The Official Findfocusgroups.com Blog

Some of you might know that Findfocusgroups.com was featured in Reader’s Digest May 2007 issue last year. Andrea Cooper, a writer from RD, contacted me and set up an interview over the telephone. She was writing an article on easy ways to make money and she wanted to feature our site. A friend of hers had used Findfocusgroups and told Andrea about it. During the interview I explained how I started the site and how focus groups work. Needless to say I was thrilled to see my name and website mentioned in the May 2007 issue. In addition to being in print, a web-article was also posted and we still receive traffic to this day from that link. You can check out the article here.

It’s been about a year and the traffic to the site has grown over 200% since the article was published. When I think about it the success I feel the need to thank everyone who tells their friend about the site. Thank you so much!

At this stage Findfocusgroups is in a good place. I’m happy with it. Visitors seem to be happy with it.

I’m curious if you would like anything else added to the site. I would really appreciate your feedback.

Are there any improvements you think need to be made?

Is there anything that could be done that would help you in your search for focus groups?

Do you want to interact with other visitors?

Do you have any questions about the focus group process?

Do you feel like anything is incomplete?

I am thinking about adding a section where people can ask questions they have about focus groups. They would be able to ask questions about any part of the focus group process. I would answer some and I would also have colleagues that work in market research answer them. I believe a section like this would help out a lot of people. Let me know what you think. Thanks!

(mt) Media Temple would like to notify you and the Contacts on your Account of upcoming maintenance that may briefly affect one of your hosting related services.

DATE/TIME WINDOW:
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Friday, Feb 8th 2008 9:00 PM - Saturday, Feb 9th 2008 2:00 AM Pacific Time

I have heard loud and clear that people want the search back. It’s funny how before I would get complaints about how the search was inneffective. Now I’m getting complaints that there is no search!

Anyway…

I will be bringing the search function back tonight. It will be slightly different but it will be back.

So, feel free to stop stoning me via email. Kidding :)

Edit: New information regarding search

Simplicity

Findfocusgroups.com has received its latest update. We can call this Version 3.0.

I put a lot of thought into this new design. My new direction: Simplicity. From the start, I always tried to keep the site simple and easy to navigate, but I would still get weekly emails asking how to use it.

One common email was:

“When I searched my state all of the focus groups were expired.”

This was a common problem for cities that didn’t get many focus groups. For example, people would search for their state and try to access a listing that I posted in 2005. This is a main reason I removed the search function from the site. Understandably, I don’t want people to be directed to expired listings.

So, to reach the goal of simplicity, the site now has 4 pages of the most recently listed focus groups. From my own experience, I know that most studies get filled up within 2-3 days, so your best bet in getting a focus group is to apply only to the newest ones, not ones from several weeks ago. I don’t want the site’s users to waste their time signing up for groups that are probably already filled up. (Hopefully you agree.)

I also cleaned up the actual listings by taking out the Categories and Compensation columns. I felt the Categories were a bit redundant based on the listing title, while the Compensation was either not known or too vague. In other words, these two things just weren’t always as informative as I originally thought they were.

Alerts

Alerts have been discontinued. The alert system was created to email visitors once focus groups were added to their city. The alerts became such a success that each city had hundreds (sometimes thousands) of people subscribed to an alert, which unfortunately ended up taking a huge toll on the email server. Consequently, not everyone got the email alerts at the same time, and I felt that was a little unfair.

Instead, visitors are now encouraged to sign up for the RSS feeds, which you can use to stay up-to-date with listings. Feeds have been created for the top focus group cities, while there is also a main RSS feed that informs people of how many focus groups were added to the site for the whole day.

Share and Report

Two new features I’m excited about are the ‘Share’ and ‘Report’ buttons.

Share - Ever see a cool focus group that you think your friends would be good for? Now you can send them an email about it directly from the site. You can even email yourself if you’d like to check out a focus group listing later on.

Report - Visitors should use this feature to alert me when a posting has expired. This will help keep the site clean and up-to-date.

Mobile

Lastly, the site is more mobile friendly. Whenever you visit Findfocusgroups.com from a cell phone you will automatically be redirected to the site’s mobile version.

Well, that’s all for now. Please let me know if you have any comments or questions. Thanks!

Recently Findfocusgroups.com was lucky enough to be mentioned on some of the most popular forums!

Here are the posts where we were mentioned:

• Slickdeals.net 
• FatWallet.com

Thanks to the original posters for telling other people about the site!