Making Feedback Meaningful by Dmitry
September 15, 2009 in Notable, with 27 Comments
The ability to share website feedback is a key feature of Notable. We share feedback internally for our blog posts and projects we work on. The feature is easy to use: After you have captured and annotated a webpage with the tool you can click on the “Share” button on top right as shown below and enter a message to the recipient.
Our own “Lessons Learned” folder contains a few items which we’d like to share with you to make using Notable more effective. All ZURBians follow these tips and we believe they will benefit your team!
Complete, Clear and Concise Annotations
Social media has made all of us lazy. Let’s face it, sites such as Facebook and Twitter have made our messages partial, incomplete and vague. It’s fine to say: “Check this out," while sending a tweet or an IM to a buddy, but it gets all of us in trouble when we share feedback on websites. Our team quickly learned that incomplete sentence annotations create confusion with recipients of feedback.
Hence, our tip #1 – keep the annotations up to one line long and make the statement complete, clear and concise.
Inform, Persuade, Motivate
Each day we have millions of things to do. Receiving website feedback through Notable must prompt an action otherwise the message will be lost. Motivating the feedback recipient to perform an action is the most effective way to get follow-through on your ideas. A simple: "This needs to be tagged with (h2)" does not work as well as "Header needs an (h2) tag to align with our improved style guide."
Our tip #2 – your job is to give the recipient of feedback all the information and incentives to improve your website or application.
Direct Specific Feedback
Sending feedback to large groups of people creates confusion. If it makes sense – separate the feedback into individual notes and send them separately to stakeholders. Everyone wins when there are fewer follow-up items.
Our tip #3 - direct specific feedback items to individuals in the group.
Quick Pointers We Love to Follow
- Write a meaningful subject line.
- Make sure your signature is on the message. Most developers or busy people don't keep great contact lists. Make it easy for them to get back in touch with you.
- Proofread. Spell check is a must. Reread your email. It tells the recipient that you are detail oriented. Grammar is an important tool for conveying 'expert.'
- Don't assume privacy. Consider who else will read your feedback.
- Respond Promptly.
There you have it—a bit of a brain dump from us to you. Let us know how you’re liking Notable! We are looking for customer success stories with Notable to publish on our blog, give us a shout at support@notableapp.com
27 Comments
Jeremy (ZURB) says:
Underlying all of this advice is the fact that Notable makes feedback better by being applied directly to the screenshot, code, or copywriting of a live page. That's just cool.
But it's true that you get more out of that feedback when you apply some tried-and-true guidelines like this to get things done.
Robert Barker says:
For a firm w/ such attitude (or so it seems from your "folksy" speak on your site), and such design bravado—you have a GOD AWFUL wordmark yourself.
Awful.
unkleE says:
G'day guys.
I don't really understand exactly what Robert Barker means by his comment, but I gather he is criticising the design of this site, especially your logo. I know nothing about design, but I'm trying to learn, especially thinking about mainly black & white site design. I like your site, and it, especially your blog, have helped me get some ideas together.
Thanks, and be encouraged! : )
Mark says:
@Robert Barker: We're sorry you don't seem to like our brandmark, but we stand by it and our culture day in and day out. Glad to hear you have nothing negative to say about Notable—hope you enjoy it!
@unkleE: Glad you love the blog! Thanks for sticking to it and be sure to keep coming back for more. We're picking up steam with more posts and would love to hear from our readers more :).
Bill says:
Just tried Notable yesterday. INHALE. EXHALE. INHALE. ECSTASY. Very easy to use, and it's the best way I've found to communicate with my virtual team regarding web design revisions. You all have made creating in "the cloud" a more natural endeavor.
THANK YOU.
Dmitry (ZURB) says:
Wow Bill! What a testimonial! It's great to hear such excitement! Glad you're loving the tool! Please stay in touch with us through Twitter: http://twitter.com/notableapp or support@notableapp.com
Thanks again for the excited note!
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