...

...

One of the strengths of tree testing is that you we can evaluate your our proposed site structure quickly, fix it, and test it again until you we get it right.

To get quick results, an incentive is almost always the way to go. We offer incentives in 90% of the studies we run because we’re not willing to wait for results to dribble in.

...

• Draws are easy to set up.
  You We just need to decide on how much you we want to spend and what our participants would desire at that price point.
  
  
• They let us offer participants an enticing prize.
  For a 5-minute tree test, offering each participant a small reward (say, $5) is not usually feasible. And most people would rather have a chance at winning a big prize than the certainty of getting a very small reward.
  
  

...

• How much the organist offers for other online studies (such as customer surveys). Sometimes this is the organization’s own products or services (which presumably costs them less than the value to the prize winner).
  
  
• How much is likely to motivate the desired audience to participate. For example, you we would probably need to offer more to orthopedic surgeons than to university students.
  
  

To save money and reduce administrative effort, you we may want to combine prize draws across tests. For example, if you’re we’re testing 3 alternative site structures (which means 3 tree tests), you we can probably put all the entrants into the same prize pool. Offering a single $300 prize is a more enticing incentive than offering $100 to the winner of each test. You We just need to make sure that the single prize is something that all of those participants would want.

Given a certain price point, you we also need to pick a prize that your audience desires. A power company might offer $300 off the winner’s next bill, while a software company might offer a full version of their flagship program. If you’re we’re offering a gadget such as an iPad, pitching the latest version will get more interest from your our audience.

Also, be careful to we should choose a prize that appeals to all (or at least most) of your our participants. Being offered a free version of a program that you already own is not much of an incentive.   J

If you have Having trouble thinking up a “custom” prize for your the draw, consider ? Consider one of these generic prizes:

• Gift cards
  These could be vouchers from a specific retailer (such as Amazon or Best Buy), but that may not suit some participants. We prefer to offer generic gift cards that can be used at a variety of retailers; they essentially act as prepaid debit cards that the participant can use at any store or online.
  
  
• Tablets
  These are popular prizes because they’re fun and useful without being as need-specific as mobile phones. We usually offer the winner a choice of an Apple iPad (or iPad Mini, if the budget is smaller) or equivalent-value Android tablet.
  
  

If you we opt for a prize draw, you we escape the need to reward each participant, but you we do need to do a few extra administrative things:

• State the terms and conditions of the draw
  For more on T&Cs, see Writing supporting text in Chapter 8.
  
  
• Collect contact information for draw entrants
  You We need to be able to contact the prize winner, so you’ll we’ll need some kind of contact information from each participant who wants to enter the draw.
  If your our study requires an email address or participant identifier for other reasons, then you we may not need to do anything extra.
  In most of our studies, however, we make anonymity the default. For participants who want to enter the draw, we ask for their email address (and promise that it won’t be used for anything else):
  
  
  
  
• Pick the prize winner and notify them
  Once the tree test is closed, you can we download a list of the participants and pick a random winner. (We use a online random-number generator to do this.) You can We then notify the lucky winner and arrange to get the prize to them.
  
  
• Publicize the prize winner (for example, by including a picture and short blurb about them in your the organization’s public blog), assuming this was stated as a condition of the draw. This highlights how you’re we’re working to make things better for your our customers, and provides a way to get participants generate interest for your our next study.
  
  
  

...