Online Focus Groups Explained

What are Online Focus Groups?

Online qualitative market research does not mean, or have to be, just ticking boxes and filling in forms! Our online paid focus groups give people a chance to speak freely instead of structured answers into a questionnaire. In other words, just like a real focus group, but from the comfort of your own home!

We understand that people are busy, so we ensure market research focus group opportunities are as easy and convenient as possible. Every online session will be simple and accessible. People will be able to attend via their computer from anywhere with internet access.

Online Focus Groups Explained

Companies and organisations are interested in hearing their customer’s opinions, and they know that focus groups often bring these opinions to the fore.

Online Focus Groups are an easy and convenient way to deliver what brands expect from this research – and to hear first-hand what their consumers are saying. Focus groups online offer the ability to listen to your consumers and receive long and meaningful thoughts and opinions on a particular topic. With the same limit of between 7 and 10 people (the same as in real life), you still get the same in-depth verbatim, and brands can still attend and listen in, receive a copy of the while delivering the same high-quality analysis. The difference lies within the ability to have multiple avenues and styles of focus groups these can be:

Chat-Based Groups

This uses text chat for a discussion, integrating a whiteboard to present the participants with stimulus and content. Features like heat maps, polls and private questions allow you to develop and dictate how the conversation is going and create meaningful and actionable results.

Like focus groups both online and face to face, clients are welcome to observe and interject into the flow of the conversation and potentially develop a point that is raised. Another benefit is the semi-anonymous aspect to them. Once recruited inside of the chat, individuals are anonymous. This backs up theories that people are more open and more encouraged to speak freely with anonymity. Being text-based allows word for word transcripts to be generated automatically and available instantly. The downside is the importance of body language and facial expressions – you can tell a lot from those subtle responses observed face to face and even to an extent online.

Bulletin Board

Another facet of Online Focus Groups is the potential use of an online bulletin board. The board can be used to categorise threads for ease of navigation, upload videos and images and allow you the ability to allocate topics to different focus group segments. It also allows for reflection time for the participants, especially those who don’t respond instantly – this affords them time to express their opinions.

Benefits Of Online Focus Groups

One significant advantage of an online focus group is its efficiency in providing detailed feedback – with the ability to collect the data without the time-consuming need to transcribe a face-to-face focus group. Online focus groups offer the flexibility to develop insights – whether this is chat-based to garner and explore the top of mind responses, or whether it’s a more traditional focus group format, evolving the thoughts and topics through the conversation.

Online Focus Groups allow for a larger audience to be sought after, considering the group will not be held back with geographical tangible location, we can reach those who are the right audience but may have struggled in the past to attend by a certain time or location.

Online not the way you want to go? Not to worry, we offer multiple techniques to get the results you want to, we are experts in areas such as in-depth interviews, a more one to one area of hearing from your consumers, or the traditional face to face focus group if you would prefer to attend yourselves. Simply find out more below.

If you would like to get in touch with us to see how we can use this methodology to improve your brand and help it grow and become more successful, then get in touch using the button below, and we will be happy to help. We also offer a wide range of Online Qualitative Insight Methods, which you can find out more about below.