When building formigniter.org I wanted to include a feedback form but didn’t want to use a separate page with a form. I spotted a feedback ‘tab’ on a website I was browsing, and thought it was ideal. It sits on the side of every page, so a user can send a quick message without loading up an additional page.
You can see this in action at formigniter.org
I came across Zendesk and Get Satisfaction, which both provide these feedback ‘tabs’ as a tiny part of their fully feature, social, helpdesk solutions. This is completely overkill for my needs; I just wanted their neat little tab!
I also didn’t like that they required the user to register or login using an existing social network account such as Twitter or Facebook, to send a feedback message. They also required an email address from the user. My feeling is that the user is doing me a favour when they send a bit of feedback. If they want to leave an email address to receive a reply great, but they shouldn’t be forced to. I also have no need to know their name, so don’t want to ask for it. I hate datamining for dataminings sake.
So not happy with what was out there I knocked together my own version, based around the code of Zendesk and stuck it on formigniter.org. Over the last 6 months I have had some great feedback, started some very interesting dialogue, and had a steady flow of inspiring ‘thank you’ notes trickle into my mailbox. I haven’t received any spam, although I did receive a fair amount of blank feedback messages. Perhaps my tinkering developer readership are curious about the little tab and submit it to see how it works. This blank feedback was easily solved with a bit of validation.
I have no solid evidence, but would like to think that simplifying the form has removed some of the barriers and increased the amount of useful feedback I receive.
Given that I have found this feedback tab useful, I guess other people may as well, so I am going to knock up a little website where you can get your own.
