A Note Concerning Feedback and Queries for Web Pages#

N. Delilovic and H. Maurer, Graz University of Technology, ISDS
Contact: namikdelilovic@gmail.com or hmaurer@iicm.edu

Abstract#

When studying a web page, users often notice a mistake, feel that some important information is missing, or do not understand some explanation, wording, or instruction they are supposed to follow. The possibly supplied list of frequently asked questions and answers is often not terribly helpful; trying to contact the web administration can often be quite frustrating. In this note we discuss a mechanism that we have studied for a number of years and have refined to the extent that it is now extremely easy to use for above mentioned purposes, and is available on ever web page. We believe this could be a valuable addition to just about any web site or web application.

Introduction#

When studying a web page it is a common phenomenon that one notices an error, has the feeling that some important fact is missing, does not understand some formulation or terminology, or is unable to follow instruction on how to continue, like filling out which part of the form in what way, etc. In such cases it would be desirable to be able to communicate with the persons responsible for the website, yet this is often quite frustrating. If an error is discovered or some essential fact is missing the tendency of users is to shrug shoulders and continue (although the information provider would profit a lot from feedback). If information is needed to understand some issue one may consult a possibly existing long list of FAQs, often quite frustrating, since the specific issue one is interested in is not discussed. If an email is also missing but one is lucky to find a phone-number ringing it can increase frustration, since one often is ending up in a long waiting loop. And if, finally, someone answers who might not even be able to help.

Recognizing this situation we decided to somehow find a proper solution when building up a substantial server with information mainly of interest to Austrians. Indeed the server at issue [3] is holding some 1,1 million media objects by the time of writing.

Early Attempts#

Our first idea was to provide the option to write an arbitrary comment at the bottom of any page and send a note to the server administration, able to react to a suggestion, leaving the comment if useful for others, or erase it with or without further action.

Initially, we were quite happy with the comments obtained in this fashion. However, one night a user wrote a little program that added to ten thousands of pages an advertisement for some night-club. It was an annoying clean-up job to get rid of this. Thus, clearly, anonymous feedback visible for all was not an acceptable solution.

As next step we restricted comments to users who had registered with a valid email, accepted certain “policies” concerning comments, and where logged in (i.e. identified) when writing a comment: Indeed their username would show up with a time-stamp below their comment. Also, the server administration was notified of every comment and able to change it (e.g. correct some spelling, delete it if the desired information was provided, etc.) This method restricted misuse immediately, but also reduced the flow of comments to a trickle. It is interesting to see the numbers: Of some 2.5 million different users only a few percent are willing to register: Clearly, the benefits available for registered users being able to write comments and having their own arbitrarily large space to use for any legal purpose were considered only by few worth the trouble to register. Even worse, of those who registered many would not log in when just looking briefly for some information. If in the process they would find an error or thought something should be added, almost nobody seemed to take the effort to log-in (with the chosen username and the possibly by now forgotten password). Only those who really needed some advice did log in, or at that stage even registered to be able to log in. However, we did receive complaints that such questions for help should not be shown publicly, because it might indicate that the user asking the question was just not very knowledgeable. We accepted the situation for quite a long time but discussed in the background how to improve it.

The Final Solution#

Eventually we decided to add to every page a feedback button that allows also anonymous users to send some arbitrary text (suggestion, criticism, question, etc.) associated with a concrete webpage to the administrator of the server, invisible for everyone else. This is indeed working well: mistakes are pointed out, additional information is provided, criticism of the user-interface can be taken care of; even feedback to the feedback process has been sent! A typical example was the feedback message concerning the biography of Mozart, where a book on Mozart that can be read online is mentioned:

URL: https://austria-forum.org/af/Biographien/Mozart,_Wolfgang_Amadeus
Feedback: Could you not provide a table of contents of the biography after the picture of the book?

Of course administration acted, so this is what that part of the biography now looks like (Fig.1):

Screenshot by H. Maurer

Fig.1.: Below the picture of the book on Mozart is now a clickable PDF-File with the table of contents.

Specific questions as feedback can of course only be answered if an email address is provided by the person sending the question (we guarantee that the email address is discarded after answering). However, specific questions have also taught us to expand certain sections of our help system.

The simple system is not quite as simple to implement carefully, as we will discuss in the following section. Yet two other points are worth mentioning.

When we presented the idea to a group of server administrators they were appalled: “We will be drowned with suggestions to change our user interface.” However, our first experience shows that the feedbacks obtained concerning the user interface allowed to improve the interface, eliminating frustration and stabilizing the situation to the extent that fewer and fewer suggestions were obtained.

However, a kind of situation occurred that we did not expect. We would get a feedback like: “I don’t understand the explanation concerning Point 3. Please elaborate more carefully.” Soon after we had done so we got the feedback: “The explanation of Point 3 is much too long, shorten it”. Any attempt to have one explanation satisfying all seemed to fail: Whether an explanation is sufficient or not obviously depends on the level of expertise. A way out is to provide a short and a long explanation. Let us hope that two versions suffice! To really provide the correct kind and amount of feedback a detailed profile of the user would be necessary. This is impossible in our case, since we want to preserve anonymity of users. Note that other approaches like “5 Steps for giving Productive Feedback” [4] insist on giving up anonymity and compile a detailed profile.

Points to Notice#

Introducing a feedback button and thus allowing all users to contact administration leads, at least initially, to a large number of emails. The system should not send each mail separately to the administrator but collect them in a file and only send the file once it gets very large or in some user-defined intervals.

It is also much easier to look at such a file of messages, often only test messages, than to open dozens or hundreds of mails where only some are useful. The system should also exclude empty mails, or mails consisting of just a few characters, since such a short feedback cannot carry significant information.

Note that a feedback button also allows a kind of attack on the server, by a program that sends thousands of nonsense feedbacks. The program can limit the number of messages per hour coming from one IP address, or can, like a SPAM filter, eliminate similar mails or mails similar to certain patterns. If use extensively a learning algorithm can be employed to make sure that only meaningful feedbacks are obtained.

We do not want to discuss on purpose details of such methods, since knowing the algorithms that eliminate superfluous feedbacks may give hints how to send a flood of feedbacks evading the recognition of meaningless messages.

Conclusion#

It is our firm belief that every website should provide an easy way to send feedbacks as described. It will certainly reduce the frustration that all of us have experienced with some sites, apps or such. This must be a feature of all systems designed with good usability, as is pointed out to some extent in the literature on usability, like [1] or [2].

Typically, we expect that all government agencies and big organisations make sure that such feedback mechanisms are available. To drive our point home just two examples: It took me a very long time to figure out how to contact Amazon by E-Mail; Looking at Wikipedia, how often have you seen a contribution and wanted to comment on it or point out some relevant information. Yet unless you are seriously involved in working with and for Wikipedia you will not go to the trouble of giving important feedbacks, since it is not obvious, how to do it.

References#

[1] Maturing Usability: Quality in Software, Interaction and Value (Human–Computer Interaction Series) 2010; Effie Lai-Chong Law, Ebba Hvannberg, et al., Springer
[2] User Interface Directions for the Web (1999); Jakob Nielsen, Communications of the ACM, 42 (1), 65-72.
[3] https://austria-forum.org
[4] https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/219437