Research 101: Tips for Starting Research Processes

Research is something that should happen frequently and throughout the entire life of your product or your business. What method you use will depend on several factors primarily the stage and maturity of your product or your user base.

It may also depend on factors like time, cost, and priority. Many businesses make the mistake of skipping research, instead defaulting to their confidence in what they know about the problem or market. If you’re an entrepreneur/solopreneur, consultant, or ‘one-(hu)man-band’ this can be even more tempting because you’ve got limited time or resources, but it’s even more essential to guard yourself from bias…or the even deadlier consequences of creating a product or service that doesn’t sell after all that effort!

❓ The first question to ask yourself to decide where you start with research is:

• Do I have current users or do I ‘just’ 😉 have an idea or goal?

A slight adaptation to this could be:

• What data do I already have and what data might I need to answer my questions and help me reach my goals?

But if you’re not even sure what research methods to use or what data you might have or need, let’s start with some research basics.

There are several types or categories of research including:

• Moderated or unmoderated - The difference between these is whether there is one-on-one contact or guidance between yourself and the participant (e.g. interviews are moderated, asynchronous surveys are unmoderated).

• Qualitative or quantitative - The difference between these is the data produced (e.g. quantitative research produces specific numerical outputs or can be measured whereas qualitative focuses on sentiment, emotions, or ‘ why’.

• Generative or evaluative - The difference between these is that generative research looks to explore new ideas or understand opportunities whereas evaluative research helps to validate the success of an idea/experiment against specific goals (e.g. answering ‘why are you not completing sign-up’ is generative versus ‘how many more people complete sign-up if we reduce the steps’ is evaluative).

• Primary or secondary - The difference between these is that for primary research you are collecting original, new data whereas for secondary research you are analysing data that has already been collected and published by other sources.

These categories can be surfaced and implemented using specific methods. Some common methods of research include:

• Surveys

• Interviews

• Usability testing

• A/B testing

• Benchmarking

• Focus groups

• Observational studies

• Market research

But where should YOU start?!

This returns us to our question of whether you already have a source of insights, current users, or whether you have to first start with understanding your problem in order to create a service or a product that will target potential users.

If you have current users:

When you have current users, you probably have some data that you can begin to analyse, even if this is passive data that’s currently been unused. If you don’t know where it is, start looking and build these methods in proactively as you make your next steps. Most digital products (websites, downloadable resources, podcasts, e-newsletters, communities) have in built ways to collect quantitative data. Consider looking for:

• Issue reports from users - how many of these do you get per day, week, month and are these typically related to an area or workflow (e.g. payment issues)?

• Use data - how many users come to your website or use your product, can you tell if you have a few users frequently or lots of users infrequently visiting or interacting?

• Revenue - what’s your profit margin per user/purchase, per week/month/year against your outgoing costs?

If I have data, I like to start by looking at things like active users, return users, user demographics (location, age). Analyse this quantitative data against your goals and identify your gaps. These are the questions that would be most helpful for making decisions on what you do next, which will help guide you to which qualitative research options you may want to start with.

For example, if I have a large free subscriber base to my podcast but low numbers of engagement with my paid resources. Consider that my goal is to increase my revenue so I'm trying to understand whether I should:

• Charge everyone for any access to my podcast

• Find ways to get my free subscribers to pay for the additional resources.

These are my clearest options, but I want to make the right decision by getting the data to make the smartest choice or maybe to find an option I hadn’t previously considered to help me reach this goal.

I want to start with interviews but this would probably take at least two weeks (minimum!!) by the time I reach out to people, they agree, and we’re able to set up interviews around my busy schedule. In this case, I choose to release a survey to my current paid members that have agreed to emails during sign-up asking them just one question- ‘what did you like about this resource?’ I release a similar survey of just one question to our free subscribers, ‘what would you like to see more of?’

I let this run for a week and get a few results from both paid and free users. Now, I could run a trial, creating of resource specifically targeting what those free subscribers say they're looking for and see if they convert. Potentially, I discover that I already have the resources they say they want but I need to find better ways of bringing attention to those through personalised marketing or better search functionality. Maybe I saw an overlap in what paid subscribers loved and what free members want so I create additional resources on this topic, creating upselling opportunities and making sure my paid members keep paying!

Of course, there are many different options and this research scenario is only one. Similarly, I could have done some competitor research to see how other podcasters incentivise paid subscribers. Maybe I have the technical skills to conduct some A/B testing on our call-to-action buttons. Maybe I do these things as well as the surveys… The next step to an experiment like this might be understanding how you can increase new users through recommendations, SEO and web optimisation, and creating innovative, delightful ways to upsell additional services.

Ultimately, if you already have users, the best way to keep them is to ensure that we understand their motivations, their needs, and why they would continue to stay and pay. This isn’t a one-time experience, try to do this once a week or once a month, at minimum. Prefer research options that help you focus on the user you have or the ones you want to target over just competitor research or generic data.

If you don't have users:

If you are just starting your journey, you may not even know who your users are, much less how to speak with them! You can, of course, try to identify people within your circle or your circle-once-removed (e.g. contacts of friends/family, connections on LinkedIn or in the Candid! community) that fit your target audience (e.g. young working parents).

Because you don't already have in-built ways of accessing these individuals (e.g. registered users on your website or mailing list) some people can find this quite difficult, intimidating, or time consuming. It’s more comfortable to see yourself as your target user or to build based on your passion. While this may produce some results, don’t let this replace your research!

In these cases, you can start with accessing secondary research looking at understanding your target user from published statistics. You could also conduct some secondary market research on:

• Indirect competitors that are reaching your target market, even if the services they are offering are very different from what you want to create

• Direct competitors offering similar services or products to understand potential opportunities that they are not currently serving and how you can differentiate yourself.

If you don't have users or an established team, tool stack, or process, large focus groups or A/B testing can be quite difficult.

But don’t overlook the value of primary research. You can only learn so much by looking at what people have already done or historical data in an ever-evolving society.

While interviews allow you to explore follow-up questions and feel more personal, surveys are often a lower barrier for participants as they can be anonymous, brief, and completed at the user’s convenience. Many of these tools like SurveyMonkey, Microsoft Forms, or Typeform are free or low cost and also provide functionality to analyse insights such as graphs, sorting, etc.

You want to balance the quality of the insights that you can gather against the friction this may cause. If your survey is too long, people simply won't complete it, even if you feel like you need all those questions answered right now. Identify where you can use multiple choice questions or a Likert scale and where you need to use open-ended questions or sorting/ranking options in order to avoid bias in potential answers. Remember, if you don’t scare people off with long surveys, they may even be willing to complete a follow-up in future 😉.

The more participants or data points you can get, the more confident you may be in your next steps. But, consider the cost of delay.  While you might be 80-100% confident in a decision if you interview 10 or 20 users, this is an incredibly high number unless you have an established business, user base, or wider research team. Aim for 3- 5 qualitative data points or 10-15 quantitative data points and try to make the smallest next step in validating the guesses that you draw from these results.

If you can answer this, now you’ve got your research next steps.

Have any questions? Try one of these kinds of research and tell us what you’ve learned from the process or the results!