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• We find an online panel we want to use, based on what kind of users they offer in our region, how much they charge, and whether their participant system can work with our online testing tool. This usually involves studying their website and emailing them specific questions.
  
  
• We set up an agreement with the panel company, specifying how many users we want and how much we will pay for that number of responses.
  
  
• We configure our online study to receive participants from the panel. Usually this involves receiving a “participant identifier” from each incoming participant, then notifying the panel when that participant has completed the study (so the participant can earn their reward from the panel company).
  
  Some tree-testing tools let us configure this as part of our study. Others may require us to do a bit of extra work or ask the vendor to help us set it up, or may require us to ask each participant for their identifier so we can send it back to the panel company later.
  
  
• We configure our study to return participants to the panel after the study. This informs the research company that their participant has completed our study and can be rewarded. The company should supply us a URL to use.
  
  
  

In terms of quality of the results we get, research panels follow the same caveat as most other recruiting methods – we will always get a small percentage of participants who race through the test and give “dummy” answers, just so they can get the reward.

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