4specs Survey Results
How Do Specifiers Find and Use Your Product Information?
- 2011 Google Analytics Study - Executive Summary - 88 advertisers provided 4specs with their "All Traffic Sources" referrer page for a 30 day period.
- Spreadsheet showing individual company results, with company name removed.
- 2008 User Survey - 6 page summary - Research was conducted by Verified Audit Circulation
- Commercial & Institutional. 74% of our users are doing institutional and commercial work. Institutional is even bigger than commercial.
- Mostly Architects and Specifiers. About 43% of our users are specifiers and about 43% are architects. Specifiers do a higher volume of work – and 65% of the specifiers use us EVERY DAY.
- Loyalty. Users tend to pick one website for their product research and stick with it. Very few of our users also rely on other construction directories and aggregators.
- Internet Reliance. Our users estimate that 62% of their product research relies on the Internet, vs. 15% from all print sources (manufacturers' binders was #1), 15% from product/sales reps, and 5% from trade shows.
- 2008 User Survey - 51 page report - 194k pdf - more detail plus pages of comments filled into the open question areas.
An independent research survey conducted for 4specs by Verified Audit Circulation. This was a survey of all 1,081 CSI (Construction Specifications Institute) Certified Construction Specifiers and members of SCIP (Specification Consultants in Independent Practice). A total of 285 telephone surveys were completed (26.4% of the population).
- 2006 Survey - Verified Audit Report Full Report (including Executive Summary) - (PDF)
- Questions used for phone surveys (PDF)
Findings:
- Specifiers were twice as likely to use the Internet as print for product research. And 86.7% of their Internet research takes them to your website, either through 4specs, Google, Yahoo, or directly.
- 72.7% of respondents named 4specs as their most frequently used industry specific Internet product research tool (vs. 15.2% for Sweets, 7.3% Arcat, 4.9% First Source).
- 4specs' greatest strength is among high-volume, full-time specifiers. For instance, 41.7% of full-time independent specifiers use 4specs daily and 66.7% use us weekly. These professionals average 45 projects per year totaling $379 million.
Methodology:
We sent one email to the 150 SCIP (independent specifiers) and 150 registered members of the 4specs discussion forum and posted the survey on the 4specs website for about 3 weeks. The person had to print out the questionaire and fax it back to us. We requested their name and in 95% of the cases got a name and company. We had 113 responses to the survey.
