May Newsletter

How can Focus Groups assist you with your
technology projects?

As quickly as technology changes, our customers’ views and habits change as well. Keeping up with public opinion on your brand or initiative can be challenging. The Internet is a great research tool, but can only take you so far when dealing with a specific group or organization’s opinions or feelings about a particular subject. Whether you have an existing application or website that needs to be updated, or are launching a new project, you may feel uncertain about your users or audience’s perceptions to guide your strategy or direction. We recommend using focus groups as a solution to help you navigate with more certainty. A focus group is a small group of people pre-selected by you and brought together in a moderated forum to discuss their ideas, attitudes, feelings and opinions about a particular subject. Properly done, focus groups can provide more meaningful insight and assist you in developing a clearer strategy for technology initiatives. They are relatively quick and easy to set up and execute with far reaching value to the organization.

Our customer approached us to redesign their website with a completely new approach to their message and their audience. The site was about six years old and ready for not only updated technology, but also new messaging and direction. We facilitated their executive team meeting to review and confirm their business objectives as well as current trends and best practices in website development. By clearly defining their business objectives for the site, it was recognized that the site would need to be revamped. They wanted to find out from their diverse business audiences what web and social media practices helped them in making business decisions, as well as finding out how the current website was being utilized.

WTI assisted in the development of their Focus Group planning and conducted four Focus Groups which led to a clear direction for the website redesign process.

When you have applications, automated business processes, intranets or public websites that are outdated or ineffective, consider Focus Groups as your first step to guiding your technology and process direction. By using a third party to assist in the development and execution of focus groups, you will ensure there is no bias or fixed views on the direction or outcome. You can find additional information about Focus Groups for government programs at Howto.gov.

Contact us to discuss how focus groups can help with your next technology project.