How did it happen? - Tips for doing in-depth web-based market research

Last week I touched upon how we approach market research at OpenView, based on the 3 pillars:

- Crystal-clear output definition
- Comprehensiveness
- Pragmatic Prioritization

Today, I want to touch upon a few web-based research techniques we have used to ensure that our data set is as comprehensive as possible. Some of these techniques are for direct data collection, some other help us identify additional (online and offline) sources of data for us to use. It is a recursive process in the sense that each round of research and analysis help us gather additional data points AND additional sources of data for the next round of research. The list of techniques is very long so I will just point out the main categories here:

Direct Content Discovery Techniques

General Web Search: Google is still the kingpin of web search and newly added features such as universal search, real time search make it even more useful as a Swiss-knife type of starting point for all research project. Google perfectly balances the simplicity of the interface with very robust advanced search querying syntax.

Content-type specific Web Search: With the explosion of digital content, most of which are freely available in some format on the Internet, even Google has a hard time indexing all contents, especially non-text content such as sound, video, compressed files. While these files do show up in Google search, we always consider complementing our data with very content-type specific search, such as video search, audio search, image search, which allow us to go deeper into the search results than the typical Google universal search.
Content Site-specific Search: In the last 3 years, many start-ups have done an admirable job of creating the "Youtubes" of X, where X is any type of digital content. For example, for online documents and books, we have Scribd, Docstoc, while for Presentations, we have Slideshare, Slide.com, etc. These sites are indexed by Google, but again, the benefits of going to the site is that you will be able to utilize the advanced search features, and you can also see related content, which are great for discovering yet more content relevant to the domain being researched.

Social Media Content Search: With practically everyone on Facebook and other social networks, there is an unfathomably rich amount of data and content available on social networks. Searching in Facebook, LinkedIn and Delicious have become required steps for any project. The amazing thing about social media sites is that they lead you to a full spectrum of sources: documents, people, organizations etc. that are all extremely valuable.

This week, I am attending the Market Segmentation Forum, hosted by OpenView for our portfolio companies and a group of outstanding expansion stage companies in our network that are looking to learn the best practices process for defining their priority target segments and create the competitive positioning in those segments. I am particularly looking forward to the session on primary research techniques, and I fully expect that after the forum, I will come back with a list of new ideas to add to the tools listed here.

In the next post, I will continue with the exploration of research tools, with a focus on web content analysis and inference techniques, such as: