Your Survey
Visitor/Customer Survey Analysis
Customer Surveys – analysing Postcodes and spend – have always been central to SPA’s work. In the early days we did lots of projects for big pub chains and off licences. For a long time now we’ve been doing surveys for all-comers – shopping centres, tourist attractions, museums, libraries, colleges, small businesses, B2B, etc.
Our formula is simple:
SPA designs the questionnaire
you collect the data;
SPA analyses it for you
and SPA supplies back results as a PowerPoint presentation.
To keep it really simple, just phone SPA on 01926 334978, Contact Us and fill in our Enquiry Form, or email us at surveys@spamarketing.co.uk telling us the kinds of thing you’re looking for.
So What Do You Want to Know?
How about:
What kinds of people visit/buy from you? And what types don't? We’ll give you a profile.
Do patterns vary? By time of day? Or by day of the week etc?
How far away do visitors live? We'll give you a breakdown, not just an average figure. Or have the results in terms of drivetimes if they’re more appropriate.
What proportion come from outside your area? Local authority clients love this one!
What is your catchment area? Do some local areas provide few visitors? A map tells all.
Add YOUR questions. You don't need to do a full Usage & Attitude survey to get actionable results. A simple survey can still ask the key question – about children, about satisfaction, about which services were used – whatever you want to know!
SPA Visitor Analysis reports and maps provide private sector shopping centres and visitor attractions with hard information on which to base a detailed marketing plan – who to target, where and how. Public sector clients focus more on geographical and social variations in service use, the catchments of local facilities (e.g. branch libraries), and any areas poorly served.
Food for Thought
What you’ll get out of your Visitor/Customer Survey depends on the questions you ask.
Visitors’/Customers' Home Postcodes
Collect customers' Postcodes, and your results could include:
MOSAIC Profile of customers: mix of visitors by 11 MOSAIC Groups (or SIC for B2B)
Distance Profile of customers: numbers of visitors by distance band.
Customer Map: a dot map of visitors' home postcodes – suggesting the catchment area.
Catchment Penetration Map: shaded by concentration of customers v resident population.
Census Data Profile: social class, household & age profiles for the areas providing visitors – an alternative to MOSAIC if certain kinds of areas are thought to yield very many/few visitors.
Time/Date of Visit or Other Questions Splitting Visitors into Types
Record the time/date of the visit, or ask questions which split visitors into Types, (e.g. with/without children, using Service A/B/C/Two+) and your results could include:
Time of Day & Day of Week Profiles: number of visitors by time of day, day of week etc.
Numbers of Visitors by Type: establishing the relative sizes of your main client groups
Profiles by Type: MOSAIC, Census & distance profiles split by Type of visitor or day of week
Questions Collecting Numerical Values
Collect numerical data (amount spent, satisfaction 0-5, number in group, etc) and you could get:
Average value by MOSAIC: which MOSAIC Groups spend least or grumble most?
Average value by Type: are some types of visitor bigger spenders or more satisfied?
Average value by Day of Week: do weekend visitors spend more or come in bigger groups?
BUT REMEMBER...
Your guiding principle must to focus on what you want to achieve. This is crucial to the design of your survey questionnaire. Don't even think of adding questions or specifying output just to look good! Results which aren’t relevant to your objectives are a waste of your money.
Though SPA champions the power of the Postcode in understanding visitors/customers, we have no hidden agenda to insinuate Postcodes where they’re not needed. We want to help you find out what you need to know, at a worthwhile cost. And we won't do that by encouraging you to spend money on irrelevancies! So if you are interested ONLY in the satisfaction levels of visitors – and not what kinds of people are dissatisfied – you will have no need for MOSAIC profiles of satisfaction scores. Our central question should always be "Will this tell us something that we need to know?"
Sample Sizes
Interview too few people and your results won’t be statistically reliable, so we normally recommend surveying at least 250. Allowing for those giving incomplete, incorrect or foreign Postcodes, this should yield about 200 valid Postcodes for quantitative analysis - the minimum we’d normally profile or split into simple groups. You’ll need larger numbers for more detailed splits. If in doubt, go for the largest sample practicable, or ask for our advice. Smaller numbers are fine for gathering qualitative information (impressions & patterns of thought) where statistical significance is unimportant.
Your Survey Step by Step:
| 1 | Design the Survey Sheet | 6 | Analyse the Results |
| 2 | Test the Survey Sheet | 7 | Prepare Tables |
| 3 | Print the Survey Sheets | 8 | Prepare Maps |
| 4 | Run the Survey yourself | 9 | Prepare Presentation |
| 5 | Key in the Responses | 10 | Write Report |
1 Design the Survey Sheet
SPA will design your survey for you. For the lowest survey cost, your survey sheet might be just one line per respondent – with the date in a header to save space on each line. Designed landscape in Excel, it's amazing what you can fit in. Collect visitors Postcodes, and we can tell you what kind of people they are, how far they came, and where they live. We can even map them for you. The rest of the line can then be tick boxes, or slots for simple answers (e.g. amount spent). Use a separate "box" for each letter of the Postcode, and one for each tick and each numeric digit.
Even if you need more than one line per respondent, we might still put 4 or 6 entries on a page. When asking for opinions, however, respondents mustn’t see each other's answers: give each one a new page. If you’re asking several questions, you’ll be into at least a page per respondent anyway. And each questionnaire will take longer – so get customers to fill them in!
2 Test the Survey Sheet
Once we’ve designed a survey sheet, we try it out to make sure everyone understands it and fills it in the same way. This may not be quite so important if you’re going to get your own staff to fill it in for each respondent, but it is vital if you’re asking customers/visitor to fill it in themselves. We don't want to use a Survey Sheet with a design fault which makes it easy to misinterpret – or difficult to key-in.
3 Print the Survey Sheets
Except where very large volumes are required, photocopying is usually preferred – being faster and far more flexible should a few extra sheets be needed owing to wastage.
The example (left) is a “one line per respondent” visitor survey which might be appropriate for a tourist attraction. The survey collects each customer’s Postcode, the type of party or group, and the part(s) of the attraction to be visited. Surveying customers when leaving is often preferable but may require more staff.
4 Run the Survey Yourself
SPA supplies the survey sheets to you so you can do the survey yourself. Plan to run it over a full, continuous calendar period (e.g. every day for a week, or month). Avoid distortions due to the inclusion/exclusion of school/bank holidays. Aim for genuinely representative data. If it is impractical to cover every visitor/customer, systematically ask every third, every tenth... or whatever will work. Try to record actual numbers of customers in each period – so survey results can be checked for bias and reweighted if necessary. To compare month-on-month volumes or for detailed breakdowns, you will need larger samples than simply to analyse visitors/customers as a whole. If in doubt, discuss your aims with SPA for advice on the appropriate survey period, sampling strategy and sample size.
"One line per respondent" surveys, you may prefer your own staff to complete for customers. If not, have several sheets comb-bound together (or in a clip board) on a counter or other writing surface. This allows you to enter headers (e.g. dates), to discourage joke entries, and to collect up completed sheets at regular intervals. For longer surveys, you’re likely to need plenty of table space and a tray or ballot box for completed questionnaires. Let people take away the questionnaire for completion later, and you’ll find that few are returned – even if you provide Freepost envelopes. Best not!
5 Key in the Responses
To minimise data problems, SPA will normally key in completed survey sheets for you. Rocket science it isn’t, but we still need to get it right. If you want to do the keying yourself to keep down costs, use Excel or Access and show us a sample before you do the lot. Each respondent should be a row, each question a separate column. Most problems stem from numeric data keyed as text, wrongly keyed Postcodes (letter "O" as zero, "S" as five, etc), or impossible combinations of (e.g. mutually exclusive) answers. Finally, if your Survey Sheet includes headers (e.g. dates, branch codes etc), that data must be attached to all relevant respondents – a simple “copy and paste” job.
6 Analyse the Data
SPA has specialist software to check Postcodes, and to attach grid references, lifestyle codes and Census data. This enables us to work out how far your visitors/customers have travelled, what kinds of people they are, and how they compare with the population at large. Once we’ve done this prep work, it’s easy to count up the answers to all your survey questions in Access or Excel. At this stage, results are raw counts with no statistical magic to help turn them into meaningful information.
7 Prepare Tables
We usually produce final tables in Excel. Quickly and easily, it enables us to do re-weighting, work out percentages, calculate index scores, and add anything else needed to provide an understanding of what the survey results actually mean. But producing tables which are intelligible and attractive isn’t a minor matter. Excel also allows us to vary the number and width of columns at will, to colour-code the cells in a table, and to persuade all the resulting printed output to fit the page – making it easier to get exactly what you want without the risk of needing coronary aftercare services!
8 Prepare Maps
Results of surveys that collect customers’ Postcodes can usually be mapped, though what is worthwhile – and looks good – will depend on the nature of the survey. Where appropriate, we may compare the distribution of respondents with that of the population at large – identifying areas where customer are concentrated or few and far between. Customer satisfaction, delivery times and other variables can also be mapped if a significant geographical pattern might be expected.
9 Prepare Presentation
For presenting survey results – especially to non-specialists – it is hard to beat the visual impact of a slide show. SPA therefore recommends Microsoft PowerPoint as the best way to get over what your survey results mean. We normally return all the survey results in a single PowerPoint presentation – putting everything in one place, in a form which is easy to review and easy to share with others.
10 Write Report
SPA offers a full written analysis of survey results. Reports are supplied as Word documents for in-house editing/amendment as appropriate. Costs depend on the content of the survey and the report’s audience. However, detailed write-ups are not in vogue, and most clients say “no thanks”.
Where to Start
To keep it really simple, just phone SPA on 01926 334978, Contact Us and fill in our Enquiry Form, or email us at surveys@spamarketing.co.uk ideally including the following information:
your full name, organisation name, address, telephone number and email address
a brief summary of the purpose of your survey (and your broader objectives if relevant)
a list of the kinds of questions you want to ask
the numbers you would expect to interview and/or your budget
the kind of information you want back
the approximate period/dates when the survey would ideally take place
OR download a copy of Survey Design: 20 Top Tips & Silver Bullets which includes a Survey Outline & Quotation Request. It’s in pdf format (click here for the free Acrobat Reader).
What Will It Cost?
Our standard service includes designing, copying, testing and supplying your survey sheets, keying-in data from those completed, analysing them, and preparing a PowerPoint presentation of the results. Unless we agree to the contrary, you will be responsible for all aspect of survey administration, including asking respondents to fill in the questionnaires, and returning completed sheets to SPA for analysis.
Once we have the information listed above, we will give you an indication of likely costs based on our recommended sample sizes, questionnaire layout, survey design, and so on. We will then discuss with you any aspects of our proposal which you may wish to change. Once a final approach has been agreed we will give you a firm costing and timescale for completion of the work. We will then invoice 50% of the agreed fee – payable before survey sheets are supplied – at which point your survey work will begin.