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Special thanks
to Linda Rand from
Words Unlimited
Feedback tutorial
This concise analysis is dedicated to all Webmasters with the goal of improving effective feedback. If you find our tips useful, please include a link to www.feedmeback.com in your site.
What is a feedback poll?
Practically everyone would like to increase the number of Web site hits they receive while obtaining the ideal information feedback from surfers and clients. This tutorial will help you do just that. Read on to learn how to build appealing Web polls.
Feedback relates to all data and opinions gathered from surfers and clients visiting your Web site. This includes information from e-mail addresses to application forms and feedback polls. This site focuses on collecting constructive data for your organization focusing on specific issues by using HTML forms.
Today, the vast majority of Web sites invites surfers to email general comments and suggestions. We will see why this approach is not efficient and why it is recommended to use HTML forms polls to offer feedback requests.
The magic formula
In order to maximize your company's collection of feedback, it is essential to have a formula: Begin formulating requests that address your site's scopes AND your surfers' needs. This is the basic approach of moderated feedback polling. Remember that every site is unique, and so are its goals and its visitors. You are the best expert on this issue and you should therefore design your site with this in mind.
For example, a cultural site may ask questions about its activities: "Are you interested in a summer camp on..." or "In what month would you prefer participating in...". A singer may ask about his next CD: "Would you like the song... to appear on my next CD?". A producer may ask about the next product: "Which feature would you like most to have in product "x" ?
Intrinsic publicity
The question itself is a tool that may be used to push activities. Formulate some of your questions to convey a bit of information about one item. Such information may be the item existence: "Would you consider taking part in our field excursion to the Bahamas in July?", a product feature: "Did you know that any Web site can use f-Polls.com?", a special offer: "Are you interested in our 50% discount for a full year subscription?". In this way you benefit even when the surfer doesn't answer. Reading the question, emphasizes the one issue you are interested in promoting.
Moderated feedback
Allow your surfers and clients to participate in the decision- making process by presenting a focused poll form and enabling participants to choose among possible answers.
Active surfer/client participation is easy and only a click away from acquiring important data from your target market. Feedback can then be analyzed with statistical software. Here is a moderated feedback form example:
If you think that this approach is not effective enough, try this link to e-mail your comments and suggestions. You will realize that writing an e-mail about somebody else's interests is not appealing, and therefore chances to receive constructive feedback is almost nil.
Verification of all input is recommended in order to stay in touch with your clients and target market. Consider that your resources and time are limited!
You will gather constructive feedback only if the questions you ask are important enough to your clients' needs and if the possible answers are targeted to their wishes. Note that in order to get a clear signal, you need at least thirty inputs.
Get attention!
Getting the right amount of attention is tricky. It you overdo it, people will run away. If you don't do it, people will not see your feedback requests.
For specific feedback, it's better to insert a single question poll in a relevant page, as your visitors will see it immediately. Border the area and differentiate it slightly so that it will attract a surfer's attention at a glance. You can use a larger or different fonts and colors for text or for the background.
If you decide to include a contact form or web survey with several fields, like our feedback experience poll survey, it's better to put it on a separate page - and allow for a clear link to it on all your other pages. Your navigation menu, either on the page bottom or side, is a good place to put such a link. This approach requires an additional click just to get there.
Surfer's benefits
Before publishing your feedback poll request, try to include some benefit to your participants. You have to make those 5-10 seconds it takes to fill out your feedback request worthwhile to your visitor.
Visitors benefits can include voting and witnessing immediate results, free subscriptions to online newsletters, special groups, and opportunities to win a prize. Drawings boost responses but may also result in hasty answers.
Triggering a surfer to return some feedback is easier said than done. Even a one click response requires an active visitor operation. The main trigger is the visitor's feeling that by doing so he or she will help change something important.
Keep in mind that anyone who surfs your pages for more than three minutes is interested and probably has a good idea about what he or she would like to find upon the next visit.
Participation impact
Another important part of feedback is the perceived impact of participation. People will be more interested in sending you their feedback if they are given the feeling that something will change as a result of their input.
In order to be effective, your polls must convey a feeling of importance in the act of answering, and give some intrinsic benefits. This is the reason that you will not get constructive feedback if all you ask is "How nice is my site?".
The poll should be focused, and it should be clear that answers will be taken into consideration for an important issue in the near future, i.e., in the next two weeks.
Do your homework!
Asking for e-mail comments and suggestions is not effective because writing an e-mail requires concentration and knowledge. The writer must feel at home with the subject, know the site well, feel that his letter is smart, and that his approach will give him validity.
Sending e-mail also begins a correspondence. It implies that the writer expects an answer, but many surfers are not interested in revealing their e-mail addresses.
If you want effective feedback, you should do your homework. The quality and amount of feedback you will receive depends mainly on preparation.
Focused questions are the conduit between your site and the visitor. The first step is asking clear questions. The second step is enabling participation with a minimal number of clicks.
Focused Web feedback polls transmit the seriousness of your concerns regarding future changes to the site, services, products or other issues.
This approach raises the chances of receiving feedback, and for a clear indication on any item you need at least 30 answers.
Content is King
Content is king! This is the absolute truth about Web sites and Web surfing. Surfers will visit your pages for more than thirty seconds only if your subject matter interests them.
If you want people to return and tell their friends about your site, make sure to include good content. This is even truer about feedback polls, because otherwise people will not even reach your feedback requests.
Polls Coding
We suggest you include a form to enable your visitors to quickly answer one or more questions. You will need some HTML coding to do so.
Good Web sites are expected to change constantly, so the best thing to do is to get started and see how things go.
If you decide that your site will offer access to such poll forms, then data can either be emailed directly to you with the ACTION=MAILTO: email statement in the FORM declaration, or passed using a email generator form (if you have a server that will perform this action for you). Web hosting companies usually offer such tools, however, you may decide to use an external one.
Advanced sites implement CGI programs or PERL scripts coded specifically to their forms. PHP or ASP coding is even better because it will enable interaction with a database. This solution is more advanced, but requires special resources, servers and programming manpower.
The basics of HTML forms coding are explained with the following example:
The basic code to generate such request is the following:
<TABLE width=206 bgcolor=#FFFFFF> <FORM ACTION="/cgi-sys/formmail.pl" METHOD="POST"> <tr bgcolor=navyblue><td>Contact form</td></tr> <tr bgcolor=#FFFFFF><td> To get in contact with the feedback<br> support team, enter your e-mail:<br><br> <input type="text" name="e-mail" size=19 maxlen=64 value=""> <br><br>Message: <textarea name="message" wrap=auto cols=19 rows=3 maxlength=512></textarea> <br><br><input type="submit" value="Call"> </td></tr></FORM></TABLE>
How does it work?
The first line defines a TABLE area to include the form. (Note the /TABLE closing at the code end). Inside this area there is a FORM command that groups input fields. Closing the input area is the /FORM command at the code end. Collected inputs will be posted to the ACTION directive when the surfer press the 'Call' button, defined as an INPUT/submit field.
Inside the table, objects are inserted by rows (TR.../TR) and data items (TD.../TD). The (P) command starts a new paragraph.
The main input field is the e-mail address field that enables text input on one line.
Adding to this code, you may include FONT display controls to change color and text lookout, or other input fields. The HTML protocol currently support the following input fields: Radio, Select, List, Checkbox, Text line and Text area.
Collected data must be passed to CGI code running on a server. While this may require additional resources and programming manpower, it is possible to e-mail the feedback data directly to your mailbox using the ACTION:MAILTO statement (Such a shortcut may activate a browser notice about revealing the surfer's e-mail address).