Running a Focus Group

[TheFilmGod]

I'm running a focus group for a website I'm developing. I'll sit down 20-30 students in front of a computer and ask them to navigate through my website and provide me with feedback. Any tips or suggestions on how I could successfully run a focus groups?

 

Several quick questions-

 

1) Should I put together a survey at the end? For "quantitative data" or numbers?

2) What's the best way to test the functionality/usabilty of the webiste? Ask specific questions, or just ask them for the overall impression?

3) As the focus group moderator, how would I handle people who go on a tangent?

[Philip]

Take a look at eye tracking and heatmaps - they will give you a lot of honest data about how people look at your site.

 

1 - If you're not going for either of the solutions above, yes for sure. I prefer using a scale with a 'rate this feature' - but also have room for them to list specific ideas/comments on each question.

2 - Depends on how many pages you're testing them over. One or two, be specific; more, be more general but ask some specifics.

3 - Thank them for their time and ask them to leave. haha

[.josh]

you can use website tracking tools like omniture's sitecatalyst or yahoo web analytics to gain insight into what people do on your site, what paths they take throughout your site, specify conversion points when user performs an action, gets to a page, etc.. and see what pages/paths produce highest conversion rates, etc..