WOW! The past three months since we launched EnRAPTURE on the 9th of May have flown by at Mach speed! Have finally (phew!) got some time to catch up on our breath and put down some of our thoughts and experiences in this blog - which I’ve been meaning to put out there for a while now!
A quick background on why we developed EnRAPTURE… the online survey research industry has grappled with many concerns over the years… the early days were about clients voicing concerns regarding the non-representativeness of the online sample and now the industry has to think about how to deal with the falling survey response rates. Online researchers need to own up to the sins of taking respondents for granted for many years and the several instances of bad research – long, meaningless, boring surveys having been inflicted on respondents. Having participated in setting up a testing many an online survey, I often wondered how people have the patience to take those surveys! Am sure you agree!
As we conceptualized EnRAPTURE, we looked to differentiate on simplicity & ease of use and quickly figured the best way of doing this was via tight integration with the leading survey systems – Confirmit, IBM-SPSS Data Collection (Dimensions) etc. This philosophy has driven most of the development efforts and it was great to be able to establish a strong partnership with Confirmit who saw value in what we were doing and extended to us tremendous support. Working closely with the Confirmit development team, we were able to build EnRAPTURE in a manner such that it is available as an app within Confirmit. This makes EnRAPTURE an extremely easy to use application for Confirmit users.
We were able to launch EnRAPTURE at the Confirmit Community Conference in Las Vegas on the 9th of May and had the great opportunity of being able to give a presentation on EnRAPTURE at the conference.
We were thrilled with the tremendous response we got at the conference (the back-to-back demos were pretty tiring!) and we were all excited with all the great feedback that we got from anyone who saw EnRAPTURE. It was my first trip to Vegas and while everyone’s heard of the casino culture and the unique business ‘eco-system’ that the city has, you’ve got to see it to believe it. Where in the world would you find rows and rows of slot machines at the airport – so you can start gambling as soon as you land!
Everything about the city is ‘over the top’ especially the kitshy architecture on the strip – best viewed from the roof-top bar at The Palms
It’s been quite a journey so far… going back to last year, after several months of discussions, debates, design and re-designs (wireframes!), development and testing, we were finally ready with EnRAPTURE around April. And in this blog entry I want to share some parts of the journey.
It was high time for a solution that enabled researchers to field much better looking and engaging surveys that respondents would actually like to participate in. While the surveys would need to be on par with the other rich content that people encounter online, the market would also needed a solution which is comprehensive, powerful, easy and quick to use, and cost effective as well! EnRAPTURE (which stands for Engaging Respondents Active Participation Through the Use of Rich Elements) is our answer to this need.
We were thrilled with the tremendous response we got at the conference (the back-to-back demos were pretty tiring!) and we were all excited with all the great feedback that we got from anyone who saw EnRAPTURE. It was my first trip to Vegas and while everyone’s heard of the casino culture and the unique business ‘eco-system’ that the city has, you’ve got to see it to believe it. Where in the world would you find rows and rows of slot machines at the airport – so you can start gambling as soon as you land!
Everything about the city is ‘over the top’ especially the kitshy architecture on the strip – best viewed from the roof-top bar at The Palms
Since then, it’s been an unending stream of conducting demos and working on the extremely useful feedback that we have received from customers who have suggested various tweaks to improve EnRAPTURE. If you haven’t signed up for EnRAPTURE as yet, then please do – you can trial EnRAPTURE for free – all we want is your feedback.
Next up was setting up EnRAPTURE for other survey platforms (IBM-SPSS Data Collection {formerly Dimensions} and Nebu) and showcasing EnRAPTURE at the Insight Show in London – but will leave that for the next post.
