I’m seeing more and more businesses collecting research.
They are getting in on the secret, finally.
Anything from running surveys, interviewing customers, looking at competitors, etc.
It’s all great – but you have to use that stuff.
One reason why I believe a lot of them end up not using that is overwhelmed.
They rush to get all that data, but then they have so much stuff that they get stuck in analysis paralysis.
Thing is, it’s good to run your research (heck, you can save some money on work that I’d otherwise do), but you have to know what research is useful for what purpose.
This is something that’s not talked about enough in our industry.
There’s a good quote in the book “The choice factory” about this:
“We shouldn’t harness data just because we can. Instead, as much time should be spent choosing which data sets to ignore as which to use.”
For example, and I use this strategy with every client, I divide research into 3 distinct areas:
- Internal research (team interviews + support transcripts or calls)
- User research (visitor + customer data)
- Market research (competitors + reviews)
You can consider these levers that you can pull, based on what you already have/know and on what your goal is.
Do you know a lot about your product and the way you want to position it? Then maybe you need to only run some user research to understand if your audience can use it, understand it and likes it.
Do you know a lot about your customers but not enough about your prospects? Then run some website surveys or offer visitors a reward for jumping on an interview.
And so on…
Like anything, too much of it can’t be good. I’m all for researching, but I also appreciate when we can work with the stuff we need, and nothing extra.
Something to think about.
Want to learn more about my process and see how I can help your business make sense of any data points you have? Get in touch.
