What's the best way to get feedback?

Feedback from visitors

[spikedo55]

I was reading somewhere that you really got to know why your visitors are coming to your site and what they are looking for. I'm sure most of us webmasters made an educated guess at answering these questions when we began developing our sites. Now that they are up, what is the best way to get useful feedback from visitors so that you could fine-tune your site's content and services?

One basic thing I see sites doing is having a feedback link that toggles the visitors e-mail to open. Seems very simple, but is that effective? A bit more complex, I see others doing a popunder survey form that is toggled once you enter the site.

I'd be interested to hear what others think and do. I find the advice here very valuable. Thanks all.

[Nick_W]

A link to a feedback form is preferred for me. Make sure it's prominent and that at the end of each article/new item etc and you'll get some useful info...

Nick

[chris_f]

I've found the link to a feedback form generally doesn't work unless someone want to contact you. It doesn't even really work to report dead links. People just don't care.

On some specialist site I have a popup <shudder> feedback form after their 10th click. It has a simple yes, no and ask later buttons to the question 'would you like to give feedback'. You will find that the large majority will give you feedback this way.

Otherwise, you can put the actual form on some of you pages and people are normally very happy to fill it in.

Note For Both: People Do Not Like Putting In Their Email Address. It is not enougth to make it optional. If you want their email address have a radio but asking them where they want to include their email address. I know this is long winded and pointless as they could just leave it blank, but, general web users don't realise it's manditory.

Forms are preferred to email links as people don't what spam and like to remain annonymous.

Chris

[spikedo55]

I like the idea of the popup feedback from after a certain number of clicks. Could you post the code for that or provide a URL to where I could grab it if it's free?
I would be most grateful.

I also wonder if there is a script tat would create a popup as soon as the person left your site. Or, I gues you could have a popunder as soon as the person entered your site. What do people think about those?

[hayluke]

I've got a simple box at the bottom of some of my more visited pages inviting users to give comments/feedback/suggestions. I don't get many people filling them in but enough to make them worthwhile. Personally I'm not a big fan of pop-up/pop-unders (and I don't think I'm alone on that one!) but if you make sure that people belive comments will be acted on then they may be willing to help you.

For example my site provides a lot of information and gets a lot of regular users so if I can improve their future use of the site in some way then it's worth their while to tell me how.

The other tactic we've tried with sucsess is a competition. Have a site questionnaire asking all teh questions you like and give a prize of some kind to a lucky user. This depends on how desperate you are for feedback though..

[spikedo55]

hayluke: If its okay to do so here, could you include a URL so I can see how you did it?