The PEO Labs series brings you information or advice on items that are geared towards users who can take high-level concepts or sample code and run with them. Please note that many of the things discussed are not supported. That doesn't mean that an item is a warranty-voider; it just means that the Support Analysts can't walk you through it or troubleshoot it if it breaks.

While thinking about ways to get people more involved with an organization's online presence, I realized that most websites give an opportunity to leave feedback about the website itself. The best way to improve usability is to talk with users, right? I’ve done this with ING Direct, Netflix and a handful of other sites to let them know about bad links or usability issues. Often I leave positive feedback, just to let an organization know that I appreciate a new feature or change to their site that has made my life easier.

So following that line of thought, I whipped this up one evening while watching reruns of Scrubs. It is a new page for Patron Edge Online that allows a person to enter her name, email (if desired) and thoughts about your site. Now that version 3.3.3 has been released, I also threw in an accompanying custom report that can be generated to allow your web marketer or webmaster to review feedback on demand.

You can view a screenshot of what the page looks like here. As always, play with it on a test interface first! This feature is pretty basic (and potentially very valuable) but keep in mind that it is not supported. To install:
1. Download this ZIP file and extract the contents
2. Add Feedback_Form.asp and insert_feedback.asp to your public\bbcustomizations folder
3. If you do not have the Custom Site Settings table yet (from earlier PEO Labs articles), run Create Custom Site Settings Table.sql against your PEO database
4. Run LeaveFeedback.sql against your PEO database to create the custom table that will hold the actual comments
5. Create a new screen called Feedback
6. Create a new screen part on the Feedback screen (INCLUDE is the type) that points to bbcustomizations\Feedback_Form.asp
7. Edit the feedbackheader CSS class so that it matches your site’s overall design

You can also import the Site Feedback Report into the Custom Reports section of the Administration Site, or review the feedback via the Custom Tables folder.

Are you currently using any method of capturing user feedback about your website? How has it affected your design or business processes? Leave a message in the comments.