13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Top resource for reaching and responding to your customers, 27 Feb 2001
By "rhopewell" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Handbook of Online Marketing Research: A Data Driven Approach for Developing Web Strategy (Hardcover)
This book is packed with good information. I saw the review in Wired,
and couldn't agree more. I've been using the resources identified in
the book and on the companion website. My company did a little
research with some free web survey technology, which wasn't very
useful. Not only does this book explain why (in a way I can
understand and explain to my managers) but it also explains how to do
it right. Lots of good examples thrown in as well. We're gearing up
to run some surveys, and so far, all is well. ... -- I suppose this
book isn't for statisticians, but then, the authors say that up front.
All in all, this is one of the better "how to" books I've
seen for the web.
31 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
How to NOT conduct web surveys, 14 Feb 2001
By "webfielding" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Handbook of Online Marketing Research: A Data Driven Approach for Developing Web Strategy (Hardcover)
If you are a professional market researcher this book is far too elementary. For instance, you probably don't need standard deviation explained to you.
If you are a web developer, the examples seem downright amateurish. For instance, the authors provide some Javascript code for selecting website visitors at random, with the instruction that you will need to change variables for it to work for your purposes. That's what functions that accept parameters are for: then you can leave the core code alone and re-use it as often as you want.
Worse yet, the authors refer to "Tickle" as an alternative to ASP or CGI. It would seem they have not done their research. It's "Tcl", or Tool Command Language. Yes it is pronounced "Tickle", but the fact that they don't know how to spell it would seem to indicate they have only heard about it and haven't read anything about it, which is further supported by their assertion that Tcl/Tickle needs to run on Windows. This is patently untrue: like Perl (not "Pearl") it was originally developed for Unix and only more recently has been ported to Windows.
This book is especially at its worst if you have both market research and web development experience. For instance, the authors suggest using cookies and javascript for randomizing sample to avoid bias. However, they never mention that users can turn off both of these features. Excluding people who turn off cookies and Javascript would introduce a similar bias as not reaching unlisted numbers in telephone research.
Now that I've bought this book, the only value I can see that I will get from it is for examples about how not to do web surveys.
27 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Online Market Research for Dummies, 18 Feb 2001
By "deernuts" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Handbook of Online Marketing Research: A Data Driven Approach for Developing Web Strategy (Hardcover)
At best this book is a very general overview of market research concepts that are not even specific to online surveys. For instance, don't "lead" the respondent.
Its best isn't very good though. For instance, the authors repeatedly refer to Excel as a bona fide analysis tool. No professional worth his or her salt would use such a tool for this purpose.
At its worst this book is full of misinformation about web development. Before I bought this book, I wish I could have read the review that points out the authors' total misconception about Tcl, or "Tickle" as they call it.
Even more incredibly, there is an entry for "Tickle" in the index!
If you are at an intermediate level or higher in either market research or web development, this book is completely worthless.