Web Winners:
Political polls have been delivering some wildly divergent results. Businesses need to do a sort of polling, too, with market and customer surveys. Here are Web sites that explain how to do it.
Political polls have been delivering some wildly divergent results. Businesses need to do a sort of polling, too, with market and customer surveys. Here are Web sites that explain how to do it.
StartupNation.
This article is about doing market research on a shoestring, with basics on pulling together a focus group. An example is a Dallas woman who got 50 friends and family members to critique her new line of greeting cards.
SurveyMonkey.
For free at this site, you can fashion a market survey for 100 respondents on any subject, using templates in any language. For about $20 a month, or $200 a year, you get lots more features, but for start-ups and other small operations, there is nothing to lose by trying the free service.
Create surveys.
The eHow site includes this how-to for market surveys as part of a wider selection on how to start and run a business, hire employees, and even how to do an IPO.
Survey says.
Articles and discussion threads here cover some of the methods and issues in conducting a customer survey. For example, we read that 30 is a standard survey sample size. Why? We don't know. "Strategies for surveying employees" might help a company ask the right questions for pinpointing worker discontent.