Jeff Rum

How to Get User Feedback… Quickly!

Jeff Rum
Person-using-digital-tablet-computer-sending-customer-rating-online,-stars-871604976_1258x839.jpeg

The term user experience, or UX , was introduced by Don Norman, a cognitive scientist. “He was VP, of the Advanced Technology Group at Apple Inc at the time,” writes ISHIR on Medium. “It refers to all characteristics of end-user interaction with the services, products and company. It defines how a user interacts with the system or website, and if it helps you achieve your goals. If users have issues, UX strives to resolve them and decreases then impediments.”

You want your website to have good user experience. And you had it designed to be easy. But is it actually easy for your users? To create great user experience, you need feedback from actual users. (And you need to collect the right analytics about how actual users navigate your website, but I’ll address that in a later blog post.)

ISHIR suggests that there a few question you can ask yourself about UX before you even need to get feedback from others:

  • Is my website mobile-friendly?

  • Is my website cluttered?

  • Is there enough space on the website?

  • Is the website full of 404 errors?

  • How much time does your website take to load?

  • Are your website forms scary?

  • Are the blog titles misleading?

  • Do you have enough call to action buttons that are descriptive as well?

  • Are the images generic and boring?

But once you’ve got those covered, then you need to know how other people respond to your website. Insightful feedback can help you better design your website and your social media efforts.

“People who complain … aren’t an annoyance; they’re actually helping you do a better job,” writes Sharon Hurley Hall on Optinmonster.

How do you get feedback? Here are a bunch of ways:

1) Popup Survey on Your Website

“Displaying a simple survey on your site is the easiest way to get feedback,” writes Hall. Keep it short and sweet. One to three questions only. More people will be willing to fill out a short survey. Hall suggests that open ended questions will get more in-depth responses than yes-or-no questions.

Hall recommends displaying a survey only to returning visitors, and triggering it so that it will only display after they view two or more pages. “This ensures that your survey popup only displays to interested visitors who are already engaged with your content and will have an opinion about it to share,” says Hall.

2) Put a Feedback Button on Your Website

A feedback button in another easy way to ask for feedback on your site. This is helpful for people who run into problems and want to tell you about it. It also benefits from the Zeigarnik Effect, according to Hall, psychological effect which suggests that those who initiate a process are more likely to finish it than those who do not initiate.

3) Offer an Incentive for Feedback

Giving feedback is time consuming, so offering an incentive can be helpful to convince people to take that time. Especially if you want to ask a bunch of questions, consider offering a coupon, a free ebook, a white paper, or other goodie.

4) Use Live Chat

“If you want to know what your customers really think, use live chat to talk to them when they’re on your site,” says Hall. Live chat a great user experience service tool. An actual conversation allows you to figure out which issues are important to audience, what’s working, what isn’t in much finer grain detail than a survey.

6) Find Out Why People Are Abandoning Your Site

There is software that allows you to have a popup that comes up when a user is about to leave your site. Some users might find this a bit aggressive, but if people are abandoning your site in large numbers without taking action, it might be worth it to ask them why.

7) Run User Testing

“Usability Hub has a free 5-second test tool,” says Hall. You can upload and test pages of your site, logos, and other marketing material. “People look at your page for 5 seconds, then Usability Hub asks what they remember,” says Hall. “Responses are recorded to give you insight into visitors’ first impressions. You can also test navigation, clicks, and preferences with Usability Hub.”

8. Have People Use Your Site and Then Talk to Them

It’s old school, but it works.

9. Look at the Website of Other Organizations, Where Do You Run into Problems

Too many clicks to get to the place that you actually want to be? Not sure how to find important information? Learn from the mistakes of others.