DATA COLLECTION: WHY AND HOW TO START?
WHAT IS DATA COLLECTION?
Data collection is the process of gathering information about a specific subject. It is important to ensure that data is finalized during the collection phase and is collected in a legal and non-ethical manner. Otherwise, the analysis from this data will be inaccurate and may cause consequences later.
THE IMPORTANCE OF DATA COLLECTION:
Data collection is critical for businesses of any size. According to the Office of Research Integrity, data collection is the “process of gathering and measuring information on variables of interest that enables one to answer questions, test hypotheses, and evaluate outcomes”.
In a business context, this offers many benefits, including:
- Collecting data helps businesses learn more about their customers.
- Have a deeper understanding of what is important to your customers.
- Segment your business prospects and customers to deliver better automated marketing campaigns that directly speak more to their biggest concerns as individuals and organizations.
- Improve decision-making process by facilitating data-based decisions.
- Improve reporting and foreseeing, allowing more accurate and long-term potentials for business.
- When it comes to knowing your customers, you know where need to be improved, which helps to increase the revenue and provide a better experience.
- Data collection techniques also play an important role in an organization’s ability to collect proper data.
PRIMARY VERSUS SECONDARY DATA COLLECTION
Primary data is the type of data collected through direct research from first sources, using methods such as surveys, interviews or experiments.
Secondary data is collecting data and information that has been previously collected by another source. For example, if you gather data from the internet, newspapers, and other media sources, this is secondary data collection.
Data collection can be done in a variety of sizes, forms, and complexity levels. Data can be recorded by book, excel spreadsheet manually, or automatically stored, synthesized, calculated into the database by scanning equipment, software.
In a “data lifecycle,” data collection is the second step. Once the data is created, it must be collected for your business use. It can then be processed, stored, managed, analyzed and visualized to help business in decision-making process.
✅ Generation
✅ Collection
✅ Processing
✅ Storage
✅ Management
✅ Analysis
✅ Visualization
✅ Interpretation
Before collecting data, there are a number of factors you need to identify:
- What questions does your business want to answer?
- Which data subjects do the data need to be collected from?
- Timeframe for the collection?
- Which data collection method(s) best fits the needs of the business?
The data collection method chosen by the business should be based on the question the business wants to answer, the type of data, the timeframe, as well as the company’s budget.
7 DATA COLLECTION METHODS USED IN BUSINESS ANALYSIS
Surveys
Surveys are paper or digital questionnaires used to collect both qualitative and quantitative data from subjects. A situation where you can conduct a survey is to gather the feedback of attendees after an event. This can give a sense of what attendees like, what they want, and any fields where you can improve or save money in the next event for a similar target group.
Surveys can be distributed at scale and are inexpensive when using free tools. However, if you want to target a specific group of customers, partnering with market research companies for accurate surveys and time-saving can be worth the money
Tracking transactions
Every time your customer makes a purchase, tracking that data can enable you to make decisions related to marketing, targeting, and better understand the customer base of your business.
Typically, e-commerce and point-of-sale platforms allow you to store data as soon as it is created, making this a seamless data collection method that can benefit in the form of customer insights.
Interviews and Focus Groups
Interviews and focus groups include speaking directly to subjects about a specific topic or issue. Interviews tend to be 1-1 face-to-face, and focus groups are usually made up of several people. You can use both to collect qualitatsive and quantitative data.
Through interviews and focus groups, you can gather feedbacks from people in your target group about new product features. Seeing them interact with your product in real time and recording their reactions and responses to questions can provide valuable data about the product features to pursue.
As is the case with surveys, these collection methods allow you to ask your audience whatever they want about their opinions, motives and feelings regarding your product or brand. However, it also might lead to biased answers, so asking questions using words that are not misleading or on a certain side.
One disadvantage of interviewing and conducting focus groups is that they can be time-consuming and expensive. If you plan to conduct them yourself, it can be a lengthy process. In order to avoid this, you can hire a market research facilitator to represent your business to organize and conduct interviews.
Observation
Observing people interacting with your site or product may be useful for data collection because of the benefits it provides. If your user experience is confusing or puzzled, you can witness it in real-time.
However, setting up observation sessions can be difficult. You can use a third-party tool to record a user’s journey through your site or observe the users’ interaction with a beta version of your site or product.
Although less accessible than other data collection methods, observation allows you to see firsthand how users interact with your product or website. You can leverage qualitative and quantitative data gathered from this approach to improve and increase your likelihood of success.
Online tracking
To collect behavior data, you can implement pixels and cookies. These are all tools that track users’ online behavior on websites and provide insights into content they are interested in and often interact with.
You can also track user behavior on your company’s website, including what parts are of most interest, whether users are mistaken when using, and how long they spend on product pages. This helps you improve the design of your site and makes it easier for users to navigate to the section they want.
Inserting pixels is usually free and relatively easy to set up. While setting cookies may come with a fee, it is worth the quality of the data you will receive. Once pixels and cookies are set, they automatically collect data and do not require much maintenance (if any).
It’s important to note: Tracking online behavior can have legal and ethical privacy implications. Before tracking a user’s online behavior, make sure you comply with your local and industry data security standards.
Online forms are beneficial for collecting qualitative data about users, especially demographic data or contact information.
This method is relatively inexpensive and simple to conduct, and you can use it to create content “portals” or applications, such as webinars and email newsletters.
You can then use this data to keep in touch with people who might be interested in the business’s products, build demographic profiles of existing customers, and during remarketing, such as automated email scenarios and content recommendations.
Follow social media
Monitoring your company’s social media channels to attract followers is a way to track data about your business’s customers’ interests and motivations. Many social media platforms have built an internal analytics system, but there are also third-party social platforms that provide more detailed, organized information that is analyzed from multiple channels.
You can use data collected from social media to determine which issues are most important to your followers. For example, you may notice that the number of interactions increases significantly when your company posts about its sustainability efforts.
SUMMARY
No matter which data collection method you choose to learn more about your customers and prospects, it’s important that you understand that the data you collect is valuable only if it is consistent, standardized, and of high quality. Different primary data collection methods may be suitable for different types of organizations.
Data collection is the process of gathering information about a specific subject. It is important to ensure that data is finalized during the collection phase and is collected in a legal and non-ethical manner. Otherwise, the analysis from this data will be inaccurate and may cause consequences later.
Data collection is the process of gathering information about a specific subject. It is important to ensure that data is finalized during the collection phase and is collected in a legal and non-ethical manner