Many organizations are developing polls and survey as a way to secure feedback from website visitors in hopes to learn more about what they want and need. Something you may not have considered that might be a viable option is using an intercept research method. Anyone who has been approached by someone in a mall or bank asking them to participate in a survey has experienced intercept research.

The Difference Between Needing and Wanting an Intercept Study

Do you need or want website intercept study?  Either way, we’ll go into guidelines for using one.  First though let’s determine whether you really need one. We suspect like many companies, you are tracking a variety of website measures.  While there are numerous things you can measure, when you cut through the clutter, there are really only four categories of website measures that provide insight into whether you need an intercept study.

1. The amount of activity on your site – page views, visitor sessions, returning visitors, etc.
2. The source of that activity – referrers, search terms, languages, countries, organizations, etc.
3. The nature of that activity – entry pages, exit pages, browsers, platforms, JavaScript versions, cookie support, screen resolutions, page refreshes, page load errors, average time per page, etc.
4. The results of that activity – click trails, most requested pages, number of page views, signups, orders, etc.

These measures provide insight into whether you need vs. want to do an intercept study. If you are seeing a decline or adverse shift in the measures, or you are implementing programs that are not positively improving the measures, then you need an intercept study.

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The Purpose of a Website Intercept Study

Intercepting visitors to your website can provide you with information related to how satisfied visitors are with the content on and experience with your site; whether they found what they needed, the site was easy or hard to navigate, there were features they liked or disliked about your site, and so on. The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) released An Evaluation of Methods Used to Assess the Effectiveness of Advertising on the Internet, which examines the methodology behind site intercept studies. The study revealed three prevalent flaws in site intercept studies jeopardizing their results.

It’s all about the sample when it comes to website intercept studies. If you decide to use site intercept as a research option, be sure to incorporate these practices:

• capture a large enough number of responses to validate the findings
• adjust for biasing
• address leverage classic experimental design
• keep in mind that different methods (mobile, tablet, computer) people visit your site

5 Tips for Intercept Research Design

These tips and guidelines will help make sure this approach provides you meaningful results and that the visitor sample size will be large enough to use the data to make decisions.

1. Examine website visitor statistics to determine common entry points to the site. Simply placing the invite redirect on the home page may not be enough to get a good sample of visitors to the website.
2. Use an appropriate methodology to maximize accessibility, e.g., a page redirect method.
3. Survey invitations are given to a random sample of visitors and completed based on the estimated number of visitors to the website, over the study time period.  This is the population that is the number of visitors over the time period during which the research is conducted. Take steps to minimize the likelihood that a visitor will get invited multiple times to take the survey.
4. Determining the time period of the survey is very important. Conduct the study over a long-enough period of time to include a broad and representative sample of the target population.
5. Avoid generalizing survey results beyond the visitor population. This point has some important considerations. It means that if you conduct the research for a month the results and the target population is visitors over the past year, then the sample has to be treated as non-probable.

These steps will help ensure that the results of a website visitor intercept survey sample truly reflects your visiting population and customer experience. You don’t want to make important changes and expensive or time-intensive decisions based on bad information from a bad or limited sample.

Your instrument design is critical. That’s where we can help.

FAQ:

• Activity: Page views, sessions, returning visitors
• Source: Referrers, search terms, languages, countries, organizations
• Nature of activity: Entry/exit pages, browsers, platforms, load errors, time per page
• Results: Click trails, most requested pages, signups, orders

• Capture a large enough number of responses to validate findings
• Adjust for biasing
• Apply classic experimental design principles where appropriate
• Account for differences in device usage (mobile, tablet, desktop)

1. Use visitor statistics to choose intercept locations: Don’t rely only on the home page; target common entry points.
2. Maximize accessibility with the right method: For example, use a page redirect approach when appropriate.
3. Invite a random sample and prevent repeat invitations: Base sampling on estimated visitor volume during the study period and minimize multiple invites to the same visitor.
4. Run the study long enough to be representative: Ensure the time period captures a broad cross-section of visitors.
5. Avoid over-generalizing results: Results apply to the visitor population during the study period; if the sample timeframe is limited, treat it as non-probability for broader claims.

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