The Review Discussion Chaos

When you launch a new business online it is hard to get an idea of what your visitors might like or not. The best way to get this is to get review of your friends or even unknown people in forum communities. Every time when i working with a new design I ask my GF what she things about it (she is tech savvy but has a good taste of whats good looking and whats bad looking). That part of the goal was reached but i needed more technical informations.

Google Analytics did provide me with enough informations to get started with, but not enough to reach the goal. What i was in need for was a honest human review, i wanted the new design to be seen from human eyes and to give me opinions of things that they did not liked or things that did not worked within the theme. I head over and asked for that kind of review on DigitalPoint (a webmasters forum) where webmasters hang out. What I was trying to pull out of their reviews the worst side of my new layout (if you read the thread you will notice i was asking for users to report errors instead of complimenting the new design). The power of the community was huge and of great help for me, the errors that were reported i fixed and even more i received compliments and even some bookmarks (apart the traffic).

Other than going on forums and asking for review of your project or website there is an alternative, the paid reviews from blog users. Unfortunately lately this behavior has been abused and people pay for publicity instead of reviews. The latest review on John Chow dot com created a big buzz on the net due to the negative review given by John and mainly from the John Chow dot Com readers.

How should you act over negative reviews
The Ms/Mrs that ordered the review on John Chow’s blog was kinda running after readers that commented on the post and biasing on what they had to say and how they expressed themselves in regard to her service/website. Her comments were poor and unprofessional, in one of her comments she stated that she ordered the review (cost of the review is $400) for fun..oh well, she could give a party for those money in her house and have more fun. Is that the right way you should act when you get a negative review? Definitively not, because with her comments she actually convinced me even more not to sign up with her program.

You ask for a review and you should mainly concentrate on the negative comments and try to fix them. If out of 100 comments you have 10 negative than work out and convince even those 10 that you are willing to collaborate and make your visitors feel more comfortable and trustworthy that things will work out if they sign up with your program. If someone says that your site is scam don’t bias on him rather try to prove him that it is not scam it is something legit and that does work, provide him with all necessary informations.

This story can become really long but I would rather cut it off, make it short and advice you to get the reviews (especially negative ones) as constructive as possible and serious to work at and get them fixed, it will build trust with your visitors and it will help you with the new visitors.

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