If you own or manage a website, you're gonna want this. | Hacker News Reader

If you own or manage a website, you're gonna want this.

google.com

33 pointspmmucsd24 comments

Free website satisfaction surveys for your visitors.

I have been on the grand interwebs for a good long while now, and I don't think that I have ever once clicked to respond to a "help us improve our website" or similar surveys. And I'm usually a sucker for surveys. Maybe this will be different, but I don't think I'd see myself ever responding to this one either.

I wonder what Google's getting at here?

Google has a very simple business strategy: make sure the web is more useful. As more people use the web's many services and as businesses build better websites, Google will make more money because of all of the search and display ads people will undoubtedly see and/or click. Almost every Google product and service has been around encouraging consumer use of the web, or fostering growth of web businesses.

This tool is just an extension of how Google Analytics fits into their strategy: by making website owners smarter, they will be more willing to build better websites and spend ad dollars driving traffic. If you have no idea what your website is doing, you have no incentive to acquire traffic. Make a better website, grow your visits? Google still profits. This explains why GA is free -- you can better measure the ROI of your ad spend and will likely spend even more.

> Google has a very simple business strategy: make sure the web is more useful.

Nope, it is to make sure the user still needs to search for web sites.

> Almost every Google product and service has been around encouraging consumer use of the web, or fostering growth of web businesses.

Are you kidding? How do scary display ads (matching the user's recent e-mails) encourage consumer use of the web? How does going into many established business areas (product search, classifieds, insurance price comparisons, social networks ...) foster growth of web businesses?

> Make a better website, grow your visits? Google still profits.

Unless that website competes with Google ... Does Google profit from Facebook's growth? Nope, so they tried very hard to force G+ down everyone's throat.

As for why GA is still free - you must be working at Google, otherwise I can't explain your bias. GA is free because it gives Google important information, for example which websites are most popular (good for providing helpful search results).

I really hate submission titles like this. Can you please provide some information about what you're actually linking to? This title is just a dressed up version of "Click Here! Act now!"

I understand you're going for linkbait. And it worked -- it got me to click on something that I otherwise would have realized I was not interested in. And that's the irritating part.

Another widget that gives all your user visit data to Google.

Agreed. Can we start making a list of alternative services to google? I love search and gmail, but don't want to use G+ etc. Youtube is also annoying, by asking you to enter full name, link accounts etc.

Also, is there any alternative to gmail, that also has two factor auth?

I don't like the looks of this:

https://www.google.com/insights/consumersurveys/static/36834...

There is a section "Publishers get paid as their visitors answer." Then an "ad" showing "Answer this question to continue reading this page" (img above)... This could be very annoying if these start popping up like AdSense

There are two sides to the product. Website satisfaction surveys for website owners and an unrelated monetization product for news publishers.

That's fine, if optional to the end user. I'm more concerned about the interstitial nature, basically creating a wall between user and content

This looks like an easy way to get basic user feedback without thinking too hard, but "you're gonna want this" is a bit over-enthusiastic.

These surveys don't/can't measure customer satisfaction. They suffer from self-selection bias. If only 2% of your visitors actually submit the form, you can only make generalizations about those 2% of your visitors. You cannot extrapolate your biased sample to the population (all your users). All you are hearing about is the vocal minority.

These can however be useful for spotting objective problems. e.g. a broken link or missing image.

If it was just a tool to collect user feedback I could find a use for it on my sites, but I wont touch this because of all the additional premium content access and payment stuff[1].

It seems like this service is trying to do way more than it needs to.

1. https://www.google.com/insights/consumersurveys/how

There are two parts to the product for publishers: website satisfaction surveys and monetization. They are separate and you can use just satisfaction surveys without any monetization at all.

no i'm not

Fyi: Blocked by AdBlock Plus.

I was just thinking about how intrusive popup surveys are. Thanks for mentioning this.

This is an odd duck. If it becomes widely utilized, companies with infrastructure in place already for pop ups, such as ozark, could start offering it also. What google is providing is targeted questions to specific users. You are using their vast user data to isolate out targeted demographics for your site. That would be great stuff for minimum viable product sites.

Personally - These surveys drive me nuts. Especially from companies like DELL / HP - where all I want is a driver I can't find. Has anyone discovered a better way (uservoice maybe?) to collect feedback from users that want to contribute, while not hassling those who don't?

Very similar to https://qualaroo.com/ formerly Kissinsights.

Seems to me this would be easy enough to code yourself.... What am I missing?

I think that majority of people who want to use this (or think it's a good idea) aren't the kind of people who would be able to write the code to do it.

You get all of the auto-analysis, reporting, segmentation, etc that's part of Google Surveys's other market research product.

I'm sorry, but it's not appropriate for a project manager to promote his paid project on HN without some sort of disclosure, especially when using a custom title for submission.

"You're gonna want this" said the spider to the fly.

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