1. Test Product Concepts — Online focus groups can be used to test product development, from idea generation through concept testing.  The best online facility will offer visual support to show packing, products and logos.
2. Measure Communication Effectiveness — Learn what your consumers know, how well they like and understand your marketing communications efforts.  Test communication concepts, slogans, advertising, and web site content.
3. Determine website friendliness — Measure your website’s ability to connect with your customers.  Learn what your customers think of web content, user friendliness, and design.
4. Learn About How Your Customers Make Buying Decisions — Knowing how your customers make their purchasing decisions can make a difference in your marketing strategy.  Learn what triggers your customers to think about your product and brand, how and where they search for information, what features and benefits are important to them, how to get on your customers’ “short list, and how to induce purchasing.
5. Assess Customer Satisfaction — Online focus groups among key customers can help you learn if your customers are satisfied and why.  This will help you to develop even better customer satisfaction and retention strategies.
6. Measure Employee Satisfaction — In today’s marketplace, retaining great employees is crucial.  Online focus groups allow anonymous and/or confidential measurement of employee satisfaction and loyalty.
7. Help Design Better Surveys — Many surveys are designed by constructing questions based on assumed knowledge.  By conducting fast and efficient online focus groups, your surveys can be better designed to provide better information and data.
8. Access Customers Around the Corner and Across the Globe — Respondents, clients, and moderator can participate from anywhere.  This means that participants can be screened according to the most important factors rather than principally by geography, and clients can watch from anywhere in the world.  A single moderator can conduct the groups, providing important continuity.  Clients can also maintain project engagement and continuity with the ability to attend all groups from their desktop.
9. Enjoy the PR Benefit of Focus Group Research — Online focus groups are almost always enjoyed and appreciated by participants.  They like that their opinions are considered and valued, and our experience shows they feel more loyal to companies that do regular online focus groups.

Following is a list of 10 reasons to consider online focus groups:

1. Save Time and Money — Online focus groups save time for the researcher and participants.  Neither researchers nor participants have to incur travel expenses or worry about commuting time.  The research budget is extended with the elimination of transportation, lodging, and food for respondents/clients, video/audio recording or transcription costs.
2. Attract and Engage Hard to Reach Participants — The convenience of online focus groups provides a better chance of attracting professionals to attend and remain engaged.  It’s convenient and can be easily incorporated into their time-constrained schedules.  Busy professionals tend to remain engaged longer in online groups, since others do not interrupt them.
3. Assure Total Anonymity — Online groups allow participants to remain completely anonymous to one another – by name and physically.  This may be especially important for employee satisfaction studies or groups involving sensitive issues such as race, age, or gender.
4. Provide Rich and Detailed Data — Since online respondents can all type at once, there is a depth and richness of information that cannot be achieved through in-person groups.  Researchers benefit from the “extra mental step” that participants go through when articulating their thoughts into writing, resulting in rich, thoughtful comments and insights.
5. Avoid Strong Personality Dominance — Online groups reduce the effects of strong personalities and dominant individuals.  Each participant has the chance to compose and share his/her views without interruption.
6. Reduce Visual Biases — Researchers are sometimes concerned that they cannot see participants in an online setting.  While this is true, experience shows that it is possible to glean participants’ emotions and feelings in an online setting while eliminating bias due to age, race, gender, height, weight or clothing of fellow participants and the moderator.
7. Provide Instant Access to Materials for Testing — In an online focus group setting, participants can easily be shown product concepts, web sites, commercials, and other audio-visuals.  The moderator can control the exposure and ask detailed questions about the material.
8. Allow Instant, Uninterrupted Interaction and Communication Between Clients and Moderator — A good online focus group facility allows the moderator to not only see the focus group in real time but also provides access so that clients can discuss the unfolding event among themselves and can pass along input and questions to the moderator without interrupting the conversation with respondents.
9. Facilitate local, national, or global participation — Respondents, clients, and moderator can participate from anywhere.  This means that participants can be screened according to the most important factors rather than principally by geography, and clients can watch from anywhere in the world.  A single moderator can conduct the groups, providing important continuity.  Clients can also maintain project engagement and continuity with the ability to attend all groups from their desktop.
10. Provide Instant Transcripts — As soon as the focus group is finished, clients can receive a complete transcript that can be searched and sorted in various ways.  This is not only timely, but facilitates immediate analysis and shortens the time to implement findings.

1. Recruit well. Just as with traditional groups, you’ll need to over-recruit to account for no-shows, and you’ll need to compensate participants at the same level as with traditional groups.

2. Prepare your moderator’s guide thoroughly and know it well. You’ll be typing and thinking at the same time, so you won’t have a lot of time to glance at your guide.

3. Prepare long descriptions and/or links ahead of time in a text document. Test them to make sure they work and be ready to cut and paste them into the discussion. Practice this ahead of time to avoid fumbling.

4. Feel comfortable with your facility before you begin. Make sure it’s simple to use. Bells and whistles may be fun to look at, but as a moderator, you want to make sure that your facility works quickly and simply and that there’s someone on staff to offer assistance.

5. Arrive early at the facility to greet early arrivals. Acknowledge their arrival and let them know that you’ll be beginning soon. As each participant arrives, be sure to acknowledge him or her. If you don’t, the participant can be insecure about being in the right place at the right time.

6. Set expectations. At the beginning of the focus group, make the participants feel comfortable with the online format. Tell them that spelling and grammar are not important. You’re looking for honest opinions.

7. Set participant ground rules. Tell participants that it’s okay to agree or disagree with one another, but ask them to be sure to answer all the questions from the moderator.

8. Learn participants’ names and keep track of what each person is saying. Respond to individuals by name. This is extremely important! If you don’t do this, you will lose people from the group discussion. If you want everyone to respond, be sure to say this. Remember that you won’t have the physical presence of the participants and visual cues to keep people involved, so you have to keep track of them and use names to assure participation.

9. Ask everyone to answer a question at once. Moderators often begin traditional focus groups by going around the table, asking each person to answer one at a time. In an online group, you can achieve the same effect by asking everyone to respond at once. Tell participants they need not wait for others to type in their answers. Both moderator and participants will see each person’s response as they finish typing, and dialogue can follow.

10. Be prepared for less continuity in the conversation flow than with traditional groups. Differences in typing speeds combined with a lack of physical presence means that some participants may spend a longer time than others answering a question. Their responses may come once you’re already on to another topic. In essence, a good online moderator has to be skilled at handling two or three conversations at once.

11. Develop excellent keyboard skills and a great memory. Some moderators find it tough to type and remember names and conversation at the same time. This takes practice, so you may want to do some mock focus groups before you do the “real thing.” Observing an expert moderator is also very helpful.

12. Make the focus group conversational, “chatty,” and elicit the personalities of the participants. Use colloquial expressions. Use “smiley faces” and other Internet symbols and phrases, but be sure to explain shortcut phrases the first time to use them, i.e. LOL (laughing out loud). Failure to do this makes some participants uneasy that they are not as Internet savvy as other participants, and this can reduce participation.

13. Keep track of participants. If you haven’t heard from someone in awhile ask, “Mary, are you still with us?”

14. Practice makes perfect. It’s often a good idea to hire an experienced online moderator for your first few groups. By observing, you’ll quickly learn the “tricks of the trade.” Good Luck!