Like any other marketing campaign, the goal of a SEO campaign is to provide good ROI. While obviously keyword selection and proper implementation of SEO techniques is crucial for SEO success, the ROI depends on how you capitalize the SEO traffic. An important tool for improving your ROI is ‘user feedback’.
KindOfDigital.com has the most appropriate and educating definition where it mentions that a ‘user feedback’ is – A specific type of user-generated content: that created as a response to provided informational content.
A ‘user feedback’ can be in the form of –
Simply put, ROI means ‘Return On Investment’. It is used to measure the profitability of a campaign or an investment.
Here is how Investopedia defines and calculates ROI –
A performance measure used to evaluate the efficiency of an investment or to compare the efficiency of a number of different investments. To calculate ROI, the benefit (return) of an investment is divided by the cost of the investment; the result is expressed as a percentage or a ratio. The return on investment formula:
The relation is simple – the better you know your target user, the more you can sell. You might think that if a customer is looking for something that you sell, he will be willing to go through any website usability issues to complete the purchase. Alas, this is not the case! Even small barriers like – unclear product description, failing to mention serviceable areas, etc. are enough for a potential buyer to abandon your website and seek alternatives. It is important to remember that there are a lot of companies that are offering the same product and services as you do. So if there are some serious usability issues on the website you might be losing a lot of your potential buyers.
Now that you know what is a ‘user feedback’ and how it can help you understand your target audience better, it is important you implement it. Here are a few tips that would help you better implement a ‘User Feedback Strategy’. This would not only help you improve your visitor’s user behavior but would also bring in more profits.
Do not hide your contact page as a sub-menu. Make it a part of your global navigation menu and make sure it appears on all inner pages. This ensures that your potential buyers can approach you at any step of their purchase session.
This strategy is very well-implemented by Amazon.com. Their feedback section is labeled as ‘Help’ and is globally available on all the pages of the website. You can see it as the last element of their top navigation menu.
I am an Amazon.com user (an avid reader) and one thing I like about them is the way they make it so simple for anyone to drop a feedback/help request.
No one likes to fill out a lengthy form. Make you forms short, simple and straight to the point. Avoid unnecessary fields like ‘How you found us?’, ‘Last Name’, etc.
I would recommend having just three fields – Name, Email and Feedback. Make sure that such a simple feedback form is available on all important pages of your website or all across your website.
The contact section at Amazon.com is labeled as ‘Help’. While it is carefully placed in the global navigation of the website, the ‘Help’ label implies that the section deals with ‘Frequently Asked Questions’ and is not actually a section where one can give a feedback. It is important that the forms or navigational button have proper labels. If you are offering short feedback form then let the visitors know by labeling it something like – “Fast Feedback”, “Drop A Quick Mail”, etc.
See how we, at CrunchSEO, implement our ‘fast feedback form’ –
There are a few websites that make it increasingly hard for non-members to drop a feedback by either asking them to first sign in or asking them to use a registered email address. This is not right! Why discriminate or make others’ opinion insignificant? Allow a general feedback section where anyone can provide their feedback.
If you are ecommerce website, try providing incentives to those who provide feedback for your products. Providing them with coupons, discounts on their purchase, free shipping, etc. will work. Let them know that you desire their feedback and appreciate their effort in doing so.