“WE NEED DATA” . . . (Part I)

This is a two-part blog post in which the Sectigo Channel Team walks you through the process and then reveals some of our key findings.

But first, we wanted to share with you a high-level overview of the process we used to gather data to guide our roadmap for the delivery of the new Sectigo Web Security Platform.

The process started by gathering a full list of our channel partners and classifying them into a few different segments. We ended up with four categories: Hosting Providers, Domain Providers, SSL Resellers, and Cloud Providers. For this research, we focused on the Hosting Providers segment.

The quantitative research we did was executed through an initial survey that helped us gather some baseline details about our channel partners and gain a better understanding of their opinions about website security, as well as a host of other topics. This initial research also queued us up for phase 2 – the live interviews.

The qualitative research portion of the project is where we spent the majority of our time. During the course of a two-week period, we interviewed 28 companies ranging anywhere from 45 to 90 minutes per call. The live interviews gave us the opportunity to gather additional insights, validate the initial survey data, and ask key questions about our 2020 product roadmap.

What do you do with 40 hours of live interview footage to give it meaning? Well, just like a good football team, you watch and analyze the footage, talk about your findings, re-analyze the footage, and then determine key takeaways. The process we used was called ‘thematic analysis,’ which works like this:

1. The video is transcribed into readable text
2. The text is thoroughly read and key themes are highlighted
3. Patterns in themes are identified
4. We were able to get instant feedback on 2020 roadmap plans
5. We were able to understand common problems hosting providers face
6. We were able to dialog about potential solutions
7. We were able to produce reliable data that we can — and already have — used in product-related discussions.

With an initial pass using thematic analysis, we were able to quickly deliver key insights to our product teams, business development representatives, and company executives, which resulted in a quick win, but doesn’t compare to four key benefits we gained while doingthis research.

If you were to ask me 200 hours later if I would open my big mouth in the conference room and pronounce “WE NEED DATA,” the answer is a profound YES.

In fact, we plan on tackling domain name providers next.

If you are interested in the results of our survey, the next article I am writing will focus on some of the key takeaways from the Hosting Provider research project. Stay tuned.