Live intercept
A live intercept recruits people who are using a website or app right now and invites them into a research session immediately, while their task and intent are fresh. It reaches real users in the middle of real goals.
How it works
A short screener appears as a pop-up or banner on the site. Visitors who qualify and agree are moved straight into a session: an interview, a survey or a usability test on the task they came to do. Because they arrive with their own goals, researchers can observe authentic tasks instead of assigned ones.
Nielsen Norman Group reports that live-intercept response rates are low; in one study, 2 percent of the visitors who saw the screener completed it. For moderated sessions, a researcher must also be ready whether or not someone qualifies, which is why intercepts pair best with methods that can start the moment a participant accepts.
A worked example
A travel site runs a live intercept on its cancellation page. Over 3 days, 3,200 visitors see the invitation, 70 complete the screener and 24 join a session. Nine of them came to cancel because they could not find how to change dates, so the site adds a "change dates" link to the page.
Related
Automate this in Pulse
Visitors caught by a live intercept on a website can be handed a Pulse study link in the prompt itself, turning the intercept into an interview started while the visit is still underway.