Know-How Exchange : Website Critique

Yes/No questions only get you so far and may be a waste of valuable respondent time confirming you what you already "know". You need some people to open up - most won't but the ones that do are worth the effort.

Don't worry about information you didn't receive - concentrate on the good information you did receive.
The quality of the effort in (by the responder) is equal to the quality of the responses. Yes/No = little effort, whereas open ended responses = effort and better quality answers. Also - only have a few short questions.

A few pop-up survey systems are https://4q.iperceptions.com or www.iperceptions.com,
www.kampyle.com, and www.foreseeresults.com. these system are immediate while passionate answers are fresh in their mind, and less obtrusive that a many-question survey they probably will never return.

In the basic framework of those systems, create:

Initial pop-up text (this step asks their permission, builds trust, and aids in response frequency and quality of responses)

"We’re always improving our services and web site. After visiting this web site, would you please provide your feedback by answering 3 quick questions?"

Use Yes and No buttons. If No is clicked – provide this message in the pop-up “ No problem, and thank you for visiting XYZ.com ”

If Yes is clicked – provide this message in the pop-up “ Thank you very much. Notice that another window has been opened and minimized. Please DO NOT close this window. After your visit, just open the window and enter your opinions. Your participation and valuable feedback is appreciated.”

After they are done with their site visit, the questions window is still open. They then provide their immediate responses.

Questions window

1. What were you looking for when you arrived at the XYZ.com web site?

2. Did you find the information you were looking for? If not – what was missing?

3. If you decided NOT to call XYZ.com – what could we have done better?

Optional: May we contact you for further web site feedback? Name _________________ Phone: _______________ Email: _____________________

These few questions will get the ball rolling on the IMPORTANT issues with your site. Don't worry about the little stuff yet.

Contact me if I can be of further assistance.

Bob

This is a bit of a cherry. Have you considered that unless you offer a great prize there is a very poor response rate to surveys online.

If you want to find out how good your website is you must watch the users use the site.

Now I hear you shout isn’t that expensive? Yes it can be but you can carry out your own research with a few of your potential customers. Invited to meet with you in the office and put them down in front of your website and ask them to carry out tasks that you expect users to carry out on your site.

You only need 5 to test your site and observe their activities and you will find about 70% of the issues with the site.

Do not guide them or instruct them just ask them to complete the task You watch and take notes, ask them to verbalise what they are doing and to tell you at what point they would normally give up.

You will find out far more about your website performance this way than trying to set up a survey and hope people will complete it for you.

You can on the other hand get a team of professionals in to do the usability analysis for you. It may seem expensive but we have done this work for a number of clients with excellent results. One recently achieved a 700% ROI in 3 weeks after a usability review and amendments. Not bad for a 7k spend.

Best of luck with whatever route you take.

Nigel T Packer

Every website needs to be able to answer three key questions quickly of WHAT (what are you offering?), WHY (why should I as a user or potential customer care or want to use it / buy it) and then HOW (show me a bit before I get my hands "dirty" with your stuff).

Do they stand out at your web site?