Drafting the Questions

Below is a link to the current draft of the survey questions to aid in further understanding of the types of information that will be addressed. The survey includes questions about the participant, company background information, online activity data, e-commerce statistics, and other website information.

We hope this will help you prepare for taking the Irish E-Commerce Survey and we welcome any comments or suggestions you would like to offer about the content of the survey. Besides commenting through this blog, we can be reached at info@irishecommercesurvey.com and on Twitter @irishecommerce.

We welcome your thoughts and ideas on what questions are relevant and whether we should ask any other questions.

Download the Current Draft:

Irish E-commerce Survey Questions

 

  1. Hi guys,
    Great that you are organising this questionnaire. I believe it will provide a lot of insights and maybe even motivate online business owners in Ireland to critique their own focus and hopefully highlight areas that they need to improve in.

    I have added a few suggestions below:

    SOCIAL
    Do you have a Facebook / Twitter account
    How often do you use FB / Twt (less than once a week / 2-5 times a week / 5-10 times a week / 10+ times per week) (or you could put that in hours – prob better in hours)
    How do you use social channels (To promote my business, to offer customer support, to provide news to existing / new customers)
    Does social media generate sales for your business?

    BLOG
    Do you have a blog?
    If no, will you consider setting up a blog in the next 12 months?

    NEWSLETTER
    Do you have a newsletter that you send to customers (new / potential)?
    How many subscribers do you have? (<100, 100 to 500, 1,000 to 3,000, 3,000 to 10,000, 10k+)
    (Prob about another 4 to 5 questions we could ask here about newsletters)

    ANALYTICS
    What Analytics software do you use (Google Analytics, Statcounter, etc…)
    Do you have e-commerce tracking within your web analytics package?

    ONLINE MARKETING
    Do you use an agency to manage your online marketing?
    Order these channels in the order they generate most sales for your business (direct traffic, search engine traffic from organic listings, paid search engine traffic from Google Adwords, Email Newsletter, Social Media, Referral traffic from other websites, affiliate) (prob best to ask them to rate the 6 channels in order – provide one of those matrix answers)

    AFFILIATE PROGRAM
    Do you have an affiliate program?
    If no, will you consider launching one in the next 12 months?

    OUTSOURCE
    What areas of your online business do you outsource
    Graphic Design, Online Marketing, E-Commerce Development, Email Marketing, Content Writing, etc..

    GENERAL QUESTIONS
    What is the biggest challenge….
    (And a few other general "insight" type questions).

    • Kristin
    • February 25th, 2011

    Thanks Cormac! We appreciate your suggestions and will definitely take them into consideration. Be on the lookout for an updated draft of questions.

  2. Hello Gerard,
    While I think this is a great idea and will help a lot of people, I know some of my clients would not be comfortable divulging certain information such as their overall turnover to an unknown 3rd party. What about asking for an indication of their eCommerce turnover alone?
    Also, maybe extend the question:
    What aspects of e-commerce conversion do these websites target (i.e. shopping cart purchases, subscriptions, reservations, registrations)?
    To include ticket sales and voucher purchases.

    I’d change FY to Financial Year – some people might not know what FY stands for!
    What about asking if the client currently runs a social commerce store (ie. facebook plugin) or is considering it?

      • admin
      • March 3rd, 2011

      Hi Tomas,

      We completely understand the hesitation around divulging commercial data to third parties, it is a problem we’re really conscious of and we’ve tried to do as much as we can to guarantee anonymity, protect data and protect privacy. Unfortunately, we still have to ask for a level of trust and it’s impossible to get around that. We cover some of what we’ve done to protect privacy here: http://www.irishecommercesurvey.com/data-protection-privacy/

      Nevertheless, that assurance isn’t going to be enough for everyone – so the question regarding turnover is optional (many of the questions are – if a merchant feels comfortable answering the question, great, if not then hopefully there are some other questions he or she will be happy to answer).

      Do you think perhaps people would be more comfortable indicating the range of entire turnover? Say – less than 100,000, between 100K and 500K, etc?

      Regarding your other points:

      We do ask for e-commerce turnover on it’s own at the moment.

      Yes we will definitely be adding ticket sales and voucher purchases – good catch! same goes for the FY

      … and yes – the social commerce store question is a good idea – it’s going to be really important in the future, especially with Facebook getting into the area of credits – and Realex looking at releasing CaraPay: http://www.carapay.com/

      Thanks for the great input! I hope you’ll consider encouraging participation among your clients!

  3. Gerard/Kirstin,
    We would be very happy to promote and recommend the survey, so do send us the final form link. It is a positive value adding project for everyone.
    Regards,
    Michael MacGinty

  1. No trackbacks yet.