Dooyoo Members' Feedback Initiative: The Duke (Public Notice)

Member Name: The Duke

Product:	Public Notice
Date:	23/07/04 (89 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Dooyoo get feedback on the members, Members hopefully get feedback on Dooyoo

Disadvantages: Dooyoo might not listen

Not really a challenge, although more of helping hand for Dooyoo to understand the members and hopefully, in return, a chance of a better understanding of Dooyoo for us. This is how it works:

You write an open letter to Dooyoo giving them your feedback on the site as well as any suggestions you may have for taking the site forward addressing any concerns you might have etc. The important thing is the feedback, so include as much or as little as you feel is appropriate to yourself. Don't worry if someone has mentioned a point that you want to raise ? it's also important that Dooyoo see how many people have praise, concerns or suggestions about aspects of the site.

Then you do three things: first, you post your "opinion" on Dooyoo (the category is listed below) and include some blurb in it which I'll post below. Second (and this is the important bit) you email your opinion off to Dooyoo directly via the dooyooteam@dooyoo.co.uk address so that they can read it. Third, if (and the 'if' must be stressed here) or when you get a reply, then you post their reply onto the end of your letter thus giving a complete picture of your suggestions and concerns and how Dooyoo views them. Obviously, the blurb bit is important as people don't like you quoting their emails, so if a certain piece of text is included in the opinion, then they'll know what people's intentions are.

Paste this little bit at the end of your 'letter':
"The above was sent as part of the Dooyoo Members' Feedback Initiative. The content is intended to provide constructive criticism for taking the site forward from the member's point of view, and has been posted to the site as an opinion. Your reply, if any is received, will be posted into the end of the opinion giving members a better idea of the Dooyoo and the site."

All entries must be entitled: "Dooyoo Members' Feedback Initiative: <your na
me>".

The category to be used is:
http://www.dooyoo.co.uk/archive/internet/publi c_notice/

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Dear Dooyoo Team,

On August 13th 2004 I shall be "celebrating" my fourth Dooyoo anniversary. That's quite a long time! Sadly, the Dooyoo site today isn't anywhere near as busy as the site that I joined so long ago. Since the start of the year, though, things have been very weird indeed from a member's point of view.

As a long term Guide on the site, I often get members asking me questions. Most of these questions fall into one of three main categories.

A) Navigation around the site.
B) Contact with Dooyoo.
C) Product additions.

I think these three things are all fairly self-explanatory, but so I am clear, I shall expand slightly. New members don't find the site intuitive and find it extremely difficult to navigate (I'd suggest that's the case for experienced members, too). More and more people are relying on the search engine to find the items they'd like to review or research and as we all know, the search engine is, at best, incomplete.

Contact with Dooyoo is something else worth mentioning. A particular case is a new member who approached me a few months ago to chase up a product addition. Emails to Dooyoo regarding the status of the product additions went unanswered and the timescale between the member initially contacting me and the item being added to the site was six weeks. The problem was that the member was unaware of the "Recently Added" lists and was relying on contact from Dooyoo or the Dooyoo search facility, both of which can be lacking at times. Indeed, the lack of contact from Dooyoo means that the member didn't actually know if their emails had been received or were being read.

In light of this, I'd suggest some sort of auto-responder on the contact
email account giving some brief information about when replies can be expected (if any) and perhaps some relevant information regarding other aspects of the site (for example, details of the next set of uploads to the database). This is an incredibly cheap and quick solution to providing members with up to date information and, unless your email system doesn't have auto-responder capabilities, should be extremely easy to implement.

I think the flow of information is primarily Dooyoo's weakest point at the moment and the cause of most frustration. It's been nearly two years now since the "launch" of Aurora (if we're seeing any part of Aurora at all). From a member's point of view, the site hasn't improved at all except that the non-standard character bug (or the '?' problem as it was more commonly known) suddenly disappeared one day. It would be nice to know which elements of the site were being worked on and which were no longer going to be touched and if those 'dormant' bits (e.g. Hall of Fame or perhaps Speaker's Corner) are going to remain on the site or be removed. Are there any moves being made to eliminate the lack of capitals at the start of people's reviews, for example? I would suggest that Dooyoo sets up a more comprehensive set of FAQs. This will provide members with a wider range of information on the site over and above what's already included in the Community Pages. This would also have the added benefit of getting more information without the need to ask Dooyoo or a Guide, freeing up more time for Dooyoo to work on the site.

As far as the Guide's situation is concerned, I would suggest that a blanket information policy is put in place. Some Guides are being told one thing, some are being told something different and the rest are told nothing. Given the amount of changes to the Guides recently and the amount of abuse directed towards them, I suggest setting up some gui
delines where Dooyoo can indicate what's expected of the Guides over and above simply being members. That way, information can be passed on to other members consistently rather receiving different information from each Guide in sometimes contradictory ways.

I think Dooyoo is really not appreciating its members enough and apologies if that sounds really self-centred of me. Sure, we are here to provide page hits, opinions and activity around the site. It must be remembered though that since Dooyoo has suffered technical problems, the members have been here to provide workarounds for many of Dooyoo's problems which made life so much easier around the site. Members have given advice on avoiding the '??' issue (when it was present on the site), charlie-consumer has provided a workaround for the lack of capitals and ILoveJackDaniels has not only provided the Tooyoo Guestbook system for members to socialise, but also made people aware of the power of Google and its ability to search specific websites (and searching Dooyoo through Google, while not 100% perfect, is still many, many times better than Dooyoo's search engine). I'm not sure if Dooyoo is aware of how instrumental the members have been in making sure the site runs better and operates as it should.

It's unclear what role members will eventually take in Dooyoo, but it seems to me that nearly everything that's been done since September 2002 has been for the benefit of Dooyoo the company and not for Dooyoo the site or Dooyoo members. It's unclear whether that is because of a lack of resources or a move away from what Dooyoo started off as. What is clear to me, however, is that Dooyoo has an extremely loyal membership that I think is capable of helping you out rather than being dismissed out of hand. This may not be the case at all, but sadly is my current feeling.

On a positive note, I've found that the site speed has been extremely good since the sta
rt of the year and downtime seems to have been reduced considerably. The layout of the site has also improved for me. I don't use Microsoft Internet Explorer as my browser of choice, instead preferring Mozilla Firefox and there were issues with how the site was being displayed at the start of the year.

The above was sent as part of the Dooyoo Members' Feedback Initiative. The content is intended to provide constructive criticism for taking the site forward from the member's point of view, and has been posted to the site as an opinion. Your reply, if any is received, will be posted into the end of the opinion giving members a better idea of the Dooyoo and the site.

Regards,
Aaron.
(The Duke)

********************************************** ********************

Dear dooyoo users,

Thank you very much for your feedback.

We have read your opinions on The Duke's dooyoo feedback challenge with
great interest.

One of our main focus is the users and the community. They are very important to
us.

I hope you will understand if we reply to all your comments in one email. We have tried to collect them all together and will try to reply to them here.

We are aware that the site is slow from time to time. We are currently working on the technical side of the platform to make its performance better, faster and more stable. The search engine will also be much improved with the help of these implementations.

We hope to implement email replies to product suggestions shortly. The product suggestions will also be uploaded to the site much more regularly.

We think it is also a good idea to put the work-arounds up on the community page. Could one of you (maybe Jill as you suggested the idea) send all the links to us in one email so we can have all the important links together?

Thank you very much for your suggestions,

Your dooyoo team

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