Technology Archives - InsideHeads

Take Note

Do you have notes everywhere? Sticky notes? Napkin scribbles? Thoughts to remember? It’s OK. Really.

If you’re one of those people who writes notes by hand, technology is here to help. You can continue to jot down ideas that are then digitized into typed, searchable form.

Moleskin & Neo Smartpen use their own special pen and paper to digitize your handwritten notes.

Wacom Smartpad and Bamboo Slate digitize your writing and doodles using a highly sensitive tablet on which any kind of paper or pen can be used.

Livescribe uses a special pen to digitize both your vocalized and handwritten notes.

Evernote and One Note are platforms that can convert written words inside to text, which covers everything from written notes to typed documents to wine labels – whatever printed items you want to easily recall at a future time.

How do you decide which tools, if any, to buy?

More Tips & Joy

Who Provides the Best Marketing Research Platforms?

When conducting marketing research online, it’s important to understand and implement the technology required for your target market. So who do you tap for the best research platforms: a company who knows technology, or a company who knows research?

Let’s look closer at what makes the best online marketing research platforms successful:

Mobile Friendly

Today, online research studies need to be mobile responsive, while also accommodating older technology (some people still use desktop computers, it’s true.) While reported estimates vary, it’s safe to say that most of your online survey respondents will see it first on a smartphone.

Seamless Access

Platforms also need to be easy for all possible respondents to understand and use. With so much invested in recruiting, why send prospects to a survey that might not work? The best data collection, whether quantitative (surveys) or qualitative (online focus groups & IDIs), comes from research platforms that work seamlessly on any device, O/S, or browser.

Affordable

If you have to blow your entire budget on technology, we’ll just call that misdirected funds. The most expensive technology comes from fat tech firms who hang their hat on staying relevant and being “agile”. The best technology comes from companies who understand the market and custom design robust platforms with stable, time-tested code that eliminates the need for expensive user support. Tools like these are the secret weapons of seasoned researchers.

For your next online marketing research study, consider a company that understands technology and research. InsideHeads conducts marketing research and designs & develops the best marketing research platforms to do it correctly. From programming to presentations, InsideHeads has been conducting successful online marketing research studies since 1998.

Give us a call, you’ll like what you hear. +1(877)-IN-HEADS

More Tips

Online Chat Focus Groups, Limiting?

(Originally published June, 2015)

I’ve heard more than one respected professional tell me that online chat focus groups do not allow for a significant depth of response and that respondents provide short, top of mind answers of limited value.

With thousands of notches on our online focus group belt, we can soundly report that participants provide as much detail and depth as requested. The critcal elements of success lie with a skilled interviewer and a well designed discussion guide.

When the moderator asks a question to a group responding only via text, some respondents will answer right away, then follow that up with detail in a separate comment, while others will type the whole answer before hitting send. However they answer, it is surprisingly intuitive to follow the collective conversation as it scrolls on the screen, and even easier on the back-end to pull what you need from the transcripts.

When pulling key quotes for your report, simply combine any “choppy” answers from a single respondent so you have the full picture of what the participant actually conveyed.

For example, a discussion about a new plastic storage container prompted a multitude of separate responses from a single participant over the course of several minutes. When pulled together, the brevity builds and begins to tell the full story:

“The containers are great… the attached lids… we have an office full of the old lids, no bottoms… the new containers stack well… labels don’t fall off… [I use the new containers for] storing everything here and at home that fits… [before I discovered these containers] I struggled with cardboard boxes we assembled ourselves… we can’t use the cardboard for long term storage… falls apart.”

-Kim, 35, male, IL

If you’re curious what a synchronous online focus group via text is like, look no further than this recorded InsideHeads session here.