Novatris: Reducing resistance to surveys

An innovative approach is needed to overcome customer reluctance to give time to online surveys.

The Site

Novatris is a Paris-based marketing and research company that runs the bi-annual NetObserver study of internet users in Europe. It also carries out surveys for commercial clients and is currently running an online survey for Les Journaux du Midi, a regional daily newspaper publisher in the south of France.

Online readers are invited to take part in the survey when they log on. A pop-up box makes two appeals to continue with the survey: help to improve the site and be entered in a draw to win 1500€. Those tempted can proceed there and then or opt to receive the questionnaire by e-mail to fill in later. The e-mail gives a URL linking to the questionnaire online.

During the course of filling in the questionnaire, which also covers general internet usage, answers are used to formulate later questions. For example, options ticked in a query about what internet-based services you have already used are omitted from the list for the following query about which services you are considering using in the coming month.

The Takeaway

The web is a potentially strong addition to the toolbox of market researchers and individual organisations surveying consumer habits and opinion. But like the individual with a clipboard approaching people in the street they have to overcome consumer resistance to sparing the time. Novatris takes an innovative approach not only to this but also to its use of the web’s uniqueness as a medium.

Offers of a prize as incentive to fill out an online survey are relatively rare but not unheard of (Amazon vouchers were offered in a Thanksgiving week survey on the Ford site). The use of an e-mail to allow people to fill out the questionnaire at a time more convenient to them (and less disruptive to their visit to the site) is. Similarly, the updating of questions as the survey is being filled out is an exemplary use of web interactivity and impossible to replicate so effortlessly in traditional surveys.

“I haven’t time right now” becomes less of an excuse for hurrying away.

First published on 04 December, 2003