Quest for Quiescence

This is the second of three reviews that I will be conducting on the Survey Sites used in my online survey experiment. Check out my review of SurveyLion.com if you haven’t already. Greenfield online is a company that provides online data collection for more than 300 marketing research firms. Unlike SurveyLion, Greenfield is not run by a research company. Greenfield is an independent company that focuses on distributing surveys and collecting results for external research firms. According to Greenfield, they are one of the leading online panel companies in the industry. Greenfield considers themselves a global panel which means you have a good chance of receiving suitable surveys no matter where you live. It also means you are likely to receive more surveys to complete. Check out the promotional video from greenfieldonline.com below.

How it works

After a panellist signs up, they will receive emails in their inbox as studies become available. The email contains a link to the survey as well as information such as estimated time to complete, the topic and the incentive value (a cash reward or an entry into a sweepstakes contest).

The sign up process

In order to sign up you will need to provide the following information…

• Name
• Email
• Gender
• Date of birth
• Education
• Income
• Zip Code
• Country Language

After signing up you will be asked to fill out some profiling surveys. You will not be paid for these surveys but they will establish a profile that is used as criteria to provide you with surveys targeted specifically to you. These profiling surveys take a couple of minutes each and include categories such as Personal, Employment/Workplace, Household Technology, Travel, and Personal Finance. In total there are 11 profiling surveys. In terms of privacy, I do not believe I have received any spam emails as a result of signing up with this website.

The Panel Website

The website has four main tabs across the top of the page. My Surveycenter doesn’t really offer anything of value. My rewards shows you how much money you have earned as well as the history of completed surveys and the status of the reward for each. You can also request a payment from this page. My Community is interesting. It offers several community type features such as staff pictures and profiles, news mentions, a forum and even recipes! The My Summary area gives you a summary of earnings, a chance to edit your email address and access to all of you profiling surveys which can be updated at any time to ensure they remain current. Finally, the help section provides contact information in case you have any questions or issues that require support.

Referrals

A referral bonus of $1 is available for every referral who joins and completes at least one survey. To refer someone, you need to enter their name and email into a form from the members area of the panel. This means that you can not send out or post referral links for people to sign up through. This will make it difficult to recruit referrals. At the time of this writing the referral form was not working.

Payment

All cash incentives (referrals and survey completion rewards) are banked and can be seen from within the members area of the panel. At any time you may request a payment by clicking a “Request Payment” button from within the members area of the panel. Greenfield Online makes payments via Paypal which should allow you to get your money very quickly.

Conclusion

Greenfield Online seems like it is capable to deliver a lot of targeted surveys. We’ll just have to wait and see how they stack up against the other panels. At the end of the online survey experiment I’ll be posting a follow-up review based on the experiment results. Stay tuned for that. Also, be sure to check out the reviews of the two other sites used in the experiment. Survey Lion and Opinion Outpost.

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