Efficient Research: Maximizing the ROI of Understanding Your Customers

In the field of user research, every method is either qualitative, quantitative – or both. Understandably, there’s some confusion around these 2 approaches and where the different methods are applicable. This article provides a handy breakdown of the different terms and where and why you’d want to use qualitative or quantitative research methods.

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Qualitative research

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Let’s start with qualitative research, an approach that’s all about the ‘why’. It’s exploratory and not about numbers, instead focusing on reasons, motivations, behaviors and opinions – it’s best at helping you gain insight and delve deep into a particular problem. This type of data typically comes from conversations, interviews and responses to open questions. The real value of qualitative research is in its ability to give you a human perspective on a research question. Unlike quantitative research, this approach will help you understand some of the more intangible factors – things like behaviors, habits and past experiences – whose effects may not always be readily apparent when you’re conducting quantitative research. A qualitative research question could be investigating why people switch between different banks, for example.

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When to use qualitative research

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Qualitative research is best suited to identifying how people think about problems, how they interact with products and services, and what encourages them to behave a certain way. For example, you could run a study to better understand how people feel about a product they use, or why people have trouble filling out your sign up form. Qualitative research can be very exploratory (e.g., user interviews) as well as more closely tied to evaluating designs (e.g., usability testing). Good qualitative research questions to ask include:

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• Why do customers never add items to their wishlist on our website?
• How do new customers find out about our services?
• What are the main reasons people don’t sign up for our newsletter?

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How to gather qualitative data

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There’s no shortage of methods to gather qualitative data, which commonly takes the form of interview transcripts, notes and audio and video recordings. Here are some of the most widely-used qualitative research methods:

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• Usability test – Test a product with people by observing them as they attempt to complete various tasks.
• User interview – Sit down with a user to learn more about their background, motivations and pain points.
• Contextual inquiry – Learn more about your users in their own environment by asking them questions before moving onto an observation activity.
• Focus group – Gather 6 to 10 people for a forum-like session to get feedback on a product.

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How many participants will you need?

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You don’t often need large numbers of participants for qualitative research, with the average range usually somewhere between 5 to 10 people. You’ll likely require more if you're focusing your work on specific personas, for example, in which case you may need to study 5-10 people for each persona. While this may seem quite low, consider the research methods you’ll be using. Carrying out large numbers of in-person research sessions requires a significant time investment in terms of planning, actually hosting the sessions and analyzing your findings.

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Quantitative research

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On the other side of the coin you’ve got quantitative research. This type of research is focused on numbers and measurement, gathering data and being able to transform this information into statistics. Given that quantitative research is all about generating data that can be expressed in numbers, there multiple ways you make use of it. Statistical analysis means you can pull useful facts from your quantitative data, for example trends, demographic information and differences between groups. It’s an excellent way to understand a snapshot of your users. A quantitative research question could involve investigating the number of people that upgrade from a free plan to a paid plan.

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When to use quantitative research

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Quantitative research is ideal for understanding behaviors and usage. In many cases it's a lot less resource-heavy than qualitative research because you don't need to pay incentives or spend time scheduling sessions etc). With that in mind, you might do some quantitative research early on to better understand the problem space, for example by running a survey on your users. Here are some examples of good quantitative research questions to ask:

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• How many customers view our pricing page before making a purchase decision?
• How many customers search versus navigate to find products on our website?
• How often do visitors on our website change their password?

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How to gather quantitative data

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Commonly, quantitative data takes the form of numbers and statistics.

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Here are some of the most popular quantitative research methods:

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• Card sorts – Find out how people categorize and sort information on your website.
• First-click tests – See where people click first when tasked with completing an action.
• A/B tests – Compare 2 versions of a design in order to work out which is more effective.
• Clickstream analysis – Analyze aggregate data about website visits.

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How many participants will you need?

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While you only need a small number of participants for qualitative research, you need significantly more for quantitative research. Quantitative research is all about quantity. With more participants, you can generate more useful and reliable data you can analyze. In turn, you’ll have a clearer understanding of your research problem. This means that quantitative research can often involve gathering data from thousands of participants through an A/B test, or with 30 through a card sort. Read more about the right number of participants to gather for your research.

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Mixed methods research

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While there are certainly times when you’d only want to focus on qualitative or quantitative data to get answers, there’s significant value in utilizing both methods on the same research projects.Interestingly, there are a number of research methods that will generate both quantitative and qualitative data. Take surveys as an example. A survey could include questions that require written answers from participants as well as questions that require participants to select from multiple choices.

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Looking back at the earlier example of how people move from a free plan to a paid plan, applying both research approaches to the question will yield a more robust or holistic answer. You’ll know why people upgrade to the paid plan in addition to how many. You can read more about mixed methods research in this article:

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• What is mixed methods research?

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Where to from here?

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Now that you know the difference between qualitative and quantitative research, the best way to build confidence is to start testing. Hands-on experience is the fastest path to deeper insight. At Optimal, we make it easy to run your first study, no matter your role or research experience.

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• Explore our 101 guides to user research
• Start a free trial and discover insights that drive real business impact
• How to encourage people to participate in your study – Seemingly one of the hardest parts of conducting research is finding willing participants. It’s actually not that difficult.

Simply put, ResearchOps is about making sure your research operations are robust, thought through and managed. 

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Having systems and processes around your UX research and your team keep everyone (and everything) organized. Making user research projects quicker to get started and more streamlined to run. And robust sharing, socializing, and knowledge storage means that everyone can understand the research insights and findings and put these to use - across the organization. And even better, find these when they need them. 

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Using the same tools across the team allows the research team to learn from each other, and previous research projects and be able to compare apples with apples, with everyone included. Bringing the team together across tools, research and results.

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We go into more detail in our ebook ResearchOps Checklist about exactly what you can do to make sure your research team is running at its best. Let’s take a quick look at 5 way to ensure you have the grounding for a successful ResearchOps team.

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1. Knowledge management 📚

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What do you do with all of the insights and findings of a user research project? How do you store them, how do you manage the insights, and how do you share and socialize?

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Having processes in place that manage this knowledge is important to the longevity of your research. From filing to sharing across platforms, it all needs to be standardized so everyone can search, find and share.

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2. Guidelines and process templates 📝

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Providing a framework for how to run research projects is are important. Building on the knowledge base from previous research can improve research efficiencies and cut down on groundwork and administration. Making research projects quicker and more streamlined to get underway.

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3. Governance 🏛

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User research is all about people, real people. It is incredibly important that any research be legal, safe, and ethical. Having effective governance covered is vital.

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4. Tool stack 🛠

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Every research team needs a ‘toolbox’ that they can use whenever they need to run card sorts, tree tests, usability tests, user interviews, and more. But which software and tools to use?

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Making sure that the team is using the same tools also helps with future research projects, learning from previous projects, and ensuring that the information is owned and run by the organization (rather than whichever individuals prefer). Reduce logins and password shares, and improve security with organization-wide tools and platforms. 

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5. Recruitment 👱🏻👩👩🏻👧🏽👧🏾

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Key to great UX research is the ability to recruit quality participants - fast! Having strong processes in place for screening, scheduling, sampling, incentivizing, and managing participants needs to be top of the list when organizing the team.

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Wrap Up 💥

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Each of these ResearchOps processes are not independent of the other. And neither do they flow from one to the other. They are part of a total wrap around for the research team, creating processes, systems and tools that are built to serve the team. Allowing them to focus on the job of doing great research and generating insights and findings that develop the very best user experience. 

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Afterall, we are creating user experiences that keep our users engaged and coming back. Why not look at the teams user experience and make the most of that. Freeing time and space to socialize and share the findings with the organization. 

We all know that building a robust information architecture (IA) can make or break your product. And getting it right can rely on robust user research. Especially when it comes to creating human-centered, intuitive products that deliver outstanding user experiences.

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But what are the best methods to test your information architecture? To make sure that your focus is on building an information architecture that is truly based on what your users want, and need.

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What is user research? 🗣️🧑🏻💻

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With all the will in the world, your product (or website or mobile app) may work perfectly and be as intuitive as possible. But, if it is only built on information from your internal organizational perspective, it may not measure up in the eyes of your user. Often, organizations make major design decisions without fully considering their users. User research (UX) backs up decisions with data, helping to make sure that design decisions are strategic decisions. 

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Testing your information architecture can also help establish the structure for a better product from the ground up. And ultimately, the performance of your product. User experience research focuses your design on understanding your user expectations, behaviors, needs, and motivations. It is an essential part of creating, building, and maintaining great products. 

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Taking the time to understand your users through research can be incredibly rewarding with the insights and data-backed information that can alter your product for the better. But what are the key user research methods for your information architecture? Let’s take a look.

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Research methods for information architecture ⚒️

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There is more than one way to test your IA. And testing with one method is good, but with more than one is even better. And, of course, the more often you test, especially when there are major additions or changes, you can tweak and update your IA to improve and delight your user’s experience.

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Card Sorting 🃏

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Card sorting is a user research method that allows you to discover how users understand and categorize information. It’s particularly useful when you are starting the planning process of your information architecture or at any stage you notice issues or are making changes. Putting the power into your users’ hands and asking how they would intuitively sort the information. In a card sort, participants sort cards containing different items into labeled groups. You can use the results of a card sort to figure out how to group and label the information in a way that makes the most sense to your audience. 

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There are a number of techniques and methods that can be applied to a card sort. Take a look here if you’d like to know more.

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Card sorting has many applications. It’s as useful for figuring out how content should be grouped on a website or in an app as it is for figuring out how to arrange the items in a retail store.You can also run a card sort in person, using physical cards, or remotely with online tools such as OptimalSort.

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Tree Testing 🌲

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Taking a look at your information architecture from the other side can also be valuable. Tree testing is a usability method for evaluating the findability of topics on a product. Testing is done on a simplified text version of your site structure without the influence of navigation aids and visual design.

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Tree testing tells you how easily people can find information on your product and exactly where people get lost. Your users rely on your information architecture – how you label and organize your content – to get things done.

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Tree testing can answer questions like:

• Do my labels make sense to people?
• Is my content grouped logically to people?
• Can people find the information they want easily and quickly? If not, what’s stopping them?

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Treejack is our tree testing tool and is designed to make it easy to test your information architecture. Running a tree test isn’t actually that difficult, especially if you’re using the right tool. You’ll  learn how to set useful objectives, how to build your tree, write your tasks, recruit participants, and measure results.

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Combining information architecture research methods 🏗

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If you are wanting a fully rounded view of your information architecture, it can be useful to combine your research methods.

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Tree testing and card sorting, along with usability testing, can give you insights into your users and audience. How do they think? How do they find their way through your product? And how do they want to see things labeled, organized, and sorted? 

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If you want to get fully into the comparison of tree testing and card sorting, take a look at our article here, which compares the options and explains which is best and when.