The Webinar Blog

The Problem With Post-Webinar Surveys

I am a big fan of post-webinar surveys. They are a great way to check on the effectiveness of your content, gauge audience satisfaction, and gather additional information that can assist in lead qualification. Many (if not most) webinar technologies allow you to add a survey as part of the webinar setup or redirect to an external survey site once the webinar concludes. But almost every survey implementation includes hidden caveats that can trip you up. It is worth knowing what to look for and how to work with your technology's limitations.

1) WILL EVERYONE SEE THE SURVEY?

Some technologies (such as WebEx and GoToWebinar) install application code on each attendee's computer and execute it when they join the webinar. Running a PC program has one huge advantage with regard to surveys… The program knows when it gets shut down and can execute special code at that time. So an attendee can leave the webinar early by closing the webinar window and the software can show them the closing survey.

If your webinar technology runs entirely inside a browser window and proudly advertises "No downloads!" (such as Adobe Connect or AnyMeeting) then it can't do anything if an attendee closes the browser window. Once the browser is closed, the webinar application stops instantly and there is no way to interrupt the process and display the survey. (In case you are wondering, that little dialog box you sometimes see that says "Do you really want to leave, or do you want to stay on this page?" is a standard browser utility and has no power other than to display a text message. Otherwise nasty sites could force you to never leave them!). This means that you are likely to get fewer responses and be biased towards more positive results -- The people who hated your webinar and closed their browser early don't get a chance to give you a negative comment.

 

2) CAN YOU LINK RESPONSES TO INDIVIDUALS?

If your webinar software lets you create and display a survey as part of the webinar setup and operation, it should "know" who is answering. You shouldn't have to ask attendees to fill out their name and email again inside the survey. Responses should be collated along with the rest of attendee details in post-webinar reports so you have everything about them available at a glance. "Beowulf Aandersen entered at 3:17pm, left at 3:24pm, had an IP address in Sweden, and gave us a negative satisfaction rating on the survey." From the attendee perspective, they have already identified themselves upon entering the webinar… they shouldn't have to do so again. And the last thing you want to do as a webinar coordinator is manually synchronize two reports to merge the data for analysis.

But this leads to another problem…

 

3) CAN YOU COLLECT ADDITIONAL RESPONSES LATER?

It's really useful to be able to send out a link to your survey as part of your follow up emails. "In case you didn't have a chance to complete our survey during the session, you can still give us your feedback at this link." Using third-party survey products is an easy way to accomplish this (I often use SurveyMonkey). But now you have to ask respondents to enter their name and email as part of the survey information. And you lose the ability to link responses back into your webinar reports. Everything is separate.

The ideal situation would be for the webinar software to insert a personalized link in each follow up email that automatically identifies the respondent who uses that link. It could then combine the submitted data back into the webinar data records for consolidated reporting. I can't think of a product with this capability off the top of my head (please add a comment if you are a vendor who does this!).

 

4) CAN YOUR SOFTWARE HANDLE DUPLICATE RESPONSES?

Webinato is an example of a webinar product that allows you to set up a survey inside the product. You can display the survey inside your webinar session (maybe as the last thing attendees see while you finish up your Q&A). You can also set the survey to display automatically when the webinar is ended or when a person leaves the session "smoothly" (by using a command button rather than just closing the browser window). A problem arises when someone fills out the survey inside the session and then sees the same survey presented after the session ends. They may believe their initial response didn't get recorded, so they complete the form again. Webinato gets confused in this case. It records the last (updated?) response for each individual, but counts all of their submissions as part of the cumulative totals. You can easily end up with a report showing 50 individual responses and 75 votes in the cumulative summary!

That is a very specific use case situation, but you could run into a similar situation by allowing follow-up responses as in #3 above. If someone fills out the survey a second time, do their responses get added to or updated in their previous entry?

 

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In most cases there is nothing you can do as a webinar host to affect the way surveys are managed in your chosen technology. All you can do is have a good understanding of exactly what happens in these different cases so you know how to interpret the data you receive, what work you need to do during your reporting, and can make intelligent decisions about how to introduce and give instructions for your surveys. Vendors, this is one of those areas where you have the opportunity to differentiate yourself from the competition by giving a richer and more robust implementation. Please do leave comments if you are proud of your survey functionality!

 

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The 10-20-30 Myth

Ah, it's back again. I recently saw somebody making a reference to the 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint as a guideline for presentation design. I wrote about this subject on another blog years ago. Maybe it's time to revisit the subject. I view 10-20-30 the same way I view the similarly misapplied Mehrabian Myth. Rooted in a very specific good idea, the concept takes on a life of its own, misunderstood and abused until it becomes a Frankenstein's Monster, ravaging the countryside, impossible to kill.

In case you are somehow pure and untouched, blissfully ignorant of the 10/20/30 Rule (oh, how I envy you!) the facts are simple enough. In 2005 Guy Kawasaki introduced the concept in a blog post and spent quite some time using it as the basis for speaking gigs. You can see him presenting the subject in a YouTube video from 2006. The rule is short, catchy, and easy to remember. Your presentation should consist of 10 slides delivered in 20 minutes using a 30-point font. That's it.

The problem is that nobody ever seems to remember the context in which Guy introduced and evangelized his Rule. This was advice for startup companies making pitches to venture capitalists. It was based on knowledge of the typical VC audience, venues in which such presentations are given, goals of that one type of presentation, and the competitive "noise" of similar presentations seen by VC's on a daily basis. Kawasaki never promoted it or intended it as a generic guideline that applies to all presentations.

The 10,20,30 Rule (and yes… I keep changing the punctuation because you'll see it referenced differently in different publications) is really a shorthand summation of several well-respected best practices of presentation design. Going through the underlying principles is not as fun as applying numbers and brief absolutisms, but the key ideas are these:

• Cut information to the key fundamentals that achieve your goal and that interest and provide value to your audience. Eliminate fluff and eliminate details best left for reference documents.
• Don't linger too long on a single visual or concept. Continually re-engage your audience's attention with updated content.
• Make your visual elements engaging and easy to take in at a glance so that they support your vocal delivery, not replicate it.

If you are using a presentation to conduct training classes, hold lead generation events for the public, or run team meetings, Guy's numbers may not (and probably do not) apply to you. If you are presenting technical information to a professional audience, the rule almost certainly doesn't apply. But in all cases, the underlying concepts are crucial and need to be followed.

Don't get too caught up in the minutiae of the exact number of slides and the exact amount of time spent on each. If a 20-point or 24-point font lets you fit a key concept point on one line rather than wrapping to two lines, go ahead and use it.

Remember, highly effective people don't have just 7 habits. Better webinars aren't the result of just 10 tips. Numbers are a great way to engage people's attention and get them thinking about the many different techniques that can incrementally improve the effectiveness of your work. But in the end they are marketing gimmicks.

Pay attention to the underlying message and work to make your presentations engaging, valuable, and understandable. If you do that, you can insert whatever numbers you like and create your own "Rule!"

 

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Do You Really WANT Better Webinars?

Q: How many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Only one… But the light bulb has to WANT to change.

I thought of this old chestnut the other day after reading an article by Steve Crepeau on truesalesresults.com. Steve's article was entitled "When Did Quality Die?" and focused on the tradeoff between higher volumes/greater speed versus attention to quality. Steve put this in the context of sales correspondence, but the same argument rages fiercely in the world of presentations (both in-person and remotely via webcast or webinar).

Finding tactics for creating and delivering a good, effective presentation is really not difficult. Pick your favorite authority in this space… Cliff Atkinson, Roger Courville, Nancy Duarte, Nolan Haims, Dave Paradi, Garr Reynolds, or many, many others (who are now angry at me for not including them in this sentence). They and I write books, publish blog posts, give public lectures, and offer training classes on things like slide design, speaking skills, and presentation planning. The information is out there and readily discoverable.

The real problem is that learning a presentation skills tactic is useless if you don't have a commitment to practicing and applying it. It's the same as painting, sports, or computer programming. You can read as many books as you like that describe how to place backspin on the cue ball, or increment an array pointer, or stipple a canvas. If you want to get good at it and be able to execute the skill with quality, you need to be willing to spend time. Time thinking about how you are going to apply the technique. Time spent practicing the technique. Time spent reviewing your failed and successful attempts to see what you need to refine, and what you can now add.

For some reason, people don't seem to apply this viewpoint to webinars. Somebody in Marketing says "We need to hold 12 lead generation webinars this year. Let's grab the head of Product Development next month and have her present something about her product."

The head of Product Development is busy with "her real job" and doesn't have much time to devote to Marketing's webinar. She creates the usual PowerPoint slides filled with full sentences in bullet point format. She presents the information in a monotone, goes long at the beginning and has to rush her final slides, and never directly engages or interacts with the audience. When she is done, she gets no feedback and is never evaluated or compensated based on her presentation skills. Tell me what incentive she has for spending any more time on developing and applying presentation skills? Presentations are an intrusive distraction from her work rather than an integral part of it.

Your webinars present the face of your company to potential or existing customers. They convey whether you are an entity that is trustworthy, reliable, provides useful value, and has the customer's interests in mind. If you don't take the time to develop and apply proper presentation skills, you won't communicate that. If you can't project and communicate that, you probably shouldn't give the webinars.

Quality matters. It's your decision whether you are going to make it matter to you.

 

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How Do You Take Webinar Questions?

Should you let your webinar attendees ask voice questions via telephone or computer mike, or should you require them to type questions into a Chat or Q&A panel?

Letting your audience ask questions by voice adds immediacy and a sense of personal interactivity to your session. In small group meetings or small classroom settings this is definitely the way to go. You want to encourage a conversation with a small audience.

But I am not a fan of taking telephone questions in a large audience webinar or a presentation given to the general public. Here are the reasons:

1) Control over what gets asked
When looking at questions coming in via typed chat, you can pick and choose which questions to address in which order. If you see the same question coming from many different people, you can answer it first and elect to spend more time on it. If you see a question that is highly specific to one person or something that is counterproductive, you can elect to skip it. Every time you open an audio line for a new question, you run the risk of getting a question you don't want to deal with in the webinar.

[SIDE NOTE: Look for the ability in your web conferencing product for presentation team members to mark incoming questions. Many technologies now include the ability to put a priority on a question, or color-code it, or otherwise segment questions for easier handling during Q&A.]

2) Seed questions
If things are going slowly in a telephone Q&A, you can't pretend to have a caller. You have to be obvious about asking one of your own questions. It also takes more concentration and active management to track which participants are waiting to ask a question and to open and close their lines. In a large webinar you never want to just open all the lines and let the audience sort out who gets to talk! Some webinar technologies are poor at matching phone lines to web participants (if they don't enter a personal ID for instance). With typed questions, you can read off one of your seed questions as if it came from the audience -- no one is the wiser.

3) Focus and brevity
I can't tell you the number of times I have heard a telephone question start off like this: "Am I on? Oh, okay. Hi, Ken! I really love your presentation. I've listened to a lot of them in the past. Here's my situation. You see, we give a lot of webinars ourselves... Well, not really a lot... Maybe one every two months. Is that a lot? Well, anyway... When we are giving one of these presentations it seems like there's often a strange thing that happens. Let me try to explain. You see, first we..."   Arrrrggh!!! The rest of your audience has long since stopped listening and you are having a hard time figuring out what the question is. When people type their questions, it forces them to be more concise and gives you the opportunity to further focus the message and get right to the heart of the question when you read it out loud.

4) Audio clarity
Opening up an attendee microphone is always a tense moment for me. Am I going to hear feedback? Volume levels that are uncomfortably loud or imperceptibly soft? Distracting background noises? A heavy accent that I have a hard time understanding?

5) Record keeping
Most web conferencing software lets you save a log of the chat queue. This is useful for answering skipped questions later, building FAQ lists, gauging interest from specific attendees for sales or customer service follow-up, and so on. You lose this capability with audio questions.

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I know of one vendor that has attempted to implement a compromise between audio and typing for audience questions. Webinato (formerly omNovia) has a feature you can enable or disable in your webinars. If enabled, attendees can record an audio question or comment using their microphone. The host or presenter can review submitted audio messages and choose to either paraphrase them for the group or play them back for everyone to hear. It's an innovative approach, but I have found it too hard to monitor and review recordings as a solo moderator while taking care of other webinar duties. I would want to assign a dedicated question management assistant who could devote full attention to reviewing recorded questions and telling me which ones to include during Q&A.

 

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