I had a chance to join the Minnov8 Gang podcast crew for their 20th show. They make up a media site covering all things Minnesota tech.

Of course, we found time to chat about the launch of 3rd Party Feedback.

One area of focus for Minnov8 is start-ups. As Steve Borsch mentioned during the show, it’s amazing how many start-ups are missing extremely fundamental elements on their websites, such as an explanation of what their websites do. It’s perfectly understandable why this happens. Start-up founders tend to be more focused on technology than the business side of their service or product. They also forget that not everyone is as familiar with their offering as they are. This is why it’s great to solicit feedback from a group of people who can give you a truly fresh perspective on what you’ve missed.

Minnesota based consumer electronics retailer, Best Buy, was mentioned during the show. Unfortunately, the topic was related to current and pending buyouts as the company weathers the downturn in the economy. A company like this could benefit from using 3rd Party Feedback to test numerous aspects of their website. For example, find out what people thing about the site’s homepage, search functionality, category pages, product detail pages, and checkout form. Feedback leading to even the slightest of improvements to any of those page types would generate a positive return on an investment in this type of research.

Apple.com is well known for creating incredible computers such as the one I’ve used to write this. While their products get high marks, what do people think of their website, Apple.com? According to Quantcast, Apple.com receives ~17.8 million visitors / month, so even small usability improvements could lead to big impacts on sales figures.

Apple.com on Jan 6, 2009

We’ve run Apple.com through our introductory tests to find out. The results are below:

What Does This Site Do?

1. This website sells, advertises, and supports Apple products.
2. Apps for the Mac. One for “life” and one for “work”. Also ads for other Mac products, especially that gorgeous laptop. Also a demo for the new battery.
3. The website is for music downloads. We can purchase our favorite music through this website.
4. It’s Apple, a well-known computer company that sells computers, software, and other gadgets.
5. This site sells Apple IPods, MAC notebooks and desktops, software exclusive to the Apple products, external hardrives, and accessories for Ipods, MAC notebooks and desktops. A customer can custom build a desktop or laptop and apply for financing.
6. This website provides information about Apple computer and their products.
7. It’s the main website for Apple, so, it advertises their various products and links to support info for customers.
8. It sells Apple computer products.
9. It is a site to buy apple products
10. This website is designed to advertise and tell you about all of Apple’s products. It also looks like it Promotes iTunes and song/other downloads. Also, this website is used to provide technical support for all of Apple’s products.

It sounds like people get what the site is all about. The site is a major sales channel for Apple, so it’s not surprising that they’ve invested in making sure the site clearly explains to users what they sell.

What is This Website’s Best Feature?

1. Ilife and Iwork box pictures.
2. The toolbar at the top makes it easy to find whatever you’re looking for.
3. Great graphics and a wonderfully clean page. One sees everything. Super.
4. the itune window is the best i think.
5. The current splash page when you first get to the site introducing a new product.
6. Well organized product categories at the top of the home page.
7. I like the overall design: it’s very clean, uncluttered, attractive, and easy to understand. I also like the bar at the top that makes all the features easy to access right away.
8. I think the graphics are the nicest feature on the site.
9. The ilife 09 guided tour
10. The store is my favorite part of the website. I love the way they have everything laid out, and the clean simple nature of the graphics makes it that much more appealing in my opinion. It makes it easier to focus on the products you want to look at.

It’s interesting that so many different features stood out to users as their favorite. This is very rare. Typically, sites do one thing well while missing in other areas. The features on Apple’s site is consistently good.

What is 1 Thing This Site Could Do Better?
1. Describe something more as to what these two do. It’s more like just an advertisement page, no explanation. Who has the time to keep reading.
2. It should describe itunes plus and what makes it better on the first page.
3. The iLife and iWork promos take up way too much of the homepage. I’d like to see more space dedicated to navigational links so you can see a larger overview of what’s available and get to what you want with fewer clicks.
4. Having the store button there is redundant for the site. It should be taken off and everything subcategorized so someone could just go to where they want to go. I think looking at Sonystyle.com would be a great template on how to organize the site better.
5. Less images on the page; they cause the website to load slowly.
6. Right now I have to scroll down to see everything even though I have a fairly big monitor, and I imagine it’s worse for those with smaller screen resolutions. I would scale down the large images in the main body of the page so that it only takes up one screen.
7. It needs a tab on the left to select options. Having it at the top of the page is not very instinctive. The store option needs to be bigger than the rest, also, since after all sales is the primary goal.
8. You can explain more what can be done with downloads. And for people not good with a computer explain that they can use DSL or Cable to download software and songs.
9. Add a find a retail store link at the top of the page to make it more easier to locate
10. I wish the website had more free things, I know that sounds silly considering they want you to BUY products, but if they gave me something for free it would draw me in to want to buy something. Also, more photos of the products would be good – I like to have a lot of photos to look at when I’m purchasing something. Also, I’d like to see more customer reviews on the products.

Interesting feedback. Quite a few ideas came to light that may be worth considering. While Apple made a conscious decision to heavily promote some new product launches, leading to some negative feedback about overdoing that, they’re probably find with that. Making the store locator and online store links easier for users to find (and testing moving the navigation to locations other than the very top of the page) may help discover more intuitive layouts.

Cullect.com is a Minneapolis based start-up that provides an RSS reader with a bunch of interesting features including community collaboration, inline processing (ex. Blog or Twitter about what you’re reading from within the reader), and shared reading lists.

Cullect founder, Garrick Van Buren, ran the site’s homepage through 3rdPartyFeedback.com’s introductory tests then publicly posted the 3rd Party Feedback results on his site’s blog.

Here is what the site looked like at the time of the tests:

This is a good example of why aggregating feedback can be valuable. The results show that while most get what Cullect is about, it wasn’t clear to all visitors. Could this be improved? Probably.

Design opinions varied from positive feedback about the site’s minimalist presentation to complaints about the “lack of design.”

Based on the feedback Cullect.com received, I get that a good chunk of visitors to the homepage aren’t having an “Ah Ha!” moment where they think to themselves, “I get what this site does and how it can make my life better.” This may or may not be an issue for this type of site since it’s probably primarily winning new visitors through word of mouth.

Visit the Cullect Blog to see what reviewers thought of the site.

President-Elect, Barack Obama, has been running a transition website at the domain change.gov where he and his transition team publish announcements relevant to his upcoming term as President of the United States.

The Obama campaign has received high praise for connecting with a record number of campaign contributors both in terms of number of donors and money donated, so they clearly know a thing or two about how to build an effective website.

So how does change.gov stack up when tested by 3rdPartyFeedback.com reviewers? Here are the results of the 3-Pack Test:

Question: What does this website do?

It appears to be the web site for president elect Obama.

It looks like the official blog of the President of the United States.

This site is concerned with preparations for taking office of the Obama administration. It provides information about the issues that the administration is working on as well as a forum for Americans to voice their opinion on issues.

This website is for the news about the US president elect and we can post our own stories and thoughts about that. We can share our ideas to develop the country through this.

This is a website for the transition leading up to the inauguration of President-elect Obama.

Provides information on president elect Barack Obama, and allows people to ask questions concerning this topic.

This webpage provides information on the incoming presidential administration

This website is to provide the information, plans and goals of President-Elect Obama.

It’s the president-elect’s transition website. Basically, it’s whitehouse.gov that Obama can use before he has access to the real one.

This site is sharing policy developments with the public, and taking opinions of people. This site is aimed at getting feedback from the masses, and there are discussions on protecting US, reviving the economy, tackling medical issues etc.

It sounds like people generally understand the purpose of this site. That puts it ahead of the curve. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that it is the official website of one of most famous people on the planet today.

Question: What is this website’s best feature?

The overall layout is excellent. It’s easy to read.

In theory, the mechanism that allows people to submit their stories is a nice idea. I can’t honestly submit this without pointing out that being a realist, I cringe at the concept in practice, though. You’d need an army of government workers to screen out the hostile/trolling/lobbyist submissions. I’m not sure I’d want my tax dollars to go toward that.

I consider the best current feature on this website to be “open for questions.” This is very useful for clarifying the administration’s current views and planned strategy for dealing with issues. It conveys an impression that the Obama administration intends to take into consideration the concerns of the governed.

The video of the weekly address. I didn’t even know this was available, and now I will be able to catch up.

The professional template and design, the top logo and header are very professional and eye catching

The blog by president elect Obama is the best feature. It allows the American people to feel connected to what is going on.

All the information about Mr. Obama’s agenda on different issues

The Agenda page because it gives the links of agenda topics. It’s well organized and easy to find information on the topics I am interested in.

It’s very authoritative. The color scheme, the fonts, the subtle/classy (NOT overbearing) use of animation all ooze power and confidence.

The best feature is the Agenda tab. You can learn about Obama and Biden’s plans for our country in any area you might be interested in. It is stated very simply for everyone to understand.

Opinions vary on what the site’s best feature is. The overall design gets high marks as well as the depth of information on agenda items and the relative newness of the information. A lot of work goes into keeping this site up to date and that seems to translate into a positive response from visitors.

Question: What is 1 thing this site could do better?

Have a clear mission statement explaining what the site does.

It looks way too much like PR spin for it to be believable. My first thought was that it is the product of a presidential marketing crew, and that makes me resistant to the whole idea. I don’t believe for a moment that this is actually the president’s blog. It has the look of a government site, but smells of propaganda.

The first thing I’d suggest is a name change. “change.gov” sounds like a campaign slogan. Once my elected president is in office I want him to stop campaigning and advertising himself and get down to work. I’d MUCH rather see a presidential blog that actually tells me what went on in the government this week, how he voted on various issues, and allowed me to track his record as a leader. That’s far more useful thing to me as a concerned, voting US citizen than a warm fuzzy feeling that the President is a friendly, chatty man.

I believe that the homepage should contain less information. It should communicate what the site offers, but it should move anything not essential to a first impression to other pages.

OK, maybe one thing: It would be good to have a link to the regional community groups. I want to join one of them, and I don’t think I can access them from this site. That would be the only thing! I like the site.

The constant switching from “Open For Questions” to “Happy Holidays” to “Your Weekly Address” is distracting. Get rid of it. Make information about the inauguration celebration more prominent.

Having a history and more personal information about Obama.

Shorten the BLOG list for that day not the whole week. Make a link of weeks for easier access to these older BLOGS.

The headings right above the animation (Learn, Newsroom, Blog, American Moments, etc) are not clear. Why is “learn” separate from “agenda”; what if I want to learn about Obama’s agenda, where do I go? What on earth is an American moment? Why is “Blog” listed both as a heading and as a subheading to “Newsroom”? It’s very difficult to browse, although the search bar to some extent mitigates the problem if I know what I’m looking for.

The blog section on the left hand side seems a bit out of place. It seems like that should be kept under the news section and not right on the main page.

Even President-Elect Barack Obama’s website isn’t perfect. Based on the feedback received, it looks like the Obama transition team suffers from some of the same challenges many businesses face: putting visitors first. Some people were turned off by the site and felt that they were being sold. In those cases, the Obama transition team has failed to connect with their website’s visitors.

There appear to be some navigational issues as well. Will the Obama transition team address them, or just ride out the three remaining weeks of this website’s lifespan before Obama will transition to Whitehouse.gov?

Does this really work? Judge for yourself. Here is a screenshot of 3rdPartyFeedback.com’s homepage before it was run through a series of feedback tests.

The test results for our own site are published below.

What Does Your Website Do?

Real humans review your website and determine what works and what doesn’t, what needs to be changed and what can be improved. This will improve web usability, conversion rates, load times, leads, and visitor retention.

This website gives (at a cost) 3rd party opinions on what to do to make YOUR website better. For example, what needs clarification? What can be improved? Who is your competition on the web?

This webpage provides an evaluation of your website by people who will let you know what is good about your site, what is bad, and what changes should be made in order that you may pull in more visitors to your site.

This website giving feedback of the website from the real people. its giving the feedback for cost and collecting various information from different people about the website.

This website gives you 3rd part feedback on what is and is not working on your webpage. You receive different type of feedback for certain amounts of money, such as – what do you do, thing to improve, best current feature, and competitive websites.

Lets users give feedback on someone’s site or product so that whoever is developing knows what they’re doing wrong or right and what they could do better.

The business has independent viewers look over your website and give feedback as to what could be better or helped.

This website solicits opinions to help improve websites. They solicit opinions from real people so that a site knows if it is doing well or not.

This business gives you feedback on your business website — tells you what’s working and what needs to change

It a website that you pay to analyze your product (website, company, etc) and they give you constructive feedback on what’s good and what should be changed.

We’re pleased that our website does a good job explaining to visitors what we do. That’s not always the case, as you can see from some on our feedback examples page.

Best Current Feature

The best current feature is the examples. It lets people know what kinds of constructive feedback they can expect from using the service.

Test 4: Competitive Websites is the best feature because it helps your webpage stand out among the competition. Knowing what people like about other people’s websites helps you make yours better.

I like how you have the four test options in bolded print, making them easy to find and that you have the price of each test at the bottom of each description.

I like how it lists they different options and gives detailed information on the options.

Feedback from real people

The fact that all four options cost the same. It makes it seems like you’re not so pressured to get one or the other, or that one’s not necessarily any better than the other.

Currently, the best feature on this website is the listing of the 4 tests in a box like setting.

I like how easy it is to order the various tests.

Getting feedback from different people is the current and best feature.

They layout is simple and easy to find information. It is clear on a glance what the company does and how the site works.

Overall, people seem to find the premise of the site interesting. That’s a good sign. The best news here is that they didn’t find a “best feature” that actually isn’t, such as a “skip intro” button on a Flash website.

From here, I could get more specific by running additional tests that ask about specific features.

1-Thing to Improve

Change that fake picture at the top to something more realistic. Those generic pictures are such a turn off! Try to find something that is either real or something with no people at all! Just nothing with generic people. Other than that, looks great and is a great concept!

1. A simple matter of color to help guide the eye — possibly something as simple as a color highlight over the active link (or tabbed navigation.
2. More content — especially testimonials. As a business owner, I’m more likely to purchase from a company with a well-established reputation or with testimonials from other customers (best when customers allow a link to their own web sites to appear with the testimonial).
3. Either remove the link to the RSS feed or put some content there. Right now the only content there is the default WordPress “Hello World” post, which makes the site look very unprofessional when a user clicks the link.

This web page is a little bit boring to look at. I know that you are going for a certain demographic, but it might help to spruce it up a bit.

“Find out what isn’t clear to first time website visitors, what can be improved, and what they like about your current site, and who they consider to be your competition. ” Grammar – Get rid of the “and” before “what they like”.

The content section where the tests are listed could benefit from a stronger visual differentiation. The page contains a LOT of white space which makes it difficult to view over extended periods of time.

In all honestly? Fix the spelling mistakes. I’m a snob, so there’s no way I would use a business that isn’t able to run their data through spell check and get rid of the errors. I can see at least two, and that’s one too many for me to consider using something like this.

Picture of real people looks fake.

I think this website needs more copy to help with its SEO results (ie articles to boost page rank and add keywords) I also think that it needs more info as to how exactly this stuff will help, ie quality.

Give some proven results for the website. I mean give the example website and the corresponding feedback in home page. Give the cost and make it sound.

You should have examples of the feedback available on the website. For the different options a customer would benefit from seeing an example of feedback given to a particular site.

Excellent feedback that shows we not only have room for improvement, but what that improvement should be. We can now confidently make changes that will improve our future visitor’s experiences.

Welcome to 3rdPartyFeedback.com: The site that helps you move beyond the boardroom when making web design decisions.

3rdPartyFeedback.com is a new type of web design survey that taps into the wisdom of crowds to help you determine what’s working, what’s confusing, and what could be improved on your website or a page of your website. (It can also be used to run the same tests on your competitor’s websites.)

Receiving batch-feedback from independent website visitors can be both eye-opening and constructive. Typically, you’ll receive some great nuggets of insight that have been overlooked and need to be addressed. You’ll also find that the feedback, in aggregate, helps determine which issues are consistent nags for your site’s visitors. Solve these underlying problems and watch your website performance increase.

Focus Group?

This is not your typical focus group. The visitors to your site don’t know you and don’t know each other, so they’re not susceptible to typical focus group shortcomings such as holding back what they really feel in an attempt to avoid offending you, and they avoid group-think since they don’t hear the responses of others.

Give it a try. I think you’ll be impressed.