5 Minutes 
As recession looms, risks increase for all businesses. As enterprises develop new products, they are well-served by an agile, self-serve market research approach. Self-serve market research makes it faster and cheaper to conduct product testing throughout the development lifecycle. Companies gain valuable consumer insights to guide both immediate and future decisions while maintaining greater control and flexibility than traditional methods.
Here, we explore the agile, self-serve market research approach, and how to use self-serve in product testing to obtain valuable consumer insights.
Why Choose Self-Serve Research?
Self-serve research platforms grew by more than 30 percent in 2020, according to the ESOMAR 2021 Global Market Research Report. The advent of self-serve grants businesses more control over and flexibility in how they approach market research.
First, businesses gain the ability to access all collected research data in real time. Self-serve quantitative research engines such as Methodify display data as completes come through. It is also easy to filter and customize your final report to suit your needs and uncover hidden insights.
Second, self-serve research is usually cheaper than traditional research. This is because your own internal team designs and monitors the research campaign, rather than paying third-party specialists.
Third, self-serve research programs enable businesses to do high-quality research at a much faster pace. Many of the time-consuming pieces of quantitative research are automated, allowing researchers to focus on higher-value tasks. In addition, self-serve research technologies such as Methodify enable customizable, repeatable agile research methods, cutting down setup time even further.
How to Use Self-Serve Research for Product Testing?
Self-serve research is great for product testing.
Businesses use self-serve methods to conduct research continuously. This provides a regular stream of insights for each stage of product development, allowing for iterative improvement to designs. Incorporating consumer feedback through each iteration, aligns you with what consumers truly want.
Product teams should use self-serve product testing at all stages of design and development. This includes concept testing initially to verify that consumers like a design. Any negative feedback is a helpful tool to adjust your product to fit what the market truly wants.
Here is a brief overview of common product testing methodologies:
- Idea Screening – Start at the very inception of your idea, whether for new products, services, or strategic approaches. Enterprises use this method to test ideas with consumers, rather than relying on hope or the Highest-Paid-Persons-Opinion (HiPPO) from executives. This is an agile, data-driven way of identifying opportunities with the most potential for success based on consumer insights.
- Concept Testing – Once you are further along in the process and have a few possible concepts, use this method to test one or multiple of them with a target audience. Concepts are shown in isolation to reduce bias, and researchers measure likeability, relevance, brand alignment and purchase intent. Concept testing ensures your initial design is aligned with what the market truly needs, avoiding wasted spend on manufacturing and development.
- Digital Experience Testing – This method is used to measure the quality of digital experiences. It forms part of user experience (UX) testing. Businesses test app and website user interface (UI) designs to understand how users interact with digital products and services. Iterative and continuous digital experience testing drive improvement over time in alignment with what consumers truly want.
- Online Discussions – Facilitate online discussions for comprehensive qualitative insights about your product with a qualitative technology like QualBoard. This approach could include group discussions to reveal greater context, with individual one-on-one diaries for deeper insights. Online discussions are used for exploratory research, concept evaluation, and in-depth customer sentiment.
How Does Self-Serve Product Testing Reduce Risk?
Self-serve product testing provides reliable customer feedback at regular intervals throughout the product development process, with appropriate changes made early and often. This approach helps ensure market success of the new product and avoids having to make major changes after release, thus supplying a dramatic decrease in risk.
What does this look like in practice?
Imagine product team one. It develops a new product without ever conducting market research. It does not understand what current consumers want, and thus develops a product unaligned with market preference. There are errors in the design, and it failed to spot those issues due to a lack of product testing. Millions of dollars are invested in manufacturing equipment, only for the product to go to market and flop.
Product team two use self-serve market research for its product testing. It discovered numerous pitfalls in the product design that reduced desirability in the market. Through continuous asynchronous research, the team regularly validates new product iterations with consumers to systematically resolve issues with the design. After multiple iterations, the team tests and validates a final product concept as ready for manufacturing. Most of the design errors were ironed out during this process, and the product concept aligns with market preference. This leads to go-to-market success for product team two.
While simplified, this is a very real scenario for enterprises that conduct self-serve market research during product development. Will you be data-driven in your product testing?
Become More Data-Driven in Your Research with Sago
Sago is a global leader in quantitative and qualitative research. Our self-serve quantitative research engine Methodify allows product teams to test and validate their products against the market. This leads to a data-driven product design and development approach, increasing the likelihood of go-to-market success.
Connect with Sago and start self-testing your products without the hassle today.
