Online panel. Find the sample you need quickly

An online panel is the most efficient way to access the sample needed for any market research study. Nowadays, most marketing research is conducted using online panels because of the many advantages they offer. Find out how to access an online panel and how to use it effectively in your market research.

What is an online panel?

An online panel is a group of pre-selected people who have agreed to participate in market research. All online panels share certain characteristics.

• Pre-selected participants: All online panels have a large number of people who have been recruited in advance. This broad base allows for the creation of need-specific samples, cross-referenced by demographics, geography, interests or specific behaviours.
• Regular participation: Panelists are regularly contacted to participate in various market research or user experience tests.
• Incentives: All online panels have incentive systems that allow participants to redeem rewards earned for cash, gift cards or donations to various organisations.

Online panels have undergone significant development in recent years, and today, a large majority of market research is conducted using online panel samples.

Advantages of an online panel

When conducting market research, you can request the sample you need from a company with an online panel. This will give you a number of advantages.

• Quality data. This is because they have a stable group of participants who are incentivised to provide accurate information. In addition, online panels employ increasingly sophisticated quality controls to identify and eliminate any suspicious behaviour among panel members, ensuring that only high quality responses are included in study results.
• Longitudinal studies. Online panels allow us to interview panel members repeatedly. For example, we can conduct periodic surveys to understand changes in the purchasing and consumption habits of the same individuals. In addition, online panels facilitate ‘re-surveying’, which allows us to access the same sample to collect additional information when initial responses are incomplete or generate new questions.
• Precise segmentation. It allows you to segment panellists according to demographics, interests or behaviours previously collected. For example, in most online panels, new members provide information about the characteristics of their home, their equipment or their habits. This information is stored and regularly updated, allowing all these information fields to be used to create filters. For example, it would be possible to interview mothers of households with children, drivers of a specific brand of car, customers of an insurance company, regular buyers of a supermarket chain or consumers of a brand of beer. This allows for very precise segmentation of the sample immediately, without the need to ask filter questions to identify participants before sending out the questionnaire.
• Speed. By having panelists already available and willing to participate, the time needed to collect responses is greatly reduced. In fact, you can start collecting data as soon as you are satisfied with your questionnaire.
• Price. Accessing panel participants directly is much more efficient than searching for a new sample each time. That is why online panel market research is more cost-effective.

The We are testers online panel

At We are testers, we have our own online panel of 130,000 people for Spain and Portugal. For other countries, we use samples from internationally recognised online panels. Our proprietary online panel incorporates numerous security and quality measures to guarantee the reliability of the data:

• Strict recruitment rules. Only participants who provide satisfactory and sufficient information are included in the panel.
• Verification of registrations by mobile phone number. This way we ensure the identity of the panelist.
• Captcha to avoid bots
• GeoIP validation to avoid duplicate accounts.
• Automatic technical controls such as unique token assignment, average response time and more…

The online panel has a card and penalty system. Any suspicions are communicated to the panelists so that they can explain them before being expelled from the panel. The system performs constant debugging, removing panelists with suspicious or inactive response patterns.

Access directly to the sample you need

When it comes to selecting samples, our online panel has 400 variables to create an infinite number of profiles:

• Household: household income, household members, household life cycle, characteristics and age of the home, second homes and other properties, home automation and security systems, contracted utilities, rates, pets, vehicles…
• Training: level of training and surveys completed, undergraduate and postgraduate degrees, vocational training, schools where they have been trained, online or face-to-face training channels, knowledge of languages and learning routes, intention to continue training in terms of educational modality and centre…..
• Employment: employment and professional situation, length of service, sector, specialisation, position, decision-making power, type of organisation and size, financial institutions with which the company operates, IT variables, etc.
• Banking and finance: users by primary and secondary bank, length of time as customers, consumers by banking product and length of time, bank by banking product, savings capacity, online banking users, users of bizum and other mobile payment applications, private banking users and personal advisors.
• Insurance: purchase decision-makers when taking out dental, travel and death insurance. insurance taken out for car, motorbike, home, life, health, death, dental and pet insurance, use of insurance in the last 12 months, type of insurance taken out, how each insurance policy is taken out, company taken out and single or shared payment for health insurance.
• Food: type of shop and brand where purchases are made, membership or customer loyalty programmes, physical and online shopping habits, frequency, responsible party, average monthly expenditure, basket composition, organic and Km 0 food products, predisposition to innovation, white label consumption, etc.
• Telecommunications: purchasing decision-maker in contracting suppliers, contracted services, landline, mobile, internet and pay TV provider, on-demand TV platforms, operating system and mobile brand, payment method for mobile phone service, company phone, with its operating system, company and payment method.
• Health: vision problems, hearing problems, oral health, diagnosis of diseases, types of diabetes, smoking habits, types of food, types and degrees of disability or dependence, use of online channels for health-related aspects…

We regularly add new crossover fields to our online dashboard, so when you are thinking about conducting market research, check out the possibilities offered by our sample. Our research experts will be happy to give you all the details and provide you with a quote for the sample you need. Get in touch today.