Concept Feedback

Back in August last year I wrote about a great new tool for marketers in my post Crowd sourcing concept feedback. Creatives will either love it or hate it.

In the year since, Concept Feedback has grown from strength to strength and they have recently introduced a raft of improvements to the service.

So I submitted the Maloney on Marketing blog to be reviewed by the expert community at Concept Feedback and I will be sharing the results with you next week.

In the mean time I thought I would interview Andrew Follett, Founder and CEO of  Concept Feedback to see what’s up.

What is Concept Feedback all about?

ConceptFeedback.com offers quick, actionable website feedback from a hand-selected panel of experts in design, usability, and strategy. Evaluations are completed in 48 hours or less using our written and visual feedback tools, which make it easy to organize and prioritize recommendations.

Concept Feedback Home Page

Most people come to us with a project in need of feedback – it could be a new redesign, or a site that’s been out there for a while, but revenue (or conversion rates) has plateaued, or is in decline.

You have the option to choose up to 5 experts in 3 different categories – design, usability, and strategy. Once you checkout, you provide some details about your concept and then wait for the feedback to come in.

Our experts are notified, and start providing evaluations using our custom-built review tools – these allow our experts to categorize feedback (serious problem, suggestion, etc.), and add visual annotations to your web pages.

Within 48 hours, you have your feedback, which can be reviewed on the site or exported in a PDF. You can also comment on the reviews if you have specific questions for the experts after the fact.

How did Concept Feedback get started?

I was working as a marketing manager at a small business in the Chicago area and consistently using contractors to develop new websites, e-newsletters, and advertising campaigns.

I had a decent eye for design, but had no formal training, and I wanted to make sure the work was the best it could be. The owner and I would send out mockups and new projects to our friends and co-workers via e-mail to get feedback, but often there was no response, or the feedback was difficult to organize and act on. After a few rounds of “family and friend” feedback, I decided there had to be a better way.

It was at that point that I came up with the idea for Concept Feedback – a place where small and medium businesses could come to get outside, objective feedback from experts in design, usability, and strategy.

Who is your main target market?

Small businesses and marketing professionals.

At a small business, resources are limited, and often there is no budget for a high-end designer, usability expert, or strategy consultant. There also isn’t the time or money to hire a focus group or perform usability testing.

Concept Feedback gives small businesses a quick, affordable way to access these professionals and optimize website performance.

How is Concept Feedback useful for marketers?

The goal of Concept Feedback has always been to provide a place where businesses and marketers can get quick, actionable feedback from an outside, objective panel of website experts.

When you’re a marketing director, or managing a website, you’re often too close to the site to be able to make objective observations – it can be difficult to figure out what’s preventing visitors from converting.

Tools like Google Analytics provide you with a lot of great data about what visitors are doing, but it’s all quantitative.

Concept Feedback provides qualitative recommendations that you can immediately take to your web team and use to start increasing visitor engagement and driving revenue.

How is Concept Feedback different?

We’ve established a community (around 9,000 at the moment) and expert panel with proven experience and credentials.

We not only share the bios of everyone on our panel, but we provide clear samples that give you a good idea of what you’re going to get when you use our service.

Concept Feedback Panel of Experts

Each expert has been screened by our team – that includes resumes, review samples, etc.

Our service is also backed by a 100% satisfaction guarantee – I haven’t had to make good on that offer yet

How do people find out about Concept Feedback?

Over the past year and a half, thousands of concepts and reviews have been posted, which is great for SEO value, so we see a lot of visitors from organic search results.

Concept Feedback Testimonials

We also have a cool community that helps us spread the word. Beyond that, I spend a lot of my time talking to bloggers, managing our AdWords account, and creating new, targeted content (like the Concept Feedback Blog).

Tell us about some of the changes you have made to Concept Feedback recently?

Most recently, we moved our focus from the community to our experts. Our experts are hand-selected (usually coming from the community itself) professionals with a lot of experience and a knack for providing quality, actionable advice.

They provide feedback at an affordable rate ($100/expert) in 48-hours or less. So far, the response has been great, and we’re continuing to expand on the model.

Over the next year or two we will continue to expand our expert service offerings, which may eventually include more in-depth website audits, as well as expert services (like web design, copywriting, and more) - giving clients the ability to utilize our expert network to improve their websites based on feedback they’ve received.