Involve while you evolve

Editor’s note: Kristin Luck
is president
of Decipher Inc., a Fresno, Calif., research firm.

As a planet, we’ve become people on the move - with millions connecting on-the-fly through mobile devices ranging from smartphones to tablets. In fact, 2011 is widely being hailed as “The Year of the Tablet” and Forrester Research predicts that this year, tablet sales in the U.S. will double and that by 2015, nearly a quarter of all personal computing devices will be a tablet.

This rapidly changing section of the consumer market has impacted market researchers as mobile research technologies and methods must be developed at nearly the same speed as new mobile devices. This presents several challenges to us as market researchers:

  • How can we use technology to our advantage to connect, engage and deliver actionable results in the mobile universe?
  • How do we develop best practices for mobile research design and implementation?
  • What issues do we need to be aware of as we embrace new mobile platforms and dive into technology development?

Addressing these issues from a research perspective means we have to first understand what mobile marketing is and how it’s changing the way marketers communicate with consumers.

Met on their own turf

Mobile devices create an expectation for nomadic access to everything and anything we may want or need. The increased demand to be met on the move has changed the face of communication and is swiftly changing the face of market research. Respondents expect to be met on their own turf - through their mobile phone or device.

With the advent of more robust mobile devices such as the iPad, which sold more than three million units in its first 80 days on market, reaching people wherever they are has become even more possible and more important.

IPad aside, the International Telecommunication Union recently reported there were five billion mobile subscribers worldwide at the end of 2010. The ubiquity of mobile phones, their presence in the daily lives of users, advances in the wireless networks and improved handset technology all are reasons that marketers are becoming hooked on the idea of mobile marketing. In fact, mobile marketing is one of the fastest growth areas in media adoption.

Mobile marketing and advertising will grow almost tenfold over the next five years, from $1.5 billion to $11.5 billion, according to eMarketer. In addition, many of the top social networking sites have demonstrated consistent rapid growth in their global user bases. Facebook.com, the global leader among social networking sites, now has more than 600 million active users, and 30 percent of those users are accessing the site through their mobile devices. Those who access the site from a mobile device are twice as active as those who do not. This is a key indicator in the power of mobile in capturing an active audience.

Here to stay

Mobile marketing refers to marketing campaigns delivered via text messaging (SMS), multimedia messaging (MMS) or wireless application protocol (WAP or what most of us think of as mobile Web browsing). Mobile marketing can also be delivered via keywords or shortcodes. (For example, “Text DEC [keyword] to 6622 [shortcode].” If you’ve ever been to a professional sports game you’ve likely seen an example of this on the JumboTron).

Even if you’re not receiving marketing communications on your cell phone (yet!), you can be assured that mobile marketing is here to stay. More than 40 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers say they have been exposed to one or more forms of advertising/marketing on their cell phone in the past 30 days. Not convinced? Ninety percent of Americans over the age of 13 own a mobile phone. There are 66 million smartphone users in the United States. Sixty percent of U.S. marketers are engaged in mobile marketing. Forty-five percent of major U.S. brands are experimenting with mobile campaigns and 40 percent of the 400 billion annual global text messages are commercial. (Source: eMarketer)

Continue to struggle

What does this all mean for us as researchers? As an industry we continue to struggle with decreases in respondent cooperation rates. Quality concerns plague us and although sample suppliers have taken the brunt of the blame, there’s no question that survey design and length present major barriers to respondent retention and participation.

In addition, respondents are using smartphones more frequently than ever to access online content. In a recent look at the tens of thousands of respondents that flow through our surveys at Decipher in a given month, close to 30 percent of respondents were attempting to access through a mobile device. As survey-takers become more active on their mobile devices, providing long, involved surveys in a strictly online environment may quickly begin to impact respondent engagement.

Thus, research technologies must evolve. Our challenge is to not only keep respondents engaged but to connect with them using relevant communication modes!

Ultimate relationship tool

Mobile devices and social networking sites (society’s current word-of-mouth marketing) have the potential of being the ultimate relationship tool: these modes are personal, deliver a one-to-one communication with mass-market efficiencies and are capable of distributing timely messages.

With the explosion of online and mobile media and entertainment options, static online surveys struggle to be effective at engaging respondents. New tools and data collection techniques are evolving to more effectively connect with respondents via interactive surveys, mobile surveys and social networking sites.

Mobile is without a doubt the fastest-growing area of media adoption. Mobile offers us a direct connection (one-to-one!) with respondents and gives us exposure to the growing number of individuals who no longer have a landline. More than 90 percent of mobile devices are now mobile Internet-ready and 60 percent of smartphone users access the Web at least one time a day. Despite the perception that mobile phones can only be used for one- or two-question surveys, marketers today are conducting research via mobile devices for all types of research: event research, ethnography/diary studies, on-site customer satisfaction surveys, screenings and exits - the list grows daily.

While mobile research is still in its infancy, surveys conducted via text-messaging are already scarce, as the industry focus shifts to surveys conducted via WAP or via a survey application designed for a specific phone operating system like an iPhone or Android device.

Both WAP (or Web-based mobile surveys) and app-based surveys have their own benefits and challenges. WAP surveys allow for cross-platform text and multimedia surveys (meaning they’re compatible with mobile browsers on multiple operating systems). Device compatibility is over 70 percent. The downside is that mobile browser speed can vary considerably based on the wireless connection. App-based surveys are device-specific (meaning an iPhone app won’t work on an Android phone, thus multiple versions of the app are necessary to allow for cross-platform research) but generally bring faster delivery and upload times. This may ultimately work to increase respondent satisfaction with the survey-taking process. In addition, survey apps can be developed on and integrated into preexisting apps, which may present marketers with opportunities to add in survey functionality to apps that have served other functions to date.

Interesting innovations

Although we’re lumping iPads in with mobile devices, any tablet PC is really a hybrid of a laptop and a cell phone. Tablet PCs present researchers with interesting innovations in on-site and qualitative research methods. On-site interviewers are actively using tablet PCs to quickly collect (and report on!) data via surveys that may include touch-screen components, interactive questions, video or other multimedia components.

Gone are the days when surveys had to be programmed and loaded on an actual PC. Today tablets can easily access surveys and instantly feed data into online reporting toolsets via a basic wireless connection. Researchers are even using tablet PCs to evolve qualitative research into hybrid quant/qual techniques. For example, respondents are given a short quant survey to quantify individual preferences, after which survey results can be instantly aggregated and summarized via real-time online reporting tools. Afterward, a focus group discussion of preference or other drivers can take place, incorporating the initial quantitative survey data into the qualitative group discussion.

Dangerous tipping point

As with any new research platform, the cons often outweigh the pros and we’re at an almost dangerous tipping point with mobile. Industry acceptance and adoption is at an all-time high while standards and best practices are still in development.

As market research firms race to be first to market with mobile research services and applications, there appears to be a greater focus on technology than on research quality. In a recent posting to a research-related LinkedIn group, a firm eagerly advertised its ability to handle “long and complex surveys” on mobile devices - a practice we’ve been battling against in online surveys, let alone mobile surveys, as an industry. Respondent engagement on mobile devices is even more challenging than in online surveys which means we need to be highly sensitive to the mobile survey experience.

Being first to market also presents other challenges. Firms like Thumbspeak and Gongos have touted their iPhone survey apps and many more firms are in aggressive development on cross-platform applications that will be supported by iPhones, Droids and BlackBerrys. Although many of these firms have their own panels to support these apps, the question of how many survey apps will one person download looms. What happens when respondents are inundated with survey apps and a multitude of survey options? As an industry we need to be cognizant of respondents threshold for downloading these apps.

Need to be sensitive

Mobile market research presents a challenge to standard online research practices. Studies have shown that in order to get the most out of research efforts on a mobile platform, we need to be sensitive to the unique challenges respondents face when completing surveys on mobile devices.

Small screens; inflexible, device-specific user input methods and potentially slow data transfer speeds all combine to make taking a survey more difficult than on a typical computer. Couple those hindrances with reduced attention spans and a lower frustration threshold and it’s clear that we must be proactive in the design of both the questionnaire and user-interface in order to give mobile respondents an excellent survey experience.

Although best practices are still evolving, there are a few that seem to be universally embraced even at this early stage:

Keep the survey short. As in 10 questions or fewer! It takes longer to navigate on mobile devices due limitations of the user interfaces and data transfer speeds.

Minimize the number of pages. Each time the page refreshes, the respondent has to wait. This wait time can range from a short to exceptionally long period of time depending on the network connection (with Wi-Fi at the fast end and regular cell data on a poor connection at the slow end). Take care not to put too many questions on a page as mobile devices also have less memory to work with, so a page with too many elements may cause the device to become slow or non-responsive.

Keep the question types simple. Single-dimension radio, checkbox or “select” questions are better than multidimension grid questions, which could be difficult to complete due to mobile devices’ small screens. Also, limit the use of open-ended questions, as they require typing.

Limit scrolling to a single dimension. Rows are preferable to columns to minimize the need to scroll on both horizontal and vertical axes. Keep answer lists short to minimize scrolling. Consider putting long answer lists into select (drop-down) questions but also be aware that these require more clicks to complete than radio questions. “Select” questions only allow a single response, so for multi-select questions, use the checkbox question-type.

Keep question and answer text short. The small screen and space make it harder to read long options.

Minimize all non-essential content. It takes extra load time and visual space for every element that appears on the screen. Repetitious elements, innocuous for a typical Web-based survey, add an undue burden on respondents completing surveys on the mobile Web, in addition to distracting from the purpose at hand: completing the survey.

Logos - limit logos to the first (and/or last, if absolutely necessary) page of the survey.

Privacy policies, rules pages, etc. - if possible, also limit these to the first/last survey page.

Progress bar - the progress bar can be very helpful for indicating a respondent’s position in the survey, however it also increases the load time and the need for vertical scrolling.

Keep the look of the survey simple. Minimize distraction. Javascript support varies radically for mobile devices, so keep interactivity to a minimum. Flash is out for iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch devices. Some mobile devices also have limited color palettes. High-contrast color schemes will work best.

Changing weekly

Mobile capabilities are changing weekly. Firms that have already embraced mobile are moving past WAP or app-based surveys and experimenting with DIY software integration, multi-language surveys, geo-tracking and image-based survey triggers.

Don’t be left behind! Even if you’re not ready to get into the mobile game, learn about it. Many of the research-related LinkedIn groups, such as Next Gen Market Research and Innovation and New Tools in MR, have members who are posting and discussing mobile technologies almost daily. Industry organizations are including mobile as education tracks in their conferences.

In short, embrace cross-platform best practices and stay curious. If you can’t be first in market, be best in market and meet your respondents on the move!