Information Updated 10/15/18
What are your thoughts about customer feedback? Judging how well your website is connecting with your customers is a different process than measuring their satisfaction. If your website is vital to your business, it is important to collect and process feedback related to the usability, reliability, and functionality. It also enables you to discover and fix any existing problem.
be cautious of free services
A problem for small businesses who want to effectively collect and interpret feedback is the cost. The majority of small businesses simply don’t have the resources to utilize the same tools many larger corporations have at their disposal.
While services like Google Analytics can provide information about how and when users are interacting with your website, they often paint an incomplete picture. No service or automated technology has the capability to accurately determine how happy and satisfied the human beings behind the “clicks” feel. Instead, they provide statistics and trends.
Consider usability tests for feedback
There is a method for small businesses to gain an accurate picture of how satisfied or unsatisfied existing customers may be with their website. Usability tests are a simple and effective way for small businesses to gauge how well their website is connecting with their customers. Usability tests aren’t just for the launch of a completely new design or section of a website. In fact, they should be used even if the change to a website is small or relatively minor.
To conduct a usability test, simply ask an employee, or friend to complete the task to navigate your website and record their feedback. There are also services online that will conduct tests for a nominal fee.
look for positive and negative trends
Asking just one person or paying for a single professional test, will not provide a complete picture as to how effective your website is in connecting with your customers. If a single tester provides feedback that they cannot navigate your site, or that they could not complete the checkout process due to other difficulties, then you should continue to conduct more tests.
It is important to look for trends and patterns in multiple use, and to find out if multiple testers are consistently having the same problems. Once you’ve completed multiple tests and identify a series of similar or identical problems or difficulties, then it may be time to request more feedback. You can then determine the least disruptive and costly way to fix the problem.
updated 09/27/2018