Over the years, many companies have shifted their focus away from using online surveys and focus groups to other tools and techniques like usability testing and web analytics to uncover the mysteries of the end-user...
I think its too bad that online surveys have a bad rap... My guess is that this is largly due to the fact that they've been so poorly implemented and can easily misintrepret the truth. While this may be true in some cases, I don't think they should be completely discarded from the bag of evaluation tools b/c they can be valuable if designed well and ask the right questions...
When you are evaluating a site or trying to learn about the end-users, its important to choose the right tools and techniques for the job and know the limitations of each.
If you are unsure of the difference in value gained through each of these methods, or want to hear my $0.02 on how a web survey could actually be useful, ...
Web analytics will help tell you 'what the user did' on the site, but it doesn't tell you why... That's were usability testing or A/B testing can help, as your analytics can tell you where there may be a problem, but a usability test really helps diagnose the issue and gives you ideas for solving it. The two really should go hand in hand.
What usability testing and web analytics won't tell you is - why people come to your site and how many share the same goal. Business owners and designers alike, need this information in order to ensure their site is structured in a way that faciliates the effortless completion of those tasks.
Hopefully, a smart web analytics company will integrate a simple online survey tool into their product that asks, "Why did you come to this website?"... and then at the end of the visit confirm "Did you accomplish your task? If not, why not?"
Sounds simple doesn't it? The truth is, having that kind of feedback in a statistical setting (paired with your analytics) would remove any doubt in the minds of the web team as to the real goals of the user and could help make fundamental design improvements to suit the needs of the users...
If you know any web analytics tools out there that already do this, please let me know...
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