Holistic customer insights through multi-method research

The same applies to user research: whoever has the choice is spoilt for choice. The range of different research methods is almost inexhaustible and each method scores with its own specific advantages. While qualitative approaches are well suited to uncover individual usage problems, quantitative methods provide representative and reliable customer insights. So why limit yourself to just one method?

Within the last year we at Facit Digital have seen a strong increase in projects that combine several methods. How such a multi-method approach can be successfully implemented is shown in a recent study for Mercedes-Benz conducted by Facit Digital.

Quantitative and qualitative methods combined

A two-stage user test was used, consisting of a quantitative onsite survey and a qualitative UX test, to investigate the newly introduced online purchase function of the Mercedes-Benz used vehicle search.

The quantitative onsite survey was aimed at gaining customer insights from actual online used car buyers. By embedding a layer on the website, customers were able to describe their impressions first-hand while using the online purchase function. In addition, targeted socio-demographic questions enabled the company to get to know and profile the actual users, so that the offer could be targeted to this user group.

A few days after participating in the onsite survey, selected participants recapitulated their user experience in a follow-up survey and thus provided important insights into the actual success rate and reasons for discontinuing the survey. For example, the lack of an opportunity to contact the merchant could be validated as a usage barrier, which was also addressed by potential users in the UX test.

The users' self-disclosures were supplemented by tracking data from Google Analytics. This made it possible, for example, to interpret the results before the fact whether they were new or returning visitors. The tracking data could also confirm, for example, the finding from the UX tests that within the search mask of the used vehicle search, the filter for vehicles that can be ordered online is not understandable enough and was therefore not used frequently.

Accompanying the quantitative research, we conducted a qualitative UX test in the laboratory. This provided in-depth insights into the usability and comprehensibility of the new online purchase of used vehicles and revealed concrete potential for optimization. During the interviews, the participants were able to observe, among other things, how they entered their data into the order form, in order to be able to determine exactly where problems occurred and how this could be improved.

Especially the combination of quantitative and qualitative methods offers great potential for obtaining comprehensive results. On the one hand, qualitative findings from a UX test can be validated by a quantitative survey. On the other hand, qualitative observations complement the quantitatively surveyed user behaviour and provide information on the "how" and "why". The targeted use of different methods helped our customer to gain holistic insights and to be able to adapt his offer even better to the target group.