Seems like I have been on a kick to garner user feedback from my visitors. I recently installed the Skribit widget to help in that regard, but I found something even better than that, UserVoice. UserVoice helps you to obtain customer feedback in a clean and professional manner.
A few things I didn’t like about the Skribit widget is that it takes up space, and for you to see the entire functionality, my sidebar needs to be a larger width than what it is today. I can’t really change the width without a cascade of issues, so I was forced to decide between reducing the amount of visible area or find a new place for it where there is plenty of width. Obviously I decided to reduce the viewing area and just live with it. I wasn’t happy about that at all though. UserVoice doesn’t come with those issues.
UserVoice To The Rescue
UserVoice is different. It doesn’t require any space other than the little Feedback tab you can see on the right hand side of the screen. Clicking that will pop open a window where you can type in your email address and a comment. The comments are meant to be a bug, a feature request, a blog post idea or even a generic question you want to fire my way. Hell, it could be whatever you want as long as you’re not trying to sell me something. 
Another feature that helped sell me on UserVoice is when you establish your account with UserVoice, you can set up a landing page. You are able to do some limited skinning of the landing page, like provide a logo, customize some of the text and so on. It’s pretty minimal but functional.
It’s also from the landing page that you can elaborate on the question or idea, and also vote on other ideas or suggestions that you agree with or want to see something happen with. All in all, it feels better than the other options, so I have once again switched up on everyone in favor of a better tool.
Installation
Another thing I liked was the ease of installation. A simple script placed before your closing
Getting started with a website is easy. Simply follow these steps to get started:
BJ@Charleston Sou... (1)
cam @ toy coupons (1)
Dave@Wheeled Holdall (1)
UserVoice is a good product (we use it). But you have to constantly monitor it for ballot stuffing because they provide no means to limit who can vote. We have a lot of cases where a customer will have 15 co-workers all go vote for their request.
But if you review every new user that registers and go delete the bogus votes then it’s a great system.
I think this will not work for my blog but this is a good one.Thank you.
Thank you for submitting this article to the small and home business carnival.
Hey Heff, would your honey agree with that? lol…I bet so…
Dana, welcome back, long time no see! This is the culmination of a years work, taking little steps each day, nothing more. I don’t spend an inordinate amount of time online, but I suspect it’s above normal usage.
I’m going to log that into the new feedback thingy and get back to you on that. There are many questions and many possible ways to try to get that information. I’ll see what I can dredge up for you.
It’s been a while since I was here and MAN am I amazed!!! And here I was, dissing myself for spending too much time online, and you must LIVE online to have accomplished all this.
I’m trying to track down a woman from an online chat room from ten years ago. She totally stopped me from committing suicide, TEN YEARS AGO. How does a person track down someone? All I have is her old AOL address and she lives in Australia. Any hope?
I don’t need this feature. I feel that I’m “tool” enough for my blog.
Thanks My Online Handyman
Maybe I should have added some graphics to display the tab itself in the post. Oh hell, I could just write another post on how to actually use it since this is more a ‘hey, look what I found’ type post.
Diesel, it’s still new, so there isn’t a lot of feedback yet. There is a difference between the feedback and the comments that I think should be obvious, but then, most things I think are obvious aren’t. So perhaps an explanation is due on that angle too.
Shaping up a new post already…I’m going to add this idea to the feedback widget now, thanks guys!
Good find Wayne, it seems to work quite well.
Are you getting a lot of feedback from it though, or is the majority of your feedback still coming from comment boxes on your articles?
I like it, I like it a lot. At first I did not understand how to use it or what you were looking for, but I quickly figured it out. Good find! I am going to Stumble it as well.