I’d like you to head over to the $300 Million Button. It’s one of my favorite usability testing success stories. A large e-commerce site used usability testing to learn how users really felt about some of these requirements. This hard data led to changes that made the site better for users and revenue better for the business (doesn’t everyone win in this case?).

You can also use Feedback Army to get feedback of this type. If there is a controversial feature getting built, ask several people to try it and see how they respond. In this case, I’d write:

We’re testing the checkout process of our e-commerce site. We don’t expect you to pay but would like to know how you feel about it. Select an item from our store and get as far as you can during checkout. Then answer the following questions:

1. On a scale of 1-10, how likely are you to complete the checkout process? Why?
2. What slowed you down?
3. What could make it faster for you?
4. What part of the process did you like?
5. What part of the process annoyed you?

With these questions, you can find out how users feel about that particular process and take an appropriate action.

Photo by: Alex //Berlin _ as+photography

This past weekend I had a phone call from an employee of a company that connects travelers with those who have couches and want to earn extra income. This employee, we’ll call him Jordan, mentioned that someone had made a request on my Syracuse, NY apartment (one I haven’t lived in for over a year) and asked if I was going to respond to it.

The phone call caught me by surprise because two days ago, I visited Jordan’s website to disable my listing permanently. When I got there, I found myself a little lost. I couldn’t find a help feature from the account management screen. I then went to the homepage and saw an FAQ link at the bottom. Finding this I tried a few search queries until I learned that I needed to visit my calendar and select an option to disable my listing.

Boy did I feel dumb, the calendar is the first place I should have looked!

This story highlights what I want to write about today. When you develop a service, you should take into account what happens when a user stops using your service. For some services this is easy, nothing happens. The user’s content and account stays.

For other services, this detail is critical. In the case of Jordan’s service, when a user likes me stops using the service, it hurts. I’m the scourge of his service. He looks good when travelers get quick and courteous responses from those with couches. I no longer have a claim to the property with the couch I was renting. For Jordan, he may want to consider an active strategy to force people like me to exit without polluting his community. Maybe an email ping after a year of no account activity from someone with an active listing.

Sometimes having an exit strategy is not necessary but it builds good will. I particularly like what WordPress.com does. WordPress.com lets you export your data into an XML file that you can then import to another service. Knowing that I can sign up for an account, invest into making a blog on WordPress.com, and later get that data back is nice.

Now, ask yourself: “when a user stops using my service, what is their exit strategy?” If you can, help them out. If a user’s lack of exiting negatively affects your community, make sure you’re doing something to protect your business.

Photo by: Robert S. Donovan

Dr. Peter Meyers has a great write-up on selling usability to small businesses on UXbooth.com. I’m glad to see this conversation happening. Usability should be part of every web project. I think designers shy away from testing because they believe usability testing is too expensive.  (During an afternoon of cold calling, I had several developers recount to me that they and their clients couldn’t afford usability testing and they refused to hear me out further).

Dr. Meyers’ write-up focuses on how a usability consultant can hook the small business client. I think many small businesses want to deal with one person, the one who is building their website. If you make websites, you can (and should) add usability testing to your personal toolbox.

Here is what you need to do:

1. Read Don’t Make Me Think by Steven Krug. This book is a quick read and it will introduce you to accessibility, writing clear copy, and what to look for when usability testing.Hint: throw out the subjective stuff like “change the color” and pay attention to where testers get frustrated.
2. Familiarize yourself with a remote testing service like Feedback Army. If you’re a free-lance designer/developer who is on the fence, email me (good thru April 2010), and I will send you a coupon to try Feedback Army on one of your projects for free.
3. Decide where to add usability testing to your process. I think any time you present concepts to your client you should also present what outsiders think. If you create several mockups (or wireframes) of a site, post them to a remote testing service and see what the reviewer(s) think. A printout of these results is a good way to inform your client on what direction they should go and give them confidence that you’re a professional who is looking out for the success of the project.

Photo credit: Bramus!

Running a business is about having tools to make your life easier and please your current and future customers. The most useful tool I’ve created lets me give away 10 Feedback Army responses to anyone I choose.

What? Yes, it’s a simple coupon system. I send anyone I like a unique URL. When they click it, a cookie is set in their browser. This cookie lets them redeem 10 free Feedback Army responses. I also receive an email to let me know when a code is redeemed.

Simple enough. You should have something like this too. I’ve found many uses for this tool, here are a few:

1. Measure the Effectiveness of Marketing Campaigns

One the nice things about a free coupon is it’s trackable. Last year I tried a cold calling campaign for Feedback Army. It was a good opportunity to work on my salesmanship and find out what people thought of my product. My goal for each call was to end by giving the callee a free coupon. That was it. With the coupon system, I was able to measure how many of these calls resulted in people trying the service. Note to self: cold calling sucks.

2. Solicit Feedback from Bloggers

When Feedback Army was new, I used to write to bloggers regularly to get their feedback on the service. Sometimes this would turn into coverage. Having promoted another service, I’ve learned that giving something away in a cold contact is much stronger than “dropping a note” to make someone aware of my product. By sending the coupons out to bloggers, I usually saw a good follow-through where they would try my service and comment on it.Now I find myself on the other side of the table with ambitious upstarts contacting me about their services. Being on the receiving end of cold email marketing, I can verify that my instinct was right. Give something away if you want to get someone’s attention. If your service is freemium, find a way to give away the premium. .

3. Reward Favors

I screw up or sometimes my technology screws up. It happens. Recently, my samples page was wiped to oblivion with none of listed sites showing their feedback. Someone took the time to email me and let me know (in a respectful tone!) that this had happened. After a few email exchanges with this person, I decided to reward them with a coupon. I can’t do this for everyone that contacts me, but when I can I do. Who knows, maybe they or someone they know will become a regular customer?

4. Defuse Scary Customer Service Situations

Part of running a business is providing good customer service. Feedback Army is a good service but there are opportunities for things to go wrong. I rely on customers to click the Return to Merchant link when they checkout from PayPal. If they don’t, I have to 1) spot their PayPal payment and 2) post their job manually. This is a rare thing and that’s why I haven’t updated my system to deal with it. One time I had a call from a customer asking where their feedback was. This was two weeks after they had paid. Doh! When I screw up, I find giving away something free goes much further than a simple “I’m sorry” with a pleasant tone.

Final Thoughts

So there you have it. A simple coupon system has many uses. You can measure your marketing, get people to promote your service, and even use it to offer stellar customer service. The common theme in all these things is the coupon is a chance to make someone feel special.

What uses do you have for making people feel special?

Photo credt: individuo

Last week I wrote about how to stay motivated and keep blogging. Something I didn’t touch upon is the need to make it easier to blog. Writing a blog is tough work. Not only do you have to create good content, you also have to spice it up, and promote it. Sometimes these side tasks add friction to the writing process.

So another secret to writing more–make it easier to write. I like to think of this as making your writing process usable for you. The more usable your writing process is, the more you’ll do it.

So what tools can make your writing process easier?

1. Post Scheduling – Get Ahead and Stay Ahead

In my earlier post I mentioned the post scheduling feature of WordPress. This makes it easy to build up a lead. I recommend you do this.

2. After the Deadline – Feel Good about Your Writing

Make sure you install a tool like After the Deadline to help with your spelling and grammar. My writing is never perfect but after I run it through AtD, I am comfortable that the obvious mistakes are gone. This is enough to make me feel safe clicking publish.

3. Full-Screen Visual Editor – Avoid Distractions

The full-screen mode  of the WordPress visual editor helps me avoid distractions. With this turned on I feel like I’m using a word processor in my browser. It’s very nice.

4. Find Images with iFlickr – Add Spice to Your Posts

I find installing the right plugins like iflickr makes it easier to get those images in place to spice up the content of my blog posts. I used to avoid this step because it took too long. Now I include something in every post and I’m happy with the result.

5. Make an Outline – Know what Kind of Post You’re Writing

While not technically a tool, this is a good tip. You should know what kind of post you’re writing. What do I mean by this? There are different formats of blog posts that seem to attract eye balls and get the message to your readers. Know what these are, know which type you’re going to write, and make an outline. I knew I was going to write five tips when I set down to do this post. By having an outline you’re giving yourself a clear end-state for the post. Doing this will make your process easier.

What tools do you use to make the writing process easier?

Photo by: xmacex

One of the best tips in your usability quiver is the FAQ or Frequently Asked Questions page. The book Producing Free and Open Source Software defines it best:

A FAQ (“Frequently Asked Questions” document) can be one of the best investments a project makes in terms of educational payoff. FAQs are highly tuned to the questions users and developers actually ask—as opposed to the questions you might have expected them to ask—and therefore, a well-maintained FAQ tends to give those who consult it exactly what they’re looking for. The FAQ is often the first place users look when they encounter a problem, often even in preference to the official manual, and it’s probably the document in your project most likely to be linked to from other sites.

Most sites have these and that’s great. Where most sites fall short though is they build their FAQ the wrong way and cut into its utility. Here are some tips on creating a good FAQ:

1. Keep it Short

Remember a document isn’t done when there is nothing left to add. It’s done when there is nothing left to take away. The shorter the FAQ is, the easier it is for your users to find what’s relevant to them.

When writing questions and answers the question should be a single sentence with no wordwrapping on a normal display and the answer should be a single paragraph.

2. Get Relevant Questions–By Asking

How do you make a relevant FAQ? You stock it full of questions people actually ask. To find these questions Feedback Army can help. I saw a customer visit Feedback Army and ask the following:

Please Help us Make a Useful FAQ Section:

1. Visit our site http://www.____________
2. Provide us with 2-4 questions you had and could not answer while browsing our site.

Normal FAQ development is an organic process. People ask questions, you notice a pattern, and you put them up. If you’ve got a new site Feedback Army can help you seed that process by sending the first impressions of many new eyes direct to you.

3. Make it Easy to Skim

FAQ pages consist of sections each with multiple questions. The Feedback Army FAQ has 3-5 questions per section. This makes it easier for a reader to skim the section headers before digging into the content.

Some FAQs let the user click on the questions to expand the answers. This is a helpful way to aid scanning while keeping the information nearby. The Glassdoor.com FAQ is a good example of this.

4. Label it Correctly

FAQ has existed in the internet lexicon for a long time. New users may not know what an FAQ is but many do. Because of this some sites have started labeling their FAQ as a Help link. Some users are drawn to it and others are confused by it. If you’re going to call the link Help, I recommend inserting a link labeled FAQ in the footer section of your website.

5. Put Your FAQ Where Users Expect It

In the last tip I mentioned putting a link to the FAQ in the footer of your site. The first place I look for an FAQ is the right or bottom of the navigation bar (just above or to the left of the Contact link). The second place is the footer. The third is the upper right corner of your site. If you’re putting it anywhere else you’re probably confusing users.

If there is a debate over this in your office, consider the use of Feedback Army. Ask the following.

Please visit our site and find our frequently asked questions page, then answer these questions:

1. Where is our FAQ page?
2. How long did it take you to find it?
3. What were you looking for when trying to find our FAQ page?
4. What would improve this process?

6. Use a Ratings System to Get Feedback on Questions and Answers

It’s helpful to attach a ratings system to each question and answer. I like how WordPress.com does this on their support page. They ask a question: “Was this helpful?” and provide a thumbs up or thumbs down link visitors can click. Clicking one of these is a frictionless way to express joy or pain from the question. Building a ratings system isn’t difficult. Over time you can use this information to pick which questions need to be revised. After all, confused users means lost sales.

Final Thoughts

That’s it. An FAQ isn’t too complicated. The trick is to make it easy to skim, keep it short, follow the right format, and stock it with questions people ask. If it’s findable on your site then you’ll have a great resource that is sure to keep your customers happy and coming back.

Photo by: everyones idle

Recently, VisualWebsiteOptimizer.com became a Feedback Army customer. They make a product to aid the A|B testing process and use the data you have to increase sales on your site. Great stuff.

You can read more about their experience using Feedback Army over at “How a $10 investment gives website improvement ideas worth thousands“.

Their post is interesting given the nature of their business and there is an insight worth taking from it:

Usability Testing provides you with hypothesis about what to fix on your site and sometimes why (e.g., users are frustrated because they can’t do [blank]). Split-testing and other data-driven techniques are a means for you to experiment with these hypothesis.

If you’re not sure where to start when improving your site, get it looked at. Take some of the ideas and come up with an experiment to test them. Rinse, lather, and repeat.

Photo by: Martin Lysholt Nielsen

Recently I came across a post, from David Jones at i-proving.ca, discussing Feedback Army and UserTesting.com applied to a project. David’s first experience with Feedback Army was disappointed but hopeful. Don’t worry, this story has a happy ending and it shows how to get the most out of Feedback Army.

Do Users Understand My Site?

Here is a snapshot of the post:

I tried this out on http://www.devcreek.com. While developing it we were concerned about usability but there was no process in place to test and refine this beyond gut reaction, so there is lots of changes that could be recommended. On the down side, it is not really a site for the general public but rather for development teams or customers working with a development team on a project, so how would a common web user provide much useful feedback?

David used the default Feedback Army questions. These questions cast a wide net and give the reviewers a chance to point out glaring issues they find. They’re useful as a first run to learn how outsiders perceive a site but they’re not good for zeroing in on an issue and getting depth.

David was happy with three of the ten responses and they brought out issues his team had debated before. He also noted he received his responses within four hours. That said, he was disappointed in the others as they didn’t lead to a helpful insight.

They haven’t gotten very far browsing the site, and their comments seem quite generic. No magic here, still we have talked about the video tutorial before, someone else recommended centering the content, and so on. So it has some merit.

David made the feedback he received available on his blog.

A Usability Test

I read the comments from David’s post and I was delighted to see David tried Feedback Army again. He read through the Usability Testing HOWTO article on this blog and tailored the “Is my Site Easy to Use” template to create a navigation test for his site. Here are the questions he asked:

Please visit my site and try to find the Deployment Summary report for the Panacea project. Get as far as you can and then answer these questions:

1. How far did you get? What slowed you down?
2. What would you change about this process?
3. What would you keep the same about this process?

After running this test David noted he found the results from these questions much more promising. He generously provides the responses he received here.

Here are David’s tips for getting the most out of Feedback Army:

• Provide an introduction to the project and your goals for the feedback at the beginning of the request.
• Frame the questions as a series of tasks that users should follow
• Create an initial question asking the user to state how far they got and where they gave up

This feedback was much more useful to David and allowed him to extract some quantitative information his team could act on.

Final Thoughts

This story is interesting because it shows two different ways you can use Feedback Army. You can go for a broad approach and learn how people see your site or you can get very specific. Either way, Feedback Army is a tool to bring people to your site and to get them to speak to you directly. What will you ask?

Photo by: albany_tim

This blog post is meant for the Amazon Mechanical Turk workers who work on Feedback Army reviews. If you’d like to leave your own tips, drop a comment.

I just spent the day responding to many of you who have had responses that were not accepted recently. I noticed some common patterns and I think they’re easy to correct without making more work for yourself.

Here are my tips to writing good feedback on Feedback Army to make sure your responses are accepted.

Spelling and Grammar

This is a big one. Customer’s will pay less attention to the feedback in your review when they spot a writing mistake. One or two may be forgiven. Several mistakes or choppy responses will hurt your credibility with the customer and cause them to reject the response.

Fortunately, this is easy to deal with.

1. Use spell and grammar check. On the worker form, there is a spell check icon in the upper left hand side of the worker form. Make sure you click it and review the suggestions before submitting your response.  There is also an add-on for Firefox called After the Deadline. If you’re using this you can customize the settings of the spell and grammar check feature and it will work on other HITs, not just the Feedback Army ones.
2. Make sure you upper-case ‘i’. Remember that you’re an I and you’re important.
3. Add a space after punctuation marks. I notice many rejected responses forget to add spaces after commas and periods. Proper white-space will go a long way towards making your writing look correct.

Answering Questions

I find on Feedback Army there are three kinds of responses. You can respond to show that you did something, say that something can improve, or say that something is fine as it is.

Show What You Did

When asked to do something, do the task, and then give a URL or some other information that shows you did it. I’ve seen some of you reply with “Yes, I did this”. If you’re asked to find a product and you provide a URL to the product, then your customer knows you did what they asked.

Chances are the customer will ask you about the tasked you performed. If they didn’t, then give specifics about the task to help them out. For example, consider stating what steps you followed to find the product. Did you search for it? Did you browse to it? Good questions make your task easier but if the questions aren’t good, you can help the customer out anyways.

Feedback to Improve

When a site feature or task confuses you, this is your chance to give your customer something valuable. The best feedback says:

1. What you wanted to do
2. What stopped you from doing this and why
3. What could fix this for the future

The customers needs to know these answers to improve their site’s navigation, add a feature to their site, or make something less confusing. When you write a response ask yourself, “did I answer these questions?”

Here are some examples of good responses:

Is this site trustworthy, why or why not? No, I do not consider this site trustworthy. There are no testimonials on the front-page. The lack of testimonials makes me think you haven’t had any happy customers yet.What would improve this site?It’s 2010 now. I would change “2009 Search Engine Offers” (on both the home page and the page you are directed to when you click on the link) to read “2010 Search Engine Offers”. The types of services that you are offering are “pay attention to details” types of services, and I think it is important to show both current and potential clients that you pay attention to details on your own website.

Both of these responses are answers to open-ended questions. The first reviewer says she was looking for testimonials to decide if the site is trustworthy or not. This is what she wants to do. She stated that she did not find testimonials on the front-page and this is a problem because it indicates no happy customers. The fix? Add testimonials.

Feedback on Good Things

Many rejected responses answer questions asking for improvement ideas with “It looks good” or “Nothing confused me”. These responses offer no action or value to your customer. If everything looks good, you can still help. Feedback on what is good and what shouldn’t change is just as valuable as feedback for improvement.

When saying something is good, make sure you say why it is good. The best feedback for this says:

1. What you wanted to do
2. What you did and why
3. What happened

By letting your customer know a feature is good and how you interacted with it, you’re showing them how you interact with a feature and what your experience is. Knowing this, your customer can work to keep your use-case in mind when improving the site.

Here is an examples of good response:

What confused you about the installation process? Nothing confused me about the download process. Since this is an experimental add-on, I had to check the “let me install” box, but other than that it was just like downloading any other add-on. The download went smoothly, and after restarting Firefox, the add-on was active.

Subjective Answers

I often see suggestions for customer’s to change the color or layout of their site. It’s ok to state that you dislike the colors but keep in mind that these will often get ignored unless your customer sees a trend from other reviewers.

If you’re going to suggest a subjective change, make sure you give a why. Sometimes the why is important.

I saw a website selling gag gifts for Bachelor and Bachelorette parties reviewed on Feedback Army. The entire site was pink. Many reviewers quickly pointed out that the pink color scheme was bad because it alienated male customers.

Bonus Points

Sometimes you will find blatant errors on a page. Maybe a spelling mistake or a copyright date set to last year. Point these things out. By doing so you’re immediately giving value to your customer and making it worth their while to read what you have to say.

Remember the Goal

Remember that your goal is to help your customer make their site better. You can do this by letting them know what is wrong, letting them know what is right, and always letting them know why. If you follow these tips you’ll make more money from Feedback Army and you’ll help make the web a better place. Thanks for reading this far.

Photo Credit: CarbonNYC

I’m going to help you take your service to a new level today. We’re going to play a game. A game motivated by our users. When you visit a new site, what questions come up in your mind? How long does it take you to decide to stay or go?

Visitors who are new to your site do the same thing. They come, with many questions and few answers. In a few moments they answer the questions to their satisfaction and move on or become your customer.

Today’s exercise is about knowing what these questions are, identifying how you would answer them, and then learning how visitors answer them. Knowing where your visitor’s answers to these web questions differ from yours will empower you to improve.

Now for the web testing questions:

1. Who runs this site or business?

Not every visitor is looking for your biography and social security number. Still it helps to have an indicator that lets them know they can learn who you are. Why? Knowing who you are helps build rapport. Having no way to find out who you are (especially if someone is looking) may create the impression that you have something to hide.

2. How do I reach someone if something goes wrong?

My biggest fear dealing with any new business is what happens if something goes wrong. Who do I contact? A contact form helps but that is not always enough. Some people might perceive that as a black-hole. Consider putting a phone number on every page and make sure your Contact page has more than just a form.

3. How will this site benefit me?

On your homepage is your sales message coming across? You’re trying to reach your visitors and make them into customers. Make sure you let them know how you can help them. At Feedback Army, I offer a service to review websites to improve usability.

4. What is this going to cost me?

If you’re offering a paid service (or if your site is free)–say so. I’m not offended paying for something. I do like to know what I’m getting into before I start. Sites that expect me to ask for a quote are the worst. If you’re one of those businesses relying on high prices and low volume, consider putting up a very high price. At least visitors will know what they’re getting into. If a visitor doesn’t know what it’s going to cost, chances are they’re not going to be your customer.

5. What exactly will I get from this site?

If you’re offering a service, it isn’t enough to “say” what you’re giving. Show your visitors what they will get. On this site I provide several sample reviews I received permission to display. Make sure you’re doing the same thing. If you’re selling something tangible–show pictures. If you’re selling software–screenshots.

6. How long is this going to take me?

When a visitor comes, some may leave if they have the mental perception that it’s going to take awhile to use your site. When I think usability testing, I think lots of money, reports, and expensive consultants. To combat this with Feedback Army, I emphasize “Two Minutes to Create a Test” right on the homepage.

7. What am I expected to do on this site?

Next a visitor needs to know what they need  to take advantage of your service. This feeds into the “how long is this going to take me?” question. When I was setting up this blog, I found the excellent ThemesPress WordPress Theme Generator. I came to their site with the expectation that creating a WordPress theme from my existing template is painful. They immediately make the steps clear on their homepage. I saw that I needed my  HTML and CSS. From there they’d provide everything else. This gave me the confidence that I met the prerequisites to use their service.

8. Will this site be here tomorrow?

Given what a visitor can see about your site, they will make a snap judgement about whether your site will continue to exist or not. Taking the time to have a decent design and indicating what years you’ve existed will give confidence to visitors that your site will continue to exist.

9. What do others think of this site or service?

Human beings (and the occasional surfing cat) are influenced by others. Quite a bit. We don’t have the time to reason about everything ourselves so we look for answers in social cues. Use this to your advantage. If people are saying good things about your service, make sure your users know this. Whenever I see press coverage or even a genuine looking testimonial, I perk up.

10. How often is this product or service worked on?

Next, make sure you keep your site up to date. My biggest pet peeve are sites that fail to update the footer of their site with the current year in the copyright. I had someone contact me to discuss their “patented software”. I took a look at their site and saw 2008 in the footer. This immediately told me no one is paying daily attention to the site. Check these details. If you can’t keep your site up to date, then consider leaving the dates out.

Now you know my usability questions (and some of my pet peeves). Have you answered these for your site yet? Once you do, the next step is to see how users would answer these questions. You can use Feedback Army to do just that. Pick out five or six of usability questions and create a test. This will give you an outsiders perspective to how you’re presenting yourself. Once you find the disconnect, you can fix these items and ask again.