15 Years of Online Research

It was 15 years ago today that I "programmed" my first Internet-based survey, while working for a local marketing research call center. I think about how far this business has come since then, and I'm simply astounded.

The hot new Web browser "everybody" was using was Netscape Navigator, which was a huge leap forward from Mosiac at the time. I put "everybody" in quotes because very few people had Web access. In fact, to get Web access, I had to go to Computer City and buy "Internet in a box", which was a box of freeware that sold for about $30! Since Web penetration was so low, we pulled this first survey off using plain text Email messages. Not Email invitations to Web surveys, but the Email message was the survey!

To our delight, we got a tremendous response rate on that first project. Almost 95%!

The idea was the respondents were to hit the their Email clients' (Eudora and Pegasus, mostly) reply button, and type Xs into the boxes that represented their responses. Since this was so new to the world, no software for extracting the answers existed... At least that I was aware of. So we printed out every response and performed manual data entry on the whole lot of them.

We actually learned a lot about online data collection during that first survey. For example, we learned that, given the opporrtunity to do so, respondents will take it upon themselves to add and alter survey response choices. How one can quantify those answers, I don't know.

It wasn't long after our first (and only) Email survey that we took this practice to the World Wide Web, and the rest is history.

About a month ago W3 programmed a survey for that first client that hired us to do the Email survey. I offer my deepest heartfelt gratitude for the years we've spent working together. Your business and your friendship are greatly appreciated.