Duke's Feedback Initiative Thingy (Public Notice)

Member Name: jillmurphy

Product:	Public Notice
Date:	25/07/04 (151 review reads)
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TheDuke says:

This isn't 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.

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Dear Dooyoo,

I'm a Dooyoo Dinosaur. I've been here since Pol Pot's Year Zero. I was here when writing ten, one paragraph opinions each day was the norm. I was here when there was no such thing as a crown. I was here when you didn't have Community Guides but you did have Dooyoo Gurus. I was here wh
en we all started trying and we were getting over a hundred reads for our opinions. I was here when Aurora turned into a disaster and when you sacked most of your staff. I'm still here. Some would say that I'm a glutton for punishment!

There are lots of good things about your site: there are good things if I look at it without reference to Ciao, your UK competitor, and there are good things when I compare it with Ciao. Here, I have a forum that I can use to earn a small piece of pin money, where I can give information about products and services I have used and where I can gain information about products and services I might wish to use. It's all a great idea. It's what the internet *should* be all about. Here, I can give and receive honest information, untainted by marketing speak. The site is democratic: it doesn't tell me what I can or can't say (within reason) and anyone is free to contribute. I like that.

Your competitor, Ciao, has an unpleasantly competitive set up. You do not have this. Its reward system is geared to a very narrow view of what constitutes desirable content. Yours is not. The bulk of Ciao's reward money goes to a very few members. Yours is spread more fairly. Ciao's atmosphere is often tense and uptight and the site feels cliquey. Yours is not; it is laid back, relaxed, more artsy, if you like. If it were not for some very silly, very amateur problems, I would far prefer Dooyoo to Ciao.

Aurora - your two-year-old "redesign" was a disaster. I know it. You know it. Everyone knows it. The VC guys knew it, cos they sacked half your staff. We now have a situation where opinions appear in a format without capital letters and with seemingly random bolding. It looks dreadful! We have a s
ite crippled by navigation impossible to er... navigate. Pages are up to 800kb in size, making them ridiculously slow to load. The site search facility is bolyxed. Because you don't have enough staff to cope, you have decided to suspend product suggestions in several categories and to upload bought-in databases instead. Other suggestions wait months before they are implemented. This is not working. Members cannot write about current products because they do not exist on site, or because they cannot find them via the bolyxed search facility. Your competitor, Ciao, sees submissions at a rate of over 200 each day. Your submissions run at about 200 per week. This is not healthy for your revenue and it is dispiriting for your members.

While I would like to see my opinions get read by members 100 times instead of the current 40, I realise that you probably couldn't afford to pay me this any more. I'm not too fussed about getting more reads. However, surely YOU are fussed about getting more submissions. Aren't you? I realise too, that you're skint. You have no tech staff to speak of - they were all sacked two years ago, weren't they? So it doesn't matter what I suggest here - if it costs money, you ain't gonna do it. Here, for what it's worth, are my two paltry ideas for what might stimulate submissions without costing you any money...

* Get to grips with product suggestions. Currently, you are trying to encourage submissions for empty categories by offering 20 prizes of £3.50 per month in various categories. Scrub this, it is pointless. If you aren't accepting suggestions and members can't find your products by your useless search facility, they aren't going to write enough new opinions to make it worth it. Use that £70 per month to pay someone for adding member suggestions. £70 isn't much
, I know, but I can guarantee you would find an existing member who would do it from home at minimum wage. Make the admin suggestion tool available to someone - I know you can do this, because you offered this to an ex-member of staff sacked during the Aurora debacle. £70 would represent 14-15 hours per month of adding product suggestions. This would stimulate MORE opinions to be submitted than your current, pointless competition.

* Sort out the community page! If you don't have the resources to correct your problems, at least use the community page not to advertise pointless competitions, but to inform members of the various workarounds produced by kindhearted members. Put the link to Charlie Consumer's Capital Punishment solution there. Put the link to the Tooyoo Guestbook facility there so that members get chatting and the site becomes more "sticky". Explain there how to do a domain search via Google, so that people can actually find - AND WRITE ABOUT! - products that exist on your site. Better still, put a Google search box there! Advertise the Opinionators forum there, too, so that people stay interactive.

These are two very simple things. They would not cost you any money, yet I believe that they would really help stimulate a greater number of submissions, which let's face it is surely what you want. Withdraw one pointless competition and replace it with including items that people actually want to write (and read) about. Rejuvenate your community page so that it gives information about how members can tackle your ongoing usability problems. It's not 'ard. It is, surely, a win-win situation. For the life of me, I cannot see why you have not done these things already.

Thanks for reading. (!) Let me know what
you think.

Jill

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.

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