User feedback - 09 July session

Guys

Here is the user feedback from Dave Jarvis - an Information Architecture and Usability dude from Grey Interactive and a pretty switched on guy who doesn't suffer fools gladly. Much of it echoes what we're already aware of, but some interesting things do crop up...

- community side to site (ie principally the forums) still needs more 'involvement' from users (he said that "at the moment, it often feels like it's just you guys all talking to each other")
- we should make ourselves more "visible" in the broader industry community, eg by getting onto more mailing lists, quoted in publications
- he was really keen to have the ability to come onto the site, ask a question to SOMEONE and know he would receive a timely answer
- this tied into the idea of making the site more personal/human, which he was in favour of (with photos and profiles of e-consultants)
- he felt the look & feel of the site in general was "slightly too dry, harsh and could intimidate you against putting up a wackier, off-centre posting"
- he tended to use the site when he had a bit of spare time, eg during a lunch break (he said that "he doesn't yet value the site's content enough to go there very regularly")
- he spent 90% of his time on the site in the forums
- he suggested that some form of mailing when sth has been posted/added re a certain topic would be a good addition
- he didn't make much use of the White Papers ("It's more of a hassle to wait to download them - I would tend to scan the summaries")
- he didn't even seem to be aware that he'd received the E-Business Briefing, nor was he subscribed to any of the other E-mail Services
- he was very keen that we get more 'client' types involved in contributing, commenting that "it's traditionally quite difficult to locate somewhere that you can chat to clients about the things that are important to them, why they select one agency over another, etc" (so he liked Shilen's involvement, for example)
- he also wondered whether the site's content was currently too heavily skewed towards agency types; he thought that many clients might be put off/confused by some of the terms used eg. for forum headings ("clients simply need to know 'what benefit can this give me and my company?', so give it to them")
- he thought my content white paper was "too general, it didn't really tell me anything new, should have been shorter/snappier, given me stuff that I can action straightaway" [When I'd picked myself up from the floor, he did say that he could see it held a lot of value for people who knew less about that area than himself...!]

Ultimately, he commented that the 3 goals for a user using a site such as ours were:

1. Find something interesting
2. Help me out with a problem
3. Put me in touch with someone

So quite interesting stuff, I'd say. When I've got Paul & Matt's feedback, I'll distil it into a single doc.

STRO