I'm trying to do a survey on a campaign micro site comparing registered and non-registered users. Originally, I was intending to use a popup survey. But my technical team tell me that service pack two is defaulted to block automatically popped windows. Further more, the survey guide from the site says:- "Opt-in surveys, where everyone can choose to take the survey from a link somewhere on your site is not a sample-based method, and therefore does not have validity from a research perspective."

So if you can't (1) pop a window (2) put on a button on the site or (3) send an email how do you do an online survey? Is this a hotly debated subject as it seems a complete show stopper for many types of online survey? `

Presumably you know who your registered users are and also maintain demographics on them? If this is true, there is no reason why you have to run the same survey to both sets of users. If you maintain demographics on your registered base you could sample those customers and send them the survey via email. (as long as they have opted in) .

I am a little confused as to how you sample a non-registered user base? The only way to do this would be to maintain cookies and sample on what the user does rather than who they are which you can achieve just as effectievly using links to surveys. Even this is highly unlikely as more often that not, pop-ups are given to everyone on certain conditions.

Layering is one way of getting round the pop-up situation but, to most people, layers are just as annoying as pop-ups.. as when a user sees layered content (I think the guardian site uses them for adverts for example) they just view them as pop-ups and wonders why their pop up blocker didn't do it's job.

In terms of delivering surveys as layers, it's not really new... e.g. Clicktools (my own companies product) enables you to do this as you need the ability to fully customise your survey look and feel and the co-operation of the people that build your web site.

You could probably use layers to deliver exit surveys but it's something I would avoid purely because of the pop up hatred around.

Andrew

On 15:43:10 7 October 2004 ChrisHandford wrote:
>Edigitalresearch claim to have a solution to this. I'm not
>sure if they can provide exit surveys though which have
>previously proved the most useful/reliable of pop-up
>surveys.
>
>http://www.edigitalresearch.com/eDigitalResearch/press/Lay-
>eredpopuprelease.htm
>
>On 17:47:18 1 October 2004 hobart65 wrote:
>>I'm trying to do a survey on a campaign micro site
>>comparing registered and non-registered users.
>Originally,
>>I was intending to use a popup survey. But my
>technical
>>team tell me that service pack two is defaulted to
>block
>>automatically popped windows. Further more, the survey
>>guide from the site says:- "Opt-in surveys, where
>>everyone can choose to take the survey from a link
>>somewhere on your site is not a sample-based method,
>and
>>therefore does not have validity from a research
>>perspective."
>>
>>So if you can't (1) pop a window (2) put on a button
>on
>>the site or (3) send an email how do you do an online
>>survey? Is this a hotly debated subject as it seems a
>>complete show stopper for many types of online survey?
>`