of all.

I sliced and diced the user ratings by accommodation type and discovered that it is actually the B&Bs of Inverness who score highest on Tripadvisor.

The trends are far more positive than negative

More than 50% of accommodation businesses I looked at are rated 4 out of five or above by Tripadvisor reviewers. The average (mean) is a little lower at 3.8, pulled down by the handful of very poor performers.

More than 50% of businesses also receive a rating from user reviewers that is higher than their Quality Assurance rating. Yes, the QA rating is looking at different and very specific factors, but it is a sign of a very positive visitor experience when a two star establishment can get a 4.0 Tripadvisor rating because it delivers that 2 star experience extremely well indeed.

Whether it is a reflection on the wisdom of crowds or wisdom of the QA assessors, fewer than 20% of accommodation providers are rated lower by visitors than their star rating would suggest. So who are those establishments with Tripadvisor ratings lower than their QA scores? They were almost exclusively 5 or 4 star B&Bs. Their visitors rated them either 0.5 points or 1 point lower than the QA rating and while I haven’t done a full text analysis of comments, I suspect that poor warmth of welcome/friendliness may have been a factor in some of these cases.

So to conclude - don’t bury your head in the sand. If you have a good product and good people, have faith that the majority of Tripadvisor reviewers are not out to get you. In fact, they’re likely to be pretty generous!

Let me know if you’d like to see more of this data and I’ll do a follow up post.

Ben Vinod, Chief Scientist at Sabre Holdings (the global powerhouse Travelocity and the Sabre Travel Network) today informed the tourism industry businesses attending Scotland’s Tourism Innovation Day that user generated content is now a fact of life.

He explained that 2008 is the year that user generated content has become mainstream to travel consumers. Mainstream to the extent that many consumers now demand and expect to consult the opinions and reviews of other users and are looking to businesses to be prepared to share that information.

What does that mean for tourism businesses? As we have already discussed on the blog (for example here and here) consumers are already having conversations about your business online. The challenge is how do you use that for competitive advantage?

Sabre Holdings itself is addressing this question on many levels, because they are determined maintain their position as undisputed leader in travel and transportation and recognise that a culture of innovation is critical to that.

Ben explains: “Innovation is not an event, it needs to be in your mind at all times - you need to out-think the competition”

Looking for keywords in Haystacks

Sabre is now intensively mining consumer generated content - included that generated in their community igougo - to spot the words and themes that people use. Afterall, the community aspect is critical to travel planning and user generated content and destination/product selection is critically connected. What is being said in those communities clearly has the power to convert into travel purchases.

So Sabre Holdings is using technology to mine this content. They then use what they find to inform their key word bidding optimisation strategy. By understanding which words people use and respond to, they can match this buy buying paid search on terms that will deliver a good return at the best price.

Their whole premise behind user generated content is that you want to intercept the potential customer well ahead of the purchase chain. Ben comments “What Tripadvisor does for Expedia is drive site traffic, where Expedia can then convert that into bookings. Consumer generated media has become expected”. Integrated effectively into the shopping process.

Ben’s key reminder to businesses large and small?

“The most important thing we have to do is remain competitive in the marketplace and the landscape is changing on a daily basis”.

Innovation, technology and the themes covered today at the Tourism Innovation Day are a critical, not an optional, part of that.

Scotland’s tourism industry is gathered here at Hampden Park stadium today to take part in a technology themed Tourism Innovation Day.

Tracking Tourism is both live blogging from and participating in the day and I’m hoping to share some of the insights as they emerge, while minimising typos!

The goal of the day is help tourism businesses discover, learn and apply new technology to boost productivity and improve visitor experience. As host Muriel Gray explain “technology is nothing to be afraid of at all. Today is about making sure you’re not baffled, but inspired. To show how technology can be relevant whether your business is large or small.”

Julie Franchetti of Scottish Enterprise talked this morning about the characteristics that innovative tourisms businesses share:

1) They understand their customers. They listen, they analyse, they then adapt based on what they learn from those customers.

2) They work collaboratively with other business in order to implement that innovation

3) By implenting on innovation, they actively do something about adapting and improving, thereby delivering on the promise of the key tourism assets.

She raised the critical point that the relationship between visitors and businesses has changed for ever. Successful businesses are using technology to run their business more profitably, win new customers, deliver improved experience and communicate with customers on an ongoing basis.

Julie was followed by Chief Scientist from Sabre Holdings, Dr Ben Vinod. Sabre are the people behind Travelocity, igougo, Lastminute.com and the Sabre Travel Network. Ben’s presentation warrents a post of its own - which will follow - but with Sabre processing 2 billion travel transactions a day and touching 80% of 2006 travellers, he knows what he’s talking about when it comes to travel technology.

Interestingly, Ben reckons 2008 is the year that consumer generated content has become mainstream, that consumers have reached a point when they are demanding businesses support their desire to see what other trustworthy users think.

As a participant in the feedback session I must earn my keep now and post again shortly!

Time to stop searching and start finding

Love ‘em or loathe ‘em, online user reviews are influential and they’re everywhere.

There’s no doubt that many tourism businesses realise the potential importance of user generated reviews. Increasingly, the evidence shows that travellers are influenced by the comments of others and most of tourism the businesses I speak to do want to manage and respond to this challenge.

But it can be an incredible struggle just to keep up with, yet alone act on, the information contained within these reviews. The sheer mass of information online means that many businesses either concentrate only on Tripadvisor, or give up on effective monitoring altogether.

For example, a survey conducted by Avalon Report showed over 90% of hoteliers think it is important to monitor reviews online, yet also found the majority of hotels monitor comments less than once every two weeks. Avalon suggest that since 87% monitor reviews manually by surfing site to site, “many of these hotel professionals appear overwhelmed by the scope of the issue, commenting they are lost in the prioritization of endless sites and searches.”

However, given the amount of effort that goes into capturing customer feedback in other aspects of the business, these freely given comments must surely have some value. Especially as unlike internally gathered comments, they are out there influencing the purchase decisions of others.

So how do tourism businesses turn online user reviews into useful research and meaningful development? I believe the answer is in tracking and monitoring online comments and reviews more effectively.

Monitoring more efficiently

There is so much potential information out there, that going site to site looking for it is simply too overwhelming. The answer is to stop surfing manually and start automating so the information comes to you.

Here are some tips how tourism businesses small and large can better grip on the online discussion that is taking place about them. Monitoring the data more effectively means you can then integrate what you find into any existing customer comment analysis process you may have. (See this previous post)

1. RSS (really simple syndication) is your friend

RSS brings your chosen web content to you through feeds as it is updated, instead of you having to visit individual sites. You can check your feedreader once a day and glance at what’s new, rather than trawl site to site, getting distracted on the way.

If you’re not already using RSS, I strongly recommend you give it a go - you’ll find you waste far less time online without missing out on the things you need to know.

Plus Tripadvisor, for example, providers feeds relating to specific properties, so you can monitor comments and respond.

Tripadvisor also produces owner feeds, which property owners can republish directly on their sites if they choose. This Travolution post explains how unedited user reviews have been welcomed by the businesses using them.

Additionally, most bloggers publish their posts as RSS feeds too (that’s what all the stuff at the top right of this blog page relates to), so you can keep an eye on key influencers in your market.

2. Set up free Google Alerts

Google alerts will email you with daily updates each time the specific terms, names and phrases of your choice are used. You can select if your alert is triggered from blogs, news, general web content etc and the frequency with which you require updating.

Personally, I find this a really handy tool and I have about 25 different alert terms running at any one time - including alerts that trigger when this blog or my name is mentioned online.

The downside is false positives, but your terms are easy to edit and amend so you can experiment to get the combination of alerts that best meet your needs.

3. Third party tools to track buzz, comments and online word of mouth

There are a number of free tools, such as the following, that let you monitor the key phases, company names or specific terms that matter to your business.

• Blogpulse’s Trend Search tracks buzz over time for certain key words, phrases or links
• Blogpulse’s Conversation Tracker assembles a snapshot of blog conversations

You can also find more tools at this Smashing Magazine post on Web 2.0 buzz monitoring.

And of course, there are also the paid tools you can also buy in to monitor and aggregate your online reviews and comments.

I’m not in a position to recommend specific paid tools as I have always found the freely available and open source tools meet my needs just fine - but I appreciate there are contexts in which paid tools fit the bill. So do feel free to tell me if you have a paid solution you couldn’t live without (no direct selling though please).

4. Build your own custom solution

For the larger business, or the somewhat technically minded, it is surprisingly easy to build yourself an in house, customer system to monitor want you want and format data how you need it.

Yahoo Pipes is an interactive feed aggregator and manipulator. Using Pipes, you can create and combine feeds to make them more powerful, useful and relevant. This Lifehacker post shows you how.

On a larger scale, if you’re running your own servers and dealing with really high volumes of online comments and conversations, I’d suggest checking out the BuzzMonitor developed by the World Bank.

As Pierre Guillaume Wielezynski of the World Bank explains:

“Like many organizations, we started listening to blogs and other forms of social media by subscribing to a blog search engine RSS feed but quickly understood it was not enough. The World Bank is a global institution and we needed to listen in multiple languages, across multiple platforms. We needed something that would aggregate all this content, help us make sense of it and allow us to collaborate around it. At the time, no solution (either commercial or open source) met those requirements so we decided to build our own.”

BuzzMonitor is an open source application that “listens in” to what people are saying across blogs and other sites in order to help the organisation understand and engage in social media. It is available as packaged, open source application. While it was developed for Linux-compatible platforms, it should be possible to install it on a Windows system, as well. (So time to call your techies!)

Moving from searching to researching

So from tracking a few terms through Google Alerts, to the monitoring the whole world from your own server - there are some great tools out there to help you automate the collection of online user generated content, comments and word of mouth.

Instead of wasting your time gathering information manually, automating the process will leave you in a position where you can start constructively responding to what you hear. That way you can get past being overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of online noise, and start reacting quickly and strategically as required.

Do you find this process overwhelming? Are you using tools I haven’t mentioned here? Do let me know!

When you’re low on fuel, its even more important you take the best possible route to your destination. Not only do you need a map, but you need a map with the fuel stations clearly marked.

In business, research is that map.

When economic storm clouds gather, businesses and organisations naturally to look to cut back on their spending. And research, like advertising, is often one of those areas that is first to be cut back.

Yet I’d argue that research can be a key to businesses survival and growth, especially in the toughest economic times. But there is little room for waste and frivolous spending. When recession looms – and the debate out there as discussed in this great post suggests it may well do - the focus needs to be on getting the biggest possible business bang for your research buck.

The research balancing act

Research is always a compromise - a fine balancing act between cost, speed, accuracy and relevance.

There is a reason researchers don’t census the whole population every single time they need a question answered. It would cost a fortune, it would take forever and the usefulness of the results to the business wouldn’t be so much greater than if they’d just asked some of the people.

Similarly, valuable insight rarely comes free. The accuracy, trustworthiness, reliability and most importantly actionability of information tends to come with a proportionate price tag, whether you are conducting research in house or bringing in outside experts.

But here are five tips that will help ensure your research stays as lean as it is effective.

So how do you get more results from less research spending?

1) Ditch the duplicated efforts

There is a tendency in larger organisations for different teams and project groups to commission their own new research, when the answers already sit in work done by different teams and departments. Existing research, if read with an open mind, can be usefully applied to new questions.

Instead of spending on overlapping research, invest in formally pooling what you already have within the organisation and start using what you already paid for. It may take a little effort to make the research available in accessible, easy to digest chunks - but in a larger organisation, those efforts will soon pay for themselves.

Doing more with the research you have also has the benefit of reducing participation fatigue amongst those key contacts being asked their opinion for the umpteenth time!

2) Work with the data you already have

Be creative. Half eaten lunch portions, sewage outflow, postcodes, website data, customer testimonials/complaints, stock usage rates, footfall and basic business data can all be used to reap actionable insight. Think about all the contact points that occur in your business and look for the associated evidence trails. Using data you already have generally has immediacy, low costs and high relevance. Working with it smartly can also make it accurate and actionable.

3) Has someone else already found the answer?

Before you commission research or set a staff member to undertake a project, it is also worth thinking about whether the answers you need already exist externally.

Yes the Internet is full of data, some of it useful, much of it wrong. So when using easily accessible, free information online information, have your quality control filters set to extra high. There are some free sources I do use regularly - National Statistics, Google Trends and ComScore’s public releases to name a few. But I always pay close attention to accuracy, timeliness and proximity to the data source (meaning whether the data is a third hand repetition/distortion, or comes direct from the researchers themselves).

Quality research generally costs money. However, purchasing a relevant, recent analyst’s report, such as those produced by PhoCusWright, will generally be more cost effective than undertaking the same research yourself. (As long as it addresses your key questions).

You may also find that your local council, chamber of commerce or development agency may already have commissioned research in the field you are interested in. Some smart web searching is likely to reveal this, even if it doesn’t show you the findings. It then does no harm to call and find out if you can see this research - they may even have an internal library you can visit.

These organisations also more likely to subscribe to longitudinal research, like long term footfall studies and market trends. Even if they can’t give you direct access to the research, there may be a knowledgeable contact willing to discuss the findings with you.

4) Consider teaming up with others when commissioning research

The DIY research route is not always the best approach and there are certainly times when bringing in the experts will deliver you more accurate, useful insight in a shorter timeframe.

One option to reduce costs of commissioned research is to team up with one or more non-competitive parties. With jointly commissioned research, you can agree to share the findings openly amongst all parties or pre-agree who will have access to what findings. (Just bare in mind overcomplicating things can erode the cost savings of sharing).

5) Will it make your roadmap clearer?

Keep your recession busting research very goal and strategy focussed.

The “so what?” factor matters more than ever when times are tough and “it’d be nice to know” has to be replaced with business critical questions.

Think of it as though your business road map is made up of Google Earth pictures – and the resolution of some of those images is pretty poor. In times of potential recession, your research needs to be sharpening those images until the resolution is acceptable enough for you to more clearly see the dangers and opportunities en route. And then you need to act swiftly and decisively based on what you see.

No need to ditch the research completely

Whether or not we do see conditions of economic recession, there are already plenty of businesses who are limiting their spending where they can.

I hope these tips show that rather than throwing the research road map out of the window completely when times get tough, there are instead ways to make it work far harder at delivering tangible business results.

What do you think? Are conditions worsening and is research on your list of things to cut?

See that customer? The one who’s simultaneously retreating out the door and avoiding all eye contact? What is the one question you’d really like to ask them?

What question would deliver maximum illumination, for minimum breath wastage - and help you fix any problem?

A smarty-pants might declare “why, its “Why?” of course!” And there are those who’d make a strong case for “How?”

Yet while “why?” may indeed be the best question in the universe, as a conversation opener it’s frankly a little scary.

Believe me, just hollering “Why?” at that retreating customer is going to make them run even faster. (And “How dare you?” won’t help much either).

It seems the perfect question clearly needs a little refinement before taking its place at the core of a business.

Perfect question(s) in action

Advocates of the Net Promoter Score would argue that the perfect business question is: “Would you recommend us to a friend or colleague?”

With this information obtained, the Net Promoter Score is then calculated as follows:

% of Promoters - % of Detractors = Net Promoter Score

While this is a very useful KPI, I think the challenge with the Net Promoter Score is knowing what to do next.

In my view the perfect question would help reveal a bit more of that “so what?” factor. In reality, that suggests a set of questions, rather than just the one.

Jim Sterne of Target Marketing and president of the Web Analytics Association talks about the perfect website survey, which asks just three questions:

1. Why did you visit this website today?
2. Did you achieve what you came for?
3. If not, why not?

This wonderfully simple survey establishes three important pieces of information. Specifically:

Customer Intent + Experience Outcome + Context

From this trifecta of data, a business has enough basic information to understand not only if there is a problem, but also the nature of the problem and whether action is necessary or appropriate. Without any one of the three pieces of data, the wrong conclusion could easily be drawn. (After all, an unsuccessful outcome doesn’t necessarily mean a problem).

The three questions identified in Jim’s survey are also surprisingly adaptable. It doesn’t take much to tweak them to suit a tourism business or destination, for example by asking:

1. Why did you visit XX on this occasion?
2. Did the visit meet your expectations?
3. If not, why not?

Of course, the key questions for you business may not be the same as those proposed by Jim. But I think these examples do give a view of how asking the right question can deliver data that can power business decisions.

But, while there may not be single perfect question, more like a little medley - don’t be tempted to overdo it. Two or three perfect questions that deliver maximum illumination, for minimum breath wastage beat a customer interrogation anytime.

If you’re going to ask great questions, don’t try and answer them too

A final tip - there is no point in asking great questions if you’re not going to listen to the answers. The answer to the perfect question is always a mystery until its uttered.

That means not forcing people to choose from a small selection of what you think their answer will be.

For example:

“There was a scorpion in the bathroom”
“My towels smelled of pizza”
“My ex was at the adjoining table”

Those are rarely options offered on tick box surveys!

For answers to the most critical questions to your business, ditch the tick boxes and let people actually tell you in their own words.

This adds to the time you’ll spend analysing the data - but it will give you answers you can actually use to make decisions.

Does this ring true for you?

Update, added 8th March - you might also be interested in this post by Avinash Kaushik, about 4Q, a new permission based on-exit survey that provides an easy to deploy framework to answer 4 questions that no website owner can live without.  Readers of this article may find those questions somewhat familiar!

More bums on seats in Tahoe

I’m afraid I can’t resist highlighting this fantastic example of working with the data sources that you have.

The Tahoe Daily Tribune reports how clued-up officials at the South Tahoe Public Utility District can get a good sense of the number of tourists in their coverage area by literally measuring their outputs.

Yup, they’re making a pretty good estimate of month on month visitor levels by essentially measuring “the sewage flow” that results from the area’s toilets getting flushed.

Above normal volumes of flushing presumably indicates either a swathe of stomach bugs, or more visitor bottoms on toilet seats. And they can cross reference with water use to determine that it is the latter!

The Tahoe Daily Tribune says that officials have noted that: “While the numbers paint a dismal portrait of travel to the South Shore for December, increased sewage flows followed early January storms that dropped feet of snow and spurred travel to the region.

Sewage flows from Jan. 12 and 13, the weekend after the series of storms, jumped above 4 million gallons per day, besting each daily sewage flow seen during the first three weeks in December.”

The article goes on to report that the “information correlates with anecdotal evidence from South Shore business organizations” but that “the Visitors Authority uses a more traditional approach when analyzing the number of people in town by looking at the revenue generated by the transient occupancy tax.”

I love that the smart thinking officials at the South Tahoe Public Utility District understand their data and its implications for what it is - quantifiable evidence of people and their associated behaviours.

And even those hard to measure part-day trippers need the loo - making me think that this is a measurement with potential!

Think I’ve gone too easy on the puns? I just have too much respect for the data! But read this great post from the Lake Tahoe Real Estate blog about the same story which crams in every pun and joke that I’ve resisted making - and a whole lot more.

Any other clever destinations out there that are counting their visitors’ outputs?

Come on, tell us, we won’t laugh!