How to Receive Feedback on your Blog or Site
Feb. 01, 2010
32 Comments
Knowing what your readers think about your website, what they like or dislike about your site, bugs, spelling mistakes, missing images, broken links etc. is incredibly useful and important. There are many services and ways to gather feedback.
Kampyle – I will start with my favorite ones and the one I use, Kampyle. It is different from all of the other services in that does not only do a great job at gathering feedback but it also anlayse the feedback it in order for you to take actions. In fact, Kampyle collects, analyzes and manages your website visitors’ feedback. You can use it out of the box or customize the look and feel. The installation takes just a few minutes and is very simple to add on your site. The management application includes tons of actionable reports that will help you quickly understand what has to be improved and what are your users saying, even without needing to read each and every specific feedback item.
Pros: Easy to install and customize. Great analytics. Users are not taken away from your site. Feedback is visible only to you. Free version
Cons: You have to upgrade to the paying version to get the Google Analytics integration.
UserVoice - UserVoice is a service that provides a forum and a community for users to share their ideas and vote them up.
Pros: Cool design, easy usability and free option.
Cons: Cannot vote and submit ideas from within the widget. Users are taken away from the page where they were when they pressed the feedback button. Feedback on this forum can be considered as a replacement the comments on your blog.
GetSatisfaction - GetSatisfaction is a service similar to that of UserVoice, which provides a forum and a community where your users could ask questions, share ideas, report problems, praise, join the community and more. It is more support forum oriented than UserVoice.
Pros: Creates a simple, valuable “home base” for customer conversations and support issues while reducing your support overhead.
Cons: Most features come with paying plans only. Users are taken away from the page where they were when they pressed the feedback button. Feedback on this forum can be considered as a replacement the comments on your blog.
SurveyMonkey – SurveyMonkey is a free online survey software and questionnaire tool. You can design you surveys, have complete control over them, and analyze your results.
Pros: Free, and customizable way to create surveys.
Cons: Surveys are long, may annoy people which makes it hard to get responses. You’ll probably not hear about things you didn’t think of asking.
Forums – You can use forums such as Young Entrepreneur, Blogcatalog, Site Point or Web Developer which all have site and blog review sections.
Pros: You can reach a large group of people.
Cons: One time only, way to get feedback.
Create a page – An easy way to receive feedback on your blog or site is to create a page called “feedback” and have a contact form with: suggestions, bugs and feedback.
Pros: People will continuously provide feedback.
Cons: Takes up valuable site space. Can generate up to ten times less feedback. You’ll lack the means to deal with larger amount of items, as basically it’s like getting mails from all those users into your inbox.
Email Request – If you want a one time feedback deal just shoot out an email to friends, family and connections asking them to do a favor and take a few minutes to check out your site and jot down problems.
Pros: More personal.
Cons: One time way to get feedback. It’s risky to ask feedback from people who are not your users. They may have great ideas, but as they don’t really know your site or blog, their ideas and suggestions might be not relevant and drive your real users away from your blog or website.
Facebook and Twitter – Another method is to send out a message on Facebook or tweet asking for feedback.
Pros: The use of social media could broaden your request.
Cons: People could think you are just self promoting. You might get lots of feedback and it will be hard to manage it, prioritize it, and see the full picture of what should be done.
32 Responses to “How to Receive Feedback on your Blog or Site”
Trackbacks/Pingbacks
-
-
Feb. 02, 2010
Social comments and analytics for this post…
This post was mentioned on Friendfeed by benlang: How to Receive Feedback on your Blog or Site | Ben-Lang.com http://is.gd/7iv1P...
-
-
Feb. 05, 2010
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Wayne Liew, Kampyle, Benjamin Lang, giladdevries, Eran Savir and others. Eran Savir said: RT @entrepreneurpro: How to Receive Feedback on your Blog or Site | Ben-Lang.com http://is.gd/7iv1P [...]
-
-
Mar. 02, 2010
[...] though if your site needs touching up? What you can do is ask someone else to look at your site and provide objective feedback. Or, you could do it yourself by pretending that you are someone who is seeing this site for the [...]
-
-
Mar. 13, 2010
[...] though if your site needs touching up? What you can do is ask someone else to look at your site and provide objective feedback. Or, you could do it yourself by pretending that you are someone who is seeing this site for the [...]
Author
Create a Page Seems to be the best option to choose from above to get the feedback
Lucifer´s last blog post: Get Rs.200GV + Ipod Touch : Bindaas Bargain
It’s very helpful, but I would say it’s a much older approach to getting feedback than services such as Kampyle, Uservoice and GetSatisfaction.
Allow me to say that creating a page on your blog or website to get feedback or at least a contact page is a must!
Using forums is what I do sometimes, it can be a dual use, one is asking for feedback and two is telling people about your blog
And actually on the discussion forums finding more experienced people to give better feedback is easier!
Hesham @ FamousBloggers´s last blog post: Is CommentLuv Selling your Blog Comment Links for Advertisers? Andy Bailey Clearing Things Up
A contact page for sure is a must, I’ve used youngentrepreneur.com so many times to ask for feedback. I think that Kampyle, and Uservoice though are better ways to get feedback.
I’ve never given feedback much thought until now. Thanks for pointing that out, something i need to do.
tony ramirez´s last blog post: One for One Can Make A Difference
Another way to view feedback is through your next blog post. Ask a question, see who replies via commenting as usual. Those comments are feedback elements if commented in direct response to your question.
Ari Herzog´s last blog post: Top 70 Commentators in January 2010
That’s true, forgot about that! Except it’s a one time thing, as opposed to Kamyple, Uservoice etc. which bring in feedback continuously.
Oh really, its a must, especially for new sites. It helps so much to know what your readers think of your site.
Feedback is essential. It is important to gear your posts towards what your readers want, and the only way to know what that is, is through feedback
p.s. – ben, nice reorganizing the blog :p
Agreed Alex, thanks, nice that you noticed some restructuring
Other than the above methods, we can also write a blog post and ask for feedback, I’m sure you’ll get tons of feedbacks if you have a huge followship.
I’ve seen people using SurveyMonkey to ask for feedback, quite effective though, but sometimes people might be lazy to click on the link and do the survey.
Cheers,
Lee
That is true, Ari Herzog, mentioned that approach. It’s a good idea but not as effective in my opinion as a service such as Kampyle or Uservoice. Surveys do bother me a bit though which is why I’d prefer to stay away from SurveyMonkey. Regards.
Great post, I think getting feedback is a great way to get some insight as to what you are doing right as well as wrong.
JR ´s last blog post: 19 Social Web 2.0 Sites To Promote Internet Marketing, Blogging, Make Money Online Content
Thanks, I agree, it’s a valuable asset for any site or blog.
I keep hearing about this GetSatisfaction , I noticed sponsored tweets using this , great tool
I’ve also seen it everywhere, check them all out though, Kamyple and Uservoice are also both very popular.
But do people have time to give feedback these days? I doubt it unless they are a loyal follower of your blog.
bud´s last blog post: Shareefa Daanish in Rumah Dara
I believe that people do, I tried using Kampyle for a while and received feedback everyday. If people would like to share their opinion with you, feedback is a great way to do that.
Great tools, Ben. It’s always good to listen to your readers/customers and build your blog or business on what they want because it’s them you are providing the service for
.
I don’t know but I haven’t been receiving your feed updates through email. I don’t know what’s happening.
Shirley´s last blog post: Shirley Featured On GH Tech
Thanks, I agree 100%. That’s weird, the service is active, I wonder why that’s happening… Regards
Ben- I hadn’t given much thought to how to get feedback, either.
Sometimes people leave me comments on my blog, but most people are lurkers (according to Google analytics they spend several minutes per post) I know I’m awesome, but there’s ALWAYS room for improvement so hopefully one of these services will help get me some feedback!
Angela´s last blog post: Sizzle Cards WORK!
Hi Angela,
Haha, there is always room for improvement, no matter how awesome you are
I am seeing Kampyle around lately, most used in outsourcing websites.
Xandra Hasegawa´s last blog post: How to Screw Up Your Relationship with a Japanese Woman
Same with me, its becoming very popular.
Nice Tips!
Probably will do the survey on my blog!
Thanks! Ok, good luck with it Nuno.
I personally like using twitter for feedback. It’s instant and gets right to the point.
Nice, I like your app!