Insticator Questionnaire
An interactive questionnaire for article readers
OVERVIEW
Insticator is an ad tech company that wanted to expand into market research. In addition to offering standard display ad units to publishers, Insticator was developing an interactive questionnaire that publishers could put on their websites to poll article readers about content topics, as well as personal preferences and attributes in exchange for points, which could be redeemed for rewards.
With this ‘embed’ publishers could learn more about their audience (making audience profiling more precise, and thereby increasing ad revenue as well), while respondents would be compensated for the data they shared, and Insticator would benefit as the platform provider.
But we needed to understand if readers would be willing to engage in this kind of experience on publisher websites, and if such a product would be viable for publishers as well.
OPPORTUNITY
Validate the MVP research and rewards embed.
RESEARCH
I facilitated a series of research and design sprints to speak with over 30 paid research participants and article readers about their experiences with existing research platforms, and to test our embed prototypes. I also ran some embed preference tests, conducted competitive analysis on other B2C research products, and coordinated a few live product A/B tests and multivariate tests to optimize the embed.
The core insights gained across eight studies were:
• Embed page placement was important– in-article placement was perceived to be more trustworthy than margins
• Embed visual aesthetics needed to be improved, and some functionality clarified
• Respondents wanted a reasonable questions to rewards ratio
• Sequencing of questions mattered– content related questions needed to come first, followed gradually by more more specific personal questions
• Respondents wanted direct payments, or a universally accepted gift card as compensation for answering questions
• Interstitial explainer screens were perceived to be unnecessary and hurt quantitative engagement rates
• Special survey offers converted better when formatted in a similar way to previous questions
• Embed page placement was important– in-article placement was perceived to be more trustworthy than margins
• Embed visual aesthetics needed to be improved, and some functionality clarified
• Respondents wanted a reasonable questions to rewards ratio
• Sequencing of questions mattered– content related questions needed to come first, followed gradually by more more specific personal questions
• Respondents wanted direct payments, or a universally accepted gift card as compensation for answering questions
• Interstitial explainer screens were perceived to be unnecessary and hurt quantitative engagement rates
• Special survey offers converted better when formatted in a similar way to previous questions
Conducting user research interviews and prototype testing
DESIGN
The primary design goal was to address the research insights, make the questionnaire more trustworthy, and create a more attractive research and rewards experience.
We removed elements that were either misunderstood, disliked, and/or unused, and added new features and elements to enhance the respondent experience.
RESULTS
We validated user demand for an Insticator B2C research product, rolled out the questionnaire embed to a number of publishers, and increased its engagement rate by over 50%.
Over time the research concept was deprioritized in favor of a more simpler content engagement and advertising model. Many respondents ultimately didn't feel comfortable disclosing personal profiling information required for research inside of an embed on publisher sites, and publishers didn’t want respondents to leave their ‘walled garden’ to carry on with another experience redeeming points for answering questions.
So naturally the embed evolved into more of a simplified, sleek, content engagement questionnaire optimized for publishers with relevant sponsored content sprinkled in.
Publisher Analytics Dashboard
UI designs for the Insticator embed and advertisement metrics dashboard
Brand Design
Sub-brand identities and banner ads for Insticator's product suite
