Rating: 
Summary: Good for beginners, great for the pros
Review: If you are a professional market researcher this book is far too elementary. For instance, you probably don't need standard deviation explained to you.If you are a web developer, the examples seem downright amateurish. For instance, the authors provide some Javascript code for selecting website visitors at random, with the instruction that you will need to change variables for it to work for your purposes. That's what functions that accept parameters are for: then you can leave the core code alone and re-use it as often as you want. Worse yet, the authors refer to "Tickle" as an alternative to ASP or CGI. It would seem they have not done their research. It's "Tcl", or Tool Command Language. Yes it is pronounced "Tickle", but the fact that they don't know how to spell it would seem to indicate they have only heard about it and haven't read anything about it, which is further supported by their assertion that Tcl/Tickle needs to run on Windows. This is patently untrue: like Perl (not "Pearl") it was originally developed for Unix and only more recently has been ported to Windows. This book is especially at its worst if you have both market research and web development experience. For instance, the authors suggest using cookies and javascript for randomizing sample to avoid bias. However, they never mention that users can turn off both of these features. Excluding people who turn off cookies and Javascript would introduce a similar bias as not reaching unlisted numbers in telephone research. Now that I've bought this book, the only value I can see that I will get from it is for examples about how not to do web surveys.
Rating: 
Summary: How to NOT conduct web surveys
Review: If you are a professional market researcher this book is far too elementary. For instance, you probably don't need standard deviation explained to you. If you are a web developer, the examples seem downright amateurish. For instance, the authors provide some Javascript code for selecting website visitors at random, with the instruction that you will need to change variables for it to work for your purposes. That's what functions that accept parameters are for: then you can leave the core code alone and re-use it as often as you want. Worse yet, the authors refer to "Tickle" as an alternative to ASP or CGI. It would seem they have not done their research. It's "Tcl", or Tool Command Language. Yes it is pronounced "Tickle", but the fact that they don't know how to spell it would seem to indicate they have only heard about it and haven't read anything about it, which is further supported by their assertion that Tcl/Tickle needs to run on Windows. This is patently untrue: like Perl (not "Pearl") it was originally developed for Unix and only more recently has been ported to Windows. This book is especially at its worst if you have both market research and web development experience. For instance, the authors suggest using cookies and javascript for randomizing sample to avoid bias. However, they never mention that users can turn off both of these features. Excluding people who turn off cookies and Javascript would introduce a similar bias as not reaching unlisted numbers in telephone research. Now that I've bought this book, the only value I can see that I will get from it is for examples about how not to do web surveys.
Rating: 
Summary: Handbook means reference, and this is not a reference
Review: There is some good information in this book but for the most part it is far too simple. For instance, almost no attention is paid to the critical topic of validating user data. I've heard this should at the least be done on the server, and possibly on both the client machine (using Javascript) and the server. Again, no useful information is presented on the matter of preventing respondents from going back and changing data once they have entered it. These are a couple of issues that have been encountered by market researchers who have already managed a web survey or two. While this book cannot be all things to all readers, it does claim to be a handbook. Handbook means reference, and I expected these topics to be covered better.
Rating:
Summary: Good for beginners, great for the pros
Review: This book is an essential tool, not for anyone who wants to conduct web surveys, but for anyone who wants to conduct them well. Grossnickle and Raskin impart hard earned knowledge in a manner easy for a layman to understand. Call it simplistic if you will, but these 2 have been in the web from the start (read their bio). This book helped me to answer questions I didn't even know I needed to ask.
Rating:
Summary: the online marketer's bible
Review: This book is packed with good information. I saw the review in Wired,
and couldn't agree more. I've been using the resources identified in
the book and on the companion website. My company did a little
research with some free web survey technology, which wasn't very
useful. Not only does this book explain why (in a way I can
understand and explain to my managers) but it also explains how to do
it right. Lots of good examples thrown in as well. We're gearing up
to run some surveys, and so far, all is well. ... -- I suppose this
book isn't for statisticians, but then, the authors say that up front.
All in all, this is one of the better "how to" books I've
seen for the web.
Rating:
Summary: Top resource for reaching and responding to your customers
Review: This book is packed with good information. I saw the review in Wired,
and couldn't agree more. I've been using the resources identified in
the book and on the companion website. My company did a little
research with some free web survey technology, which wasn't very
useful. Not only does this book explain why (in a way I can
understand and explain to my managers) but it also explains how to do
it right. Lots of good examples thrown in as well. We're gearing up
to run some surveys, and so far, all is well. ... -- I suppose this
book isn't for statisticians, but then, the authors say that up front.
All in all, this is one of the better "how to" books I've
seen for the web.
Rating:
Summary: Top resource for reaching and responding to your customers
Review: This book is packed with good information. I saw the review in Wired,and couldn't agree more. I've been using the resources identified inthe book and on the companion website. My company did a littleresearch with some free web survey technology, which wasn't veryuseful. Not only does this book explain why (in a way I canunderstand and explain to my managers) but it also explains how to doit right. Lots of good examples thrown in as well. We're gearing upto run some surveys, and so far, all is well. ... -- I suppose thisbook isn't for statisticians, but then, the authors say that up front.All in all, this is one of the better "how to" books I'veseen for the web.
Rating: 
Summary: Very valuable information
Review: This is an excellent resource for researchers that wish to collect data via the web. It details out the various methodologies implemented for proper survey research. It also includes very detailed reviews of various survey products and lists the pros and the cons of each one. These reviews gave me a great starting point but I soon found out that many of the reviews are out dated. It seems as if the better tools are likely to release a new, improved version of their software every 6 months or less and sometimes the prices have changed. I suppose that really can't be helped and that is my only complaint.
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