90% of people don’t know how to do user research. Do you?

Do you really understand user research? Can you do user research? In fact, many people do not understand how to conduct a successful user research, and they make many mistakes during the execution due to confusion. The author of this article shares his own research experience and discusses how to formulate a research plan and conduct a correct offline research.

In order to enable online students to understand some of the market situations, they can both talk about it on paper and be on the front line. So I arranged students from five groups: design, community, platform, content, and product. They took turns to conduct market research every day, and required the students who went to the market to write summaries and reports after returning.

But after a week of implementation, I found that many students had many problems during the experience and research process. I believe that these problems will also occur in you and your team, so I share them with you in the hope that you can learn from them.

1. Why do we need to conduct offline research?

Before talking about the problem, let's talk about why I arranged for students from so many departments to go for offline research and experience for one or two days. There are four reasons.

1. Business support

Because it is close to the Chinese New Year, there is a shortage of staff, but time is tight and business is heavy. Proper support can help marketing personnel quickly conduct business.

2. Find the problem

I said in the article "Changing User Habits Comes at a Price" that all operational work is to serve the market. If the posters, roll-up banners, stickers and other products you design are not easy to use offline, the functions of the products are not smooth to use, and the activities you operate are taken for granted.

Doing this not only does not help marketing personnel, but also wastes their time and increases their burden. Therefore, I hope that they can each experience some actual application scenarios of the business and the users’ feelings, and then come back to make improvements.

3. Get to know your competitors

Although everyone’s models are different, the products and services they provide are similar. So we must understand how our competitors are doing offline. What are the things we can learn from their policies, marketing methods, materials, etc.?

4. Team Assessment

Another reason why I sent so many people to take turns is that I also wanted to see what the different feedbacks from each person were. We can fully discover the differences in their respective work from their daily reports, whether it is their sense of responsibility or their observation and summarizing abilities.

2. Just talking about the problem without thinking

So what common problems did the students in the team encounter during this week?

1. Pure Execution

At the beginning, I did not deliberately tell them the purpose of going to Hangzhou for market research, so in the first two days, the four students who went there just did physical labor. There was no feedback or summary without my request.

2. Lack of real-time feedback

There is another type of students who will wait until the next day to make a summary and will not share any information on the same day.

3. Lack of pictures and video records

In fact, there are many things worth learning from offline businesses. For example, when you go to the subway entrance, are there any commercial billboards or shops nearby?

When you go to the community, what does each entrance look like and whether there are any advertisements for other competing products. Including some other Internet platforms, how do they promote offline and what are their advertising formats. However, many students do not have this awareness.

4. Just talking about the problem without thinking

Another point is that many people, after returning from research, only talk about the problems without thinking about them, let alone taking any action.

For example, if we find that users are rather averse to our products, why are they so averse to them? Which method users are more willing to accept; for example, if our product functions are relatively complicated, how can we simplify it so that users will like it?

The most important point is, after these feedbacks are completed, who will do the implementation? So we can also see from here that the gap between excellent employees and ordinary employees lies in the ability to learn to think and actively improve.

3. Correct offline research

Now that we have discussed their problems, let me talk about how to conduct a correct offline research experience.

1. Clarify the form

To conduct offline research, we must first determine the form of our research. Different forms require different methods and materials. I divide them into three types.

1) Undercover

This is the most common type we see. For example, when the village chief was working on the real estate channel, he needed to conduct research on each real estate project. At that time, I would pretend to be a customer and ask about the policies and sales status of each real estate project.

For example, when planning to provide online education for children, you can go offline in the capacity of a parent to ask about tutorials, teachers, fees, etc.

2) Stall style

This model is mainly used to test a certain form of promotion, such as conducting targeted surveys in residential areas, parks, and shopping malls.

3) Appointment

When the village chief was working in the used car industry, in order to provide car dealers with auctions, car loans, extended warranties and other products, he would make appointments with some car dealers in advance and then have one-on-one chats with them. Another example is when you are a WeChat business agent, you can also invite some WeChat business moms to communicate with you in the form of interviews or seminars.

2. Plan your trip

When we do offline research, the thing we fear the most is not having any plan. I think there are at least three aspects:

1) Route planning

Taking our own business as an example, which streets and communities we should visit every day and what the research route should be are all things that must be clarified before we go.

2) Time planning

For each community, each store, and each partner, how long do you plan to spend to complete it, and how many sample interviews do you plan to complete in a day.

3) Interview planning

Who do you plan to target for the survey? Mothers, repair shops, neighborhood supermarkets, or community stations. If these basic tasks are not done, the next day's business will be chaotic and inefficient.

3. Prepare materials

The most important thing about offline research is how to gain the trust of others. So we need to bring all the relevant materials. I have summarized them into three types and use them according to actual conditions.

1) Supporting documents

Generally, work badges, business cards, and work uniforms are the three-piece set for field sales work, such as developing stores, car dealers and other customers. These can effectively dispel users' concerns. Of course, some undercover investigations cannot be so blatant. Sometimes we need to be more professional, and sometimes we need to be more popular.

The village chief once went to do research on the wedding industry, and he asked a female colleague to go with him.

2) Promotional materials

If you are developing stores or agents, you will need to provide some official promotional materials. Not only paper materials, it would be best to have an online public account, mini program or short video, or even a potential WeChat group.

3) Research materials

Before conducting a survey, we need to think clearly in advance about what questions we need to ask users. What information do we need to collect offline, especially when asking users questions face to face, and finally make an online form in advance.

remember! It is not necessary to let users fill in the form themselves. You can ask them while they fill in the form. The less trouble users have, the better.

4) Welfare information

If you want users to ask and extend their hands, you have to give small gifts. Whether you are setting up a stall or doing street interviews, it’s a good idea to prepare some commonly used small gifts. Generally, small gifts such as water cups, small balloons, food, tissues, tool boxes, facial masks, etc. are all popular among users.

4. Execution of the plan

In addition to the above-mentioned preparatory work, we also need to pay attention to the following four aspects during the actual investigation process.

1. Record and share at any time

As the saying goes, a good memory is not as good as a bad pen.

Offline, you should not only write it down at any time, but also take pictures and even record it (sound and video). Then synchronize these materials to the research group in time. Maybe something you are doing is what other students particularly want to know about.

2. Unified Talk

In order to ensure that there are no deviations during the promotion process. It is necessary to unify the relevant question and answer scripts, such as how to develop stores, what to do if questioned, and what to do if rejected. The experience gained from actual combat should also be summarized and adjusted in a timely manner.

3. Ask why

We hold meetings with personnel from each regional market every month, and the reports we often hear are that store owners are rather averse, unwilling to cooperate, unwilling to promote, and unwilling to buy our products.

But few people can list the reasons why merchants are unwilling to use our products when the quality is the same, the price is lower and the products are delivered to their doorstep. Therefore, when we conduct offline research, it is more valuable to ask more whys rather than whats.

4. Think of a plan to execute

The ultimate goal of offline research is to understand the market and solve problems, so in addition to requiring researchers to review the basic situation, they must also provide countermeasures.

• What should we do when facing urban management during offline marketing?
• What should we do if the store owner doesn’t trust us?
• How to simplify complicated product operations?

After these questions are raised, who will ultimately complete the implementation and when will feedback be given? Doing market research is not a physical job, but a mental job. Doing market research is not only about discovering problems, but also about solving them.

Author: Shili Village

Source: Shili Village (ID: shilipxl)