[thechat] UNC student in need of insight from the web developer community!

Matt Warden mwarden at gmail.com
Mon Mar 23 21:52:19 CDT 2009


On Mon, Mar 23, 2009 at 10:36 PM, Pallas Tseng <ni.de.gong.zhu at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Web Developers!
>
>
> I'm a student at UNC's Kenan-Flagler Business School who would truly
> appreciate your feedback for my class project. My team and I have been asked
> to collect feedback about a product called “Suggestion Box”.
>
> Suggestion Box is a new web 2.0 learning tool designed to help web
> developers increase revenue from their client base.

I was unable to fully explain in your survey, because the box limited
me to too few characters. Here is my feedback:

Card is too busy; shows lack of understanding of usability and user
psychology. You must be able to answer this question: why would I, a
user, a) click on suggestion box link instead of just leaving the
site, b) see the card, estimate the time needed, and still fill it
out. You provide no motivation for the user to do this, other than a
place to vent (which they can already do, should they choose, via
"contact us" links).

This brings me to my biggest point, which I think is just a problem
with your marketing/screencast. What does your product offer my
clients that they don't get via a "contact us" link or a custom form?
The answer, I think, is in your email, but nowhere in your screencast:

"With it, your clients would be able to see how they rank in
comparison to other businesses within their industry."

Where do you show this? You need to put much greater focus on the
features that allow me to show how my site compares to my competition.
This is where the value of your product lies. Of course, you have a
chicken-before-the-egg problem, but then again I think that's why you
are offering us free 6-month subscriptions, right?

You're going to have to do better than that to drive adoption, though.

Pardon the harshness, but your product is flawed from a technical,
marketing, and adoption perspective. These flaws are NOT fundamental,
though. With work, you could have a viable product.

Good luck,

-- 
Matt Warden
Cincinnati, OH, USA
http://mattwarden.com


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