Survey and Focus Group Discussion for Tech Startup

I’m often asked about what people should do first when they are about to launch service or application from their tech startup or what additional facility they should add up? Questions like when to release their product? What kind of service or feature they should launch? What should they add? Up to what aif users don’t like their products.

My answer is: Research.

Research needs methods that are sometimes unorthodox, complicated, systematic, and thorough. But for me it can be done otherwise. What’s important is your way of thinking of things and method you’re going to use. No need to be completely thorough as long as you have clear guidance and referring to complete research method. Of course such a simple research cannot become the only complete scientific guidance and can probably be different than its basic meaning, but it can be source of additional information in making decisions.

There are several ‘simple’ researches which I think are applicable for startups or web/internet/mobile based service as additional information before, after or during service application period.

The first one is survey. Plenty of ways to conduct surveys by questionnaire are available. For example, internet opens facility for digital survey which is easier to be spread out and filled. Such facilities available are Google Docs, SurveyMonkey, Survs.

The point is how to get information from service or application you are developing. You can ask several kinds of questions (open or closed ones) to find out what users think of your products. You can chose respondents who’ve used, never used, or are using your application or your competitor’s application.

You can process those information into source of additional information to improve your service, develop new service or recast/eliminate available features and facility.

The second one is Focus Group Discussion (FGD). You don’t need too many respondent, that's why we call it simple research. 3-5 people is enough, just make sure they represents what FGD is about. Who are they gonna be? Experts. For example you are conducting FGD in mobile service, you should invite expert people who are known in mobile industry.

The discussion doesn’t have to be strict and rigid, make it fluid. Just make sure it is well documented. You can invite your colleagues and friends whom you know are experts. Like hang out, with a focused topic.

From the above mentioned method, you can complement them with statistic data your startup has compiled during service operated; if it is not yet released you can use data during beta version. If you don’t have products yet, you can have similar data from competitors as reference.

The above methods are far from perfect, but at least if you do it you can get clear image or information over what strategy you should use on your additional or new facilities you are about to launch. The point is, you have to have some data as reference, both in quantity or quality. There might be some startups counting on intuition side in managing their strategy, which is simply natural in business. But data (quality or quantity) won’t hurt and will still be useful in making decisions.

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