Scientific Ink

Author: Dunrie

  • Online Consumer Survey Comparison: Survata vs. Google Consumer Surveys

    I just completed some go-to-market research for a scientifically-oriented business-to-consumer company. In this research, one of my tasks was to assess consumer sentiment and project possible customer loyalty for a new product launch. Things like customer-lifetime-value, ecommerce conversion rate, and loyalty would be wonderful to have from our competitors, but these KPIs are closely-guarded secrets.

    While I loved spy novels as a teen, I am not up for corporate espionage. I do not need to break into competitor website analytics to uncover insights into consumer behavior. I asked consumers about their buying habits and loyalty directly, online.

    My research on online consumer surveys turned up two options – Survata and Google Consumer Surveys. I believe I had heard of Google Consumer Surveys and then found Survata by searching for competitors of Google in the consumer survey space.

    Similarities

    Both show a short survey to give a reader access to gated content. Both offer a handful of questions for a buck or two a completed survey. Both help publishers monetize their visitors. Both offer geographic, age, and gender targeting, which happens, I imagine based on the target demographic of the content on the gated sites.

    Both survey engines offer visualization help to understand your survey answers, including visualization of subsets within your answers. Both survey engines provide some sense of statistical significance of any trends in the data. Both require prepayment to run the survey.

    Differences

    Qualifying Question – Advantage Survata

    When I started earlier this summer, Google Consumer Surveys did not offer the chance to have a qualifying question. So if the website visitor met your demographic criteria (say a certain age, your specified gender, maybe your region of interest) they answered your surveys. If you wanted males under the age of 45, great. If you wanted males under the age of 45 with small dogs, not so great.

    Since then, Google has added a qualifying question option. The survey client (me in this case) only pays for respondents who answer the qualifying question correctly (e.g. people who answer yes to having a small dog).

    Google’s restriction is they need the qualifying question passed at a minimum amount, otherwise they bounce the survey back to you. Apparently, my qualifying question was too stringent. Google kept my payment for the survey and issued me a coupon in lieu of a refund. However, since I don’t want people who don’t meet my criteria to answer my survey, I’m a little stuck as to how to use the coupon.I would have preferred a full refund, so I can get my questions answered at Survata! [edited 10/22 – Google issued me a refund for the incomplete survey].

    As far as I can tell, Survata does not have a minimum response goal for the qualifying question. In fact, I used the same qualifying question for both the Survata and the Google Consumer Survey so I anticipate its success rate was similar in both environments. Survata did not bounce my survey.

    Cost – Advantage Survata

    The two survey engines are both inexpensive, but Survata is less expensive. For a 5-question survey, I paid about $1/response for US respondents from Survata. The qualifying question was not included in the question count. Google Consumer Surveys includes the qualifying question in the count, and I paid about $2/response for US respondents for 4 questions after the qualifier.

    Support – Advantage Survata

    I had a great experience with Survata. Prior to each survey launch, I got feedback on my questions and setup from a survey analyst. The analyst edited my survey, and I got to see the before and after version and approve it before launch. My analyst was available to me via email, in my survey dashboard, and via IM throughout the process. I also had a follow up call so that I could understand the survey results and get a quick orientation to their visualization engine when the survey was complete. I ran a handful of surveys and was able to work with the same analyst rather than starting anew each time.

    Excerpt from Survata Analyst review screen
    Survata – Analyst review before and after

    Google Consumer Surveys did a review of my questions ahead of launch as well, but the experience was less caring. I got a basic email detailing what was wrong with my survey and telling me what to do to fix it.

    Screenshot of email from Google
    Google Consumer Survey edit request email.

    Survata’s help was more helpful – they did the work for me and asked for my approval. Google made me their admin.

    Data/Results Visualization – no Advantage

    I liked the user interface, question previews, and results analysis engines for both survey vendors.

    Publisher Network – Advantage Google?

    I imagine with Google’s reach and reputation, Survata has stiff competition. I have not encountered a Survata survey on a website. I did see my first Google survey yesterday, on the Christian Science Monitor website. In case it’s not obvious, this is not my survey, though it is relevant to my home state, Michigan.

     

    Screenshot of survey on a news website.
    Google Consumer Survey encountered on the Christian Science Monitor website.

    I prefer Survata

    The survey engine (user interface, options, everything) for both Survata and for Google Consumer Surveys changed during my project. So, this review is a snapshot of an evolving set of features. Right now Survata has a strong edge in customer service. I had a good relationship with my survey analyst and a positive experience with the company. My experience with Google was more at arm’s length (only email, always from someone new) and ultimately unsatisfying due to their rejection of my survey after taking my money. [edited 10/22 – Google issued me a refund for the incomplete survey].

    Short version: I strongly preferred my interactions with and the results I got from Survata.

  • An introvert’s social reserve – a muscle or a well?

    In March I changed my work setting. I left my job of almost seven years and moved to independent marketing consulting and writing. Although I have my share of meetings at client sites and in coffee shops, I typically work and write in my home office.

    What I feared

    I’m an introvert. I’m restored by quiet and work productively alone. That means I should like this situation, and I do. Yet, I was worried I might get isolated or isolate myself. The work I do requires me to reach out to others, for expertise, for feedback, for work, so I haven’t gone underground, it’s not possible.

    I was worried I’d “go native” with the cats, get even more quiet and watchful. While that’s kind of a joke, I did think that being social was like a muscle. If I didn’t exercise it or keep in practice, I would drop back to previous levels of social awkwardness. In the last few months, I have had my usual share of awkward moments, but I don’t know if it is more or less than before. Probably about the same.

    When I left my position, I thought I’d miss my team–I do miss them individually and as a group. I have to make a team or gather input from people less officially connected to my fate and my projects. It is a little more conscious and less spontaneous now, but others are still available. While I’m mostly on my own during the day, I’m hardly solo. Friends, collaborators, and mentors are as close as a phone call, an email, or a drive across town to a lunch date.

    What surprised me

    I thought I loved our open, collaborative workspace. Yet, I find working in a quiet office has increased my feeling of well-being. When I worked in a leadership position in our open office, I felt I was on-stage and yearned for privacy and quiet in my off-hours. I found myself procrastinating returning personal phone calls on weekends and weeknights. I sometimes felt overwhelmed by the need to be social, engaging, upbeat.

    I am finding more social energy now that my need for quiet and privacy are better met. So my social reserve is more like a well, it needs time to replenish, and it is less like a muscle that needs to be kept in shape.

    Next Steps

    Clients and colleagues have offered me drop-in space at their offices, and Ann Arbor offers a great coworking space, the Workantile. So I have options if I need to work near others. Hasn’t happened yet, but it is nice to have a choice.

  • Great wrapping (packaging) extends the gift

    I can be a minimalist. There’s almost nothing I like better than organizing things for disposal. I like to give away books (to friends, to the library); I like to give away clothing I haven’t worn for a while. I love to reuse cardboard boxes that come in the mail – to organize items for travel, to use for a gift box – and then to recycle them. I resent “wasting” money on gift packaging, preferring to reuse what I’ve received. I love using leftover yarn as ribbon and I have used newspaper once or twice to wrap a gift even recently. Yet there is some packaging that I cannot bring myself to reuse or recycle.

    It’s well-designed and carries sweet memories, and I can’t bear to part with it, even though I detest clutter.

    I cannot part with….

    Tiffany Boxes

    Over the years, I’ve received a few Tiffany gifts. Great-Aunt Jane and Great-Uncle Chuck gave us crystal candleholders for our wedding, and I’ve thought of them and recalled our wedding day each time we use them. More recently, Delta Airlines has been giving Tiffany Gift Cards as an option for their Diamond Medallion members as a year-end perk. Smart choice: For the frequent business traveler, give the wife something sparkly to distract her from your absence.

    Tiffany packages everything as a gift — the gift card has its flat box and white ribbon and then the item it purchases gets its own box and ribbon. Each step in the chain brings more white-ribbon-wrapped Robin’s egg blue boxes, a series of gift experiences. The boxes are lovely and I enjoy the whole experience, even though the boxes (especially the ones for the gift cards) become immediately useless. Reusing them seems out of the question. It would be such a let down – to receive something that’s not Tiffany in a Tiffany box! Yet, I have a difficult time tossing them. So they pile up, and I try to use them for special items, like the puff of our sweet cat Floyd‘s fur I found behind the couch, years after he passed away.

    Stella & Dot Boxes

    When you go to a Stella and Dot party (my neighbor had one, a colleague of mine at work had another), you can order jewelry and it will be delivered to your home. Like Tiffany, each item is packaged as a gift, and the items I’ve purchased have been for me, so a couple of gift boxes hang around after I start wearing the jewelry. The boxes are colorful and printed with nice patterns, and they have a couple of steps to open them (a paper case that slips off before you can open the box).

    The Stella and Dot boxes sat around and I could not reuse them (again, it would be strange to give it without Stella and Dot inside). Eventually, I summoned the courage to pull them apart and recycle them. It took a while.

    The box for Gerla Chocolates

    In Turin, Gerla makes wonderful hazelnut-chocolates (gianduiotti) that Dave brings back from his trips to Italy. Similar to the Delta gift of a Tiffany gift card, I think this tradition started through the canny wisdom of his distributor colleague there – give a gift to keep the wife amused while the husband is in Italy. The Gerla boxes are a strange shape: kind of semi-rounded with squared edges. And I’ve taken to reusing them for knitting supply storage (needles, notions) because, again, I simply cannot toss them.

    Wrapping for Gifts from Japan

    The wrapping pinnacle is Japanese packaging – special bottles of sake and special cakes have made it home from Japan tucked in Dave’s luggage. Each item is perfectly wrapped in many layers. Typically a printed cloth or paper surrounds a lightweight perfectly fitted blonde-wood box surrounding another layer of insulation (or custom cut wood inserts) surrounding the present. Because neither we nor most of our gift recipients read Japanese, these items are easier to reuse. I use the paper or the cloth to line drawers or shelves and the boxes get repurposed for Christmas gift boxes.

    Great Wrapping extends the Gift

    When I encounter the wrapping, a decorative liner underneath my cosmetics in their drawer, knitting needles stuffed into a Gerla box, special treasures safely tucked inside Robin’s egg blue boxes, I remember the gift, the giver, and re-experience a positive feeling about the brand. Well done, Tiffany, Stella and Dot, and Gerla designers for attractive packaging that makes the gift last.

  • Choose well, and choose what you chose again

    I officiated at the wedding of friends earlier this month. The bride and groom wrote their own vows and the ceremony, and they invited me to share some thoughts about love and marriage in the middle. What follows is a paraphrase of what I said, with more of my story and less about the bride and groom than was in their ceremony on their day.

    After choosing a great partner, our next choice is to choose the marriage, over and over again.

    The big events are easy: the right choice is obvious. For instance, when Dave had an opportunity to move to England for work, I took a year of detached study from graduate school and went with him. When I worried about not being with my dad ahead of an operation, Dave said, “why don’t you just go?” So I did.

    A lifelong marriage contains a few big events and hundreds of thousands of small moments: in person, on the phone, in email, via text…In those moments, we have a choice of how to respond to what happens to us and between us.

    The good news is that we don’t have to choose perfectly, enough good choices make a marriage resilient.

    My blessing for my friends was that they continue to choose each other, that they have the experience Wendell Berry articulates in this poem:

    The Wild Rose

    Sometimes hidden from me
    in daily custom and in trust,
    so that I live by you unaware
    as by the beating of my heart,

    suddenly you flare in my sight,
    a wild rose blooming at the edge
    of thicket, grace and light
    where yesterday was only shade,

    and once more I am blessed, choosing
    again what I chose before.

    “The Wild Rose” is available in Entries as well as in The Collected Poems of Wendell Berry, 1957-1982.

  • Holiday Marketing Messages Can Go Awry

    My inbox is getting full of marketing messages about Father’s Day, and I don’t like it.

    OpenTable would like to help me make reservations at a local restaurant for Father’s Day brunch. Two Guys Bow Ties might ensure he’s snappily dressed for the occasion. Princeton U-Store wants me not to forget the college-themed gift, ThinkGeek offers up some nerd fun, and LocalHarvest and Vosges wonder if I should get my dad some yummies.

    Topical messaging is good. Bothering me is bad.

    While I am all for fatherhood and dads, especially my own Dad, all of the Father’s Day messaging rubs me the wrong way. I am not a parent and my Dad has been dead about 16 years (wow…longer than I thought).

    Dear Brand I choose to follow, why do you want to remind me of my loss? Not a good strategy for you.

    If there were a holiday opt-out in email marketing, Father’s Day would top my opt-out list. I imagine I’m not alone, folks with recent losses or who are facing infertility may be even more sensitive than I am.

    Until I can opt-out of holidays that poke me, I might set up an email filter to avoid having these little reminders interrupt what is otherwise a fine day.

  • Pretty and Nice

    We rented a canal boat in France in May with friends. We piloted it ourselves and moved between small towns on the Saône, the Seille, and the Canal du Centre in Burgundy. We had a great vacation, enjoying the sights, the countryside, the cheese, and of course the wine of France.

    Five of the six of us had taken French in high school, one much longer, and so we got by in French much of the time. Additionally, the English of many folks in the hospitality industry was much better than our French, so we switched often. For instance, we conversed easily with the staff at the port where we picked up and dropped off the boat, the mechanic who came to help us when we had battery trouble, people in restaurants, and the staff at the capitaineries where we payed to moor the boat, hook up to shore power, and take on potable water.

    Some in the group enjoyed using their French, while others of us felt overwhelmed. My joke is that I don’t really like speaking in English, and speaking in French is even more intimidating! Still, we enjoyed the little pleasantries, such as when we bought our pain au chocolat in the morning, we chatted amicably in French with the vendor. We said we were happy to have the pastries because we were hungry, to which he replied “c’est une bonne maladie!” A good problem, especially in France. Before we left, he wished us a pleasant journey, a great day, and a few other nice things. It was difficult to match the ardent good wishes and blessings we received!

    M. Malaprop strikes!

    As you might expect, we managed a few hum-dingers with our half-remembered French. We had a wonderful time at the tasting room of Domain Mestre Père et Fils in Santenay. It took us a lot longer than we expected to traverse the eleven locks from the Saône up to the wine country on the Canal du Centre. The locks make canal travel slow-going, and our trip was further slowed when we got stuck in one of the automatic locks. Its doors closed after the first boat exited and before we were able to leave, so we had to wait for the remote lock-keeper to drive up and free us. We became fast friends with the lock-keeper and saw him on several of the locks going up the Canal and then going back down the next day.

    By the time we got to Santenay, we were running up against the end of the day. We had called ahead, and although we were initially told they closed at 6PM (or 18 hours), we switched to English with someone else on staff who offered to give us a wine tasting if we arrived before 6PM. We got to Santenay a little after 5PM, and although it was a short walk from our mooring on the Canal du Centre to the center of town and the tasting room, it likely wasn’t much before 6 when we arrived at the tasting room.

    We had a wonderful tasting, we enjoyed the wine, learned a lot, spoke in both English and French, and picked up some bottles for later in our trip. We would have bought more if we could take it home easily. At the end of our tasting, after we were shown their wine cave with stacks and stacks of bottles below the tasting room, we thanked our host in French. Instead of saying, it’s so nice (“c’est très gentil”) one of us said it’s so pretty (“c’est très joli”) – they actually sound more similar in French, although they are not homophones. We corrected ourselves immediately. Our host, without skipping a beat, replied, in French, that he was both pretty and nice. That describes our experience perfectly – pretty and nice, and good humored.

    If you’d like to travel by boat on the Saône, Seille, and Canal du Centre, we had a great time with le boat!