Opportunity: Multi State Website Usability Focus Groups

Troy and I try to maintain the editorial integrity of this blog and stay away from hawking vendor services; however, from time to time, we do see opportunities that we feel might be extremely compelling to our readers. This is one of them!

Indiana based SMARI is offering state tourism offices an opportunity to participate in a "group" based web usability focus group. Oregon participated—and I personally attended—the 2006 version of this study along with Minnesota, Missouri, Montana & Indiana and gleaned some fascinating insights about how consumers use the web for travel research/booking and also how they specifically use state tourism websites to plan their trip (A screen shot from a snippet in the report is featured above). We also received a detailed evaluation of TravelOregon.com and how it compared to our competitive set.

SMARI conducts the facilitated focus groups in a closed lab environment and the panel is recruited based on the participating states' target demographics. The next focus group panel is scheduled to happen on July 30th and while the cost varies on the number of states who join, SMARI assures me that the maximum would be $4,000. If you're interested, please contact SMARI directly.