Website Mystery Shopping

Qualitative marketing research uses different kinds of tools in order to achieve certain research goals. Some of those tools are mobile research where the mobile phone is used as a tool in gathering data. There are focus groups that are basically groups of people participating in a study and meeting every week allows them to talk about their tasks. The members of the group may all be from the same area or from different parts of the world – which leads them to have online group discussions instead of face to face ones.

Mystery shopping is another tool used by qualitative marketing researchers. A company would hire a participator to do various things. The participant is a mystery shopper who would act out different scenarios in a store by impersonating different customer profiles. Some assignments would be to ask certain questions, make complaints, or even act in a certain way. These are done in order to check:

• If the employees are adhering to company policies and standards
• If the customers are given service they need or expect
• If the current system of service or product is efficient or competitive enough
• If there are things about the companies services or products that need to be improved or changed

Frankly, mystery shopping can be done for many other reasons aside from the ones above but if you take that concept and apply it to website mystery shopping, there are only a few things that are different. One is that the shopping is done online, second is you are tasked to visit a wide variety of online shops to fill out surveys, try new products, look for points of improvement in the products or services. This is a new job opportunity that allows the secret shopper to work from home and earn. Joining is just like any other job – it’s free to apply.

Mystery shoppers are also tasked to do usability testing. Others might confuse this with just looking to see if the website looks attractive enough, but to look deeper. As an online shopper, the website is like the store. The way the store is arranged may affect the way shopping is done. For example, the website may be attractive but it may not meet the functions an online shopper would look for. Each company has their own engineers who create and maintain their online sites but the real testing only happens when they receive reliable feedback from fresh eyes. It’s like asking someone to proofread an article you have written. After writing it for so long you were not able to see that some things were overlooked. Those things may be little but that does not mean it’s insignificant. These are part of the things secret shoppers must be able to find and maybe suggest solutions for.