I made two significant changes to the web site that you might notice. The first is I added a big green feedback button on the right side for most pages. The second is I added Google’s translation widget. Both changes are designed to improve the site for readers.

Change 1: Feedback Form

The feedback tool is using Kampyle for Websites. The main reason I added the tool was to get feedback about what works and what doesn’t. This is critical information to help me improve the site and fix problems.

The feedback tool comes in two flavors, but leads to the same form. The feedback button is the “self-directed” approach where you control when and if you want to give me feedback. The second option is the exit mode option. For 3% of the viewers, a small overlay will appear asking if they’d like to provide feedback.

I’ve tried to design the form so it covers the big areas. As you can see from the buttons, I’ve included the good and the bad. Clicking a category button allows you to leave your comments in a sub-area. You can also indicate a site score from 1 to 5 where 5 is the best.

I chose the Kampyle system for several reasons. The obvious one is that it gives me good actionable data in one place. Often, I get emails from people that omit details. For example, I might get an email telling me Step 3 is wrong, but people forget to give me the article name or URL. This system captures the URL and also provides some technical information about the system such as browser, version, operating system and so on. If you would like a reply, you can leave your email address.

Change 2: Google Translations

The second change is for people that would like to see these articles in a different language than US English. Although there are tools people can get for translation, I thought it would be easier to just provide the translation widget on each article. The widget will translate the article into one of 35 different languages.

The tool is pretty interesting as it will open the article up in a new window with your language selection. I always like to see which words stay the same regardless of language.