I've been visiting this site for over 2 years now and I must tell you that I've greatly enjoyed the wide variety of software offered here. As a former marketing person, it has always bothered me that there is no follow-up to all your efforts. I believe your evals should last more than a day to be useful.
I think you should have a running data page that covers the software for the previous seven days. Votes, suggestions, etc. all quantified. Then you should have a page to post to for those of us who have a life and do more than just evaluate software the instant we get it. I'm sure the developers would really appreciate some in-depth, experiential data over time, rather than just off the cuff shot in the dark 10 sec evals.
I for one would certainly use the opportunity to provide a more comprehensive feedback to developers - how else will anything get better, without considered feedback?
I would also like to see developers post email addresses that we could contact to send follow-up feedback to; they could even provide questionnaires to be taken, filled out and forwarded. There is a tremendous amount of data created every day on the site and it could be utilized at a deeper level. How about a reference page for the last 365 days - an archive database. Data's fun, doesn't take up much space at all - in the digital world, a picture is worth a good novel's worth of words - and finally feedback can turn a good idea into a great one.
DAY-AFTER pill for GOTD
(5 posts) (4 voices)-
promytius
MemberPosted 12 years ago # -
Whiterabbit-uk
Games GuruI absolutely agree with you on this. The comments page isn't actually locked, but once the giveaway is over the pages are rarely added to, which is a great shame.
Since posting my message on the game giveaway comments section each week, comments are being posted more often after the giveaway day, but there's no easy way to access these once the day is over. I think it would be an excellent idea to create a page that lists all the giveaways both applications and games with links to the pages so that the community can access them easier. It is possible now, but you have to scroll through countless pages as each page only lists about 10 to 20 giveaways. Considering the main site has been giving an app away virtually every day since Nov 2006 thats 0ver 2550 giveaways. Each giveaway has a wealth of inform,ation/feedback about the giveaway plus alternative freeware versions.
I'm sure if this part of the project was made more accessible it would become a very useful resource for the community, not only for checking out individual programs, but being able to find something that they don't know they actually need yet (lol). The freeware suggestions alone are worth putting in the effort to get these pages listed.
The seven day exposure is also a very good idea. Not everyone has the time to sit down and write a review on the day, especially if they are working full tie. At least leaving the comments more open for several days would enable more users to return easily and leave useful feedback; this in turn could bring in more developers.
I've been looking at the number of comments in relation to the number of downloads over in the game giveaway section of the project and on average only 0.1% of community members/users bother to leave any sort of comment and of those only 0.01% to 0.02% of those downloading are of any real consequence (what I mean by that is feedback that could benefit the developer; for example, suggestions to improve or enhance the application or game.
Posted 12 years ago #
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