We’ve recently been looking at two salient consultations run by local authorities – online ones in the shape of simple questionnaires. The beauty of digital engagement is the metadata which can reveal rich behavioural insights from participants. And while the sample size is not statistically relevant, our gut feeling is that the similarities reveal something interesting.
Firstly, let’s look at the most popular time of day and day of the week that people respond.
Friday, Saturday and Sunday as popular are clear trends in our view. That’s not entirely surprising – fill out a consultation when you have the freest time. The same goes for time of day – waking hours are most popular (yet still 5% of responses come in the night) with peak hours 6-8pm.
Then there’s the distribution over time of results, which appears to do most of the work in the first three weeks then there is a plateau. One of these consultations also got a PR lift, and it worked.
This signaled to us that there is still merit in 12-week consultations but also that visibility matters throughout the consultation lifecycle.
There was another striking thing too – almost double the number of responses from females compared to males, despite the topics being agnostic.Â
While we’re not going to speculate too hard, it’s clear that understanding natural behaviors can help us refine our online designs and reshape our targeted interventions. With that in mind, next time you look at the output of a consultation, take time to look at the data patterns too.