Site Feedback

[little-linguist]

Quite a few people have asked for pointers regarding their websites recently. I'm thinking maybe it would be nice to have a new section of the forum for site feedback where each shop owner could start a thread for their site if they wish and others can offer their thoughts and opinions regarding layout / wording etc. (rather than technical issues).

Just an idea - what do others think?

[john]

Be better to have one feedback thread, then any previous comments or tips can be seen in one place by anyone looking to improve their own sites, I will leave it to you to start one!

[roobyroo]

I think it's a great idea. I'm always interested in having a nosey at other peoples sites and would more than welcome any feedback/comments on my site. Constructive criticism can be a good thing.

What do people think of my site? I've been with Bluepark since Dec 07 and find myself constantly tinkering with my site as I keep discovering new features in Bluepark that iIve overlooked.

[Gillf]

Hi

I too think it is a good idea to had a string on site issues. And like John am constantly tinkering with our site to try to improve conversion rates as much as anything. I just had a nosey on your site John and found your feedback block on the home page. It looks like you are adding to that manually from ifeedback sent via the contact page.... do you find that time consuming? I've wondered if there is a way of having it fed directly by the customer like the product reviews. What does everyone else think?

Gill
www.ever-so-sexy.com (http://www.ever-so-sexy.com)

[roobyroo]

Hi Gill,

Yeah I manually add the feedback that customers leave via contact page using Dreamweaver and copying and pasting the html into my feedback page on my site.

It can be time consuming but to be honest, it's not often people leave feedback which is why I've recently created a automatic email that is sent to customers offering them discount on their next order if they leave feedback.
I'll see how this goes but it would make life easier if there is a way to have feedback automatically fed to my feedback page as and when customers leave it.

[john]

Why do you need Dreamweaver, I just copy and paste into the 'Customer Comments' page using the Page Editor.

The problem with asking for feedback is that customers keep answering via the 'Contact Us' page and you can't then just make it live, you have to fiddle about to get it in te product page it applies to, we get good feedback every day but 90% is just in an email not specific to a product. This means we can't use most of it, it would make a ridiculously long page if we put it all in 'Customer Comments'

Anyone any ideas?

[Plushpaws]

Hi John,

The best way I can see this working effectively is to have a page where you can determine how many 'comments' are shown, i.e 10/20/50 etc.

Each comment should be treated like a block, so you effectively have a page of blocks. Then you could make the blocks random, so if you have 100's of comments, they will randomly cycle.

The blocks should be auto generated, with the option to add manually as customers often use the contact us page as mentioned.

[john]

I just paste new ones in (when I remember). I can't see the point of them changing at random, most prospective customers are only going to look at them once, when they first think of buying from you, it's not like a selection of products that they are going to choose from.
Why make in needlessly complicated?

[Plushpaws]

Hi John,

"Pasting new ones in (when you remember)" is needlessly complicated and time consuming when the system could easily handle it automatically for you.

The point of random blocks would be to show differing comments over time. It's your choice, you could show just the last 10/25 comments, or a random selection.

[roobyroo]

That's great, I'll give that a try instead. I'm sure that'll save me loads of time. It usually takes me weeks to get feedback comments online by the time I get around to doing it. Seems like I've just been making more hard work for maself, lol!

Thanks for your help guys :)

[Dave]

Hi John,

"Pasting new ones in (when you remember)" is needlessly complicated and time consuming when the system could easily handle it automatically for you.

The point of random blocks would be to show differing comments over time. It's your choice, you could show just the last 10/25 comments, or a random selection.

I understand search engines like websites where the content changes from time to time. I have been thinking about different ways where the content of the page could be changed without having to change product descriptions and maybe using random blocks for either customer comments or news would be one solution?

[roobyroo]

That sounds great, I had no idea we could have random blocks. It might be worth placing some ads in random blocks so that they change each time the customer revisits the page

[john]

On our old Craptinic site, we used to have customer comments in a random display, one at a time using Php includes script. I presume this is what the random block function is, I can see the benefit of using this say at the top of each page so the visitor sees a new comment on each page change.
Think I will try this and ditch the "Customer Comments" page, as this needs a click from the visitor to view.
(When I get round to it!)