Website focus groups
Ask 100 customers why they left.
Simulated customers read your website and tell you, in their own words, why they would or would not act. About 15 minutes, $99 once.
Hosting customers get the first 100 participant group on each hosted site included.
How it works
A real focus group, without the room, the recruiter or the week.
Each participant is its own agent playing one buyer. Not one model asked a hundred times, a hundred different people with different reasons.
1. Write the brief
Who should take part, what counts as converting (request a quote, start a trial, book a table) and up to five questions of your own. Written the way you would brief a real focus group.
2. Approve the audience
We research who buys from businesses like yours and show you the mix, with the share of each group and what they want and worry about. Change a share if you know your customers better.
3. They browse
Each participant is written as a real person, with their own budget, urgency, patience and device, and reads your site page by page, choosing from the links on each page, until they act, leave or run out of patience.
4. Read the report
Conversion overall and by group, the reasons the rest did not act, counted, what people liked, what put them off, where they stopped, your questions answered and the fixes, with quotes.
The report
Reasons with numbers behind them, and the quotes to go with them.
Every count is counted from the participants' answers, not estimated. The themes are grouped for you, each one naming the people behind it.
- How many would act, overall and by audience group
- Why the rest did not, grouped into reasons with a count behind each one
- What people liked, and what put them off or confused them
- Which pages they saw and where they stopped reading
- Your own questions, answered in each participant's words and summarised
- The changes that would help most, with a button that sends them to us as a ticket
- Every participant, who they are, where they went and what they said
Our own run on topsyde.com
24%
of 100 would start the trial
Why the rest did not
- The FAQ page showed questions with no answers under them32
- No phone number or chat on the pages they read29
- No plain list of everything the plan includes21
“I got as far as the pricing page and still could not tell what happens to my email during the move. I would have called if I had seen a number.”
Owner of a 12 person law firm, let down by her current host
When to run one
For the questions analytics cannot answer.
Analytics shows where people left. It never says why. On our own site the first run found a FAQ page whose answers were not in the page at all, and three things people wanted to know before they would try us.
Sites with little traffic
Analytics needs thousands of visitors to say anything. A focus group gives you a hundred people's reasons on a site that gets twenty a day.
Before a redesign
Run one on the current site and one on the new one. The reasons tell you what the redesign has to fix, and whether it did.
A landing or pricing page
Start the group on the page that matters and ask the question you argue about. Does the price put people off, or the missing phone number?
Agencies pitching a client
A report in the client's own customers' words, with counted reasons and quotes, is a stronger case than a list of best practices.
What it costs
Paid once. Included with hosting.
100 participants
$99
One site, one brief, about 15 minutes. The right size for almost every question.
500 participants
$349
For a site with several audiences, or when you want each group large enough to compare on its own.
With TopSyde hosting
Included
The first 100 participant group on each site we host is included, with security, speed, SEO and a senior developer, for $89 a month per site.
See the planA group runs the moment it is paid for, so it cannot be refunded. Nothing is charged until you have approved the audience.
Focus group questions.
No. Each participant is an AI agent written as one person, sampled from an audience model we research from industry data for your kind of business, with their own situation, budget, urgency, patience and device. They read your site's actual pages and answer in character. Treat the reasons as the strongest hypotheses to test, not a vote. In our own runs the direction has been reliable and specific, the exact percentages are not.
The words on your pages and the links between them, the way a search engine or a screen reader reads them. They do not see your design, your colours or your photos, so a group tells you about your message, your offer, your prices and what is missing, not about the look of the site.
$99 for 100 participants or $349 for 500, paid once by card. Hosting customers get the first 100 participant group on each hosted site included. A group runs the moment it is paid for, so it cannot be refunded.
No. Anyone can run a focus group on any public website. Writing the brief opens a free TopSyde account under your email, where the report is kept. If you do host with us, the first 100 participant group on each hosted site is included, along with security, speed, SEO and a senior developer, for $89 a month per site.
About 15 minutes for 100 participants and about 45 for 500. You can watch it run, with a count of who has finished and how many would act so far, and we email you when the report is ready.
Yes. You describe them in the brief, we turn that into groups with real-world shares, and you can change any share before paying. You also choose the page they land on and what counts as converting.
Nothing. We read your public pages once and the participants browse that copy. Your site never knows it happened.
If we host your site, yes. The report's fixes come with a button that opens a ticket to our developers with the list filled in. If we do not host it, the fixes are yours to make, or we can quote the work.
Website focus group
Hear why they did not act.
Your website's address and an email. The brief takes five minutes and the report about 15.
The AI visibility check is free. This one costs money because a hundred people have to do the reading.
- 100 different people
- Reasons counted, with quotes
- Nothing changes on your site
$99 once, included with hosting