General Feedback Faux Pas
Providing website feedback is a staple of this community. People rely on feedback to help them get their site or article dialed in.
In reality, offering good feedback requires time and thought. It's hard to find a balance, sometimes, between saying something critical and saying something mean. We also don't want our feedback to be too soft.
A Gentle Stroke
After I submit feedback, I look at feedback left by others. Too many times I see that someone wrote three short sentences, all being positive in nature, when I've found 11 things wrong with this site or even just a few very common issues.
I find that so frustrating! Not because of time that I invested, but because it is difficult to get a site to review and it's because people are sucking up the feedback requests and then they are pencil-whipping the feedback.
For general feedback, there ought to be a minimum word count. Anything less than that should be vulnerable to the requester checking a box to approve the feedback.
We're paying in time or money for feedback and the person giving feedback is getting half of what we're paying. I think this creates a reasonable expectation for quality work.
When you request feedback, do you just want someone to tell you that you have a nice theme and your color scheme is fitting for the content?
No, you don't. We ought to be able to demand better feedback.
Are You Even Ready?
On the subject of asking for feedback, are you even ready to have your site evaluated?
I'm pretty thorough in my efforts to evaluate your site. I click the link then I evaluate the page I land on without scrolling or clicking to see if your site is already telling me anything that would interest me to stay there. Common problem here is that the header picture is too big. I would like to see your navigation bar and a reference to an article or more on your site.
When I start to scroll, I'm looking for your home link and I'm going to click it. Common issue...some other page is home, meaning that when I type your main URL, I'm not getting your home page. This is not good.
Before I start to surf your site, I am considering what level of training you must be on. If there are no pictures, I assume that you're doing everything just like the training teaches you, however, I often find no pictures with an exception to affiliate links. When I see this, these links are often right at the top of the page.
The message I get is that you feel the ad is more valuable than your content. So I move on.
For general feedback, I am not going to critique your content. I go through every feature of your site and try to find things wrong with it that you can fix; things like pictures not matching content, color schemes that make text difficult to read, a stupid fon't that messes with my eyes (You know the one. Quit choosing it!).
If this is going to hurt your feelings, you are still not ready to ask for feedback.
Feedback on Content
For this, I am only going to evaluate the content of ONE article. That should be the one that your link lands me on.
I'll be fair here. I often get interested in the content and look around a bit.
When I am providing feedback for the content of your article, I am also going to critique any aspect of your page that needs to be critiqued, for example, if you mention an item and then there is a link to it at the bottom of the article, I'm going to suggest that you hyperlink the text name of the product in your article as well as the picture. I will tell you that you have duplicate widgets on your right menu or that you need to proofread your article for spelling mistakes.
If this type of feedback will hurt your feelings, you're not ready to request feedback.
You Get What You Give
Folks, be thorough with your feedback. I'm telling you that if someone gives me a polite blurb in feedback, I'm sending it to Kyle and Carson demanding my 50 cents back. I put a lot of time in to each 25 cents that I earn. Maybe that won't help at all, but I'm lobbying for a way to reject crappy feedback.
25 cents is why I only do it when I have brain lock.
When I'm Finished
In some cases, when a site has a LOT of problems, I apologize for giving such a harsh review and explain that I would rather be truthful and give them a handful of things to work on.
In any case, good or bad, I offer to re-evaluate their site/page any time in the future. I've been held to that and I go through the same process, this time without any form of compensation.
I do that because I believe that is what this community is about.
With the most sincere spirit, I will wish you the very best in success and send my feedback.
There is no need to write back to argue with me about my opinion. If you think about that for just a second, it will make sense.
So Get Ready. Here I Come!
Go now to make your landing page your home page, take the comments off your privacy policy page, clean up your navigation menu so there aren't 17 items on there, make sure you don't have two calendar widgets, use either categories OR archives, not both, make sure no pages are in the uncategorized category.
While you're at it, check your spelling, add pictures or other graphic content that suits your site and the material that's on it and make sure your links go where they say they go.
Do all this because I'm out here, looking to give you some good love about your site.
If you can get me to write three happy lines about your site, you will know that you've done a great job and I'll even tell you so.
So go on! Get to it!
Recent Comments
1
All true thanks for your honesty and integrity.
Blessings,
Scarlett