Seven years since we began, we have a difficult announcement to make. Starting today we would be winding down the services of Concept Feedback and it will be fully retired by March 31, 2016. Over the coming weeks we would be restricting access to creating new concepts and posting reviews.

For all our existing community users, we understand that you would like to retain the insights you have derived from the community feedback. To do so, you can go to a concept and click on the "Export" option on the top right corner. This should enable you to download a PDF copy of the reviews posted on the concept for your future reference.

We enjoyed helping the community in creating and sharing ideas to optimize websites and hope Concept Feedback was helpful in the optimization journey for each one of you. We learnt a lot on how websites are optimized and how feedback from designers, marketers and optimizers can be translated into guaranteed conversion wins. We look forward to using this knowledge in making VWO a more powerful product and will keep you posted.

Thank you for being a valuable user of Concept Feedback. Please feel free to write to us @ info@conceptfeedback.com if you need any help or if you have any queries.

As web-designers and startup-owners, we know how important it is to be able to get qualitative feedback on our website. We also know difficult it is to get. Concept Feedback has been trying to solve this pain point for a quite some time now. With the re-launch of expert services (Read more), and increased quality engagement of our community, we are a closing in on that goal.

 This month was a new milestone for us; we hit 30,000 users on Concept Feedback (yay!). We are extremely overwhelmed and happy to see Concept Feedback growing so fast. 

The Giveaway 

This could not have been achieved without you and we want to celebrate this by giving away a free expert evaluation for one e-commerce website! The giveaway will accept entries till 12 PM GMT, 28th April. 

Who Will Be Doing The Review? 

Tom Charde, a strategy expert on Concept Feedback, would be reviewing the shortlisted website. Tom is the Director of User Experience at 5ivecanons. He is an integrated-marketing practitioner, information architect, and UX strategist based out of Jacksonville, Florida. In the last 20 years, he has helped several companies build their brands, craft messaging and create engaging customer experience. 

What will the review look like? 

In this special review, Tom will look at your website’s conversion flow to figure where it might be leaking money and visitors. This analysis will specifically focus on one poorly performing page to increase conversions, while providing general feedback on the entire funnel. We're accepting entries from e-commerce website for this contest. One website will be selected from the entries received and be reviewed at the end of the contest. Check the end of the post to submit your website! 

What will the review look like? 

In this special review, Tom will look at your website’s conversion flow to figure where it might be leaking money and visitors. This analysis will specifically focus on one poorly performing page to increase conversions, while providing general feedback on the entire funnel. 

Please note that website submissions for the giveaway will be accepted till 12 PM GMT, 28th April. Once this time window closes, an e-commerce website will be selected to be reviewed by Tom. We will also be publishing a follow-up blog post which will contain details of the Tom’s analysis. So stay hooked! 

How can I submit my site? 

Submitting your site is a simple 2 step process- 

1. Login with your Facebook/ Twitter/ email account. 
2. Enter the website url in the format http://example.com/ 

TIP: Increase your chances of getting selected by performing some simple steps (don’t worry, you’ll be prompted) after submitting the URL. e-commerce website review giveaway

e-commerce website review giveaway

It's been a while since anything happened in this space on Concept Feedback. And thats going to change, starting now. As you might already know that Wingify acquired Concept Feedback, since then we have been brainstorming a lot to figure out the path forward for all of us. The more we thought about it, the clearer it got. Concept Feedback’s core value lies in quality engagement within the community. And that's exactly where we're going to focus all our energies in the coming months.

We are happy to announce that now there'll be a dedicated team working on the community to grow and nurture it. Soon, we'll be getting in touch with each one of you and taking your feedback as to how we should make Concept Feedback better. We have an empirical road map ahead of us which we are working on.

Here are the improvements you’ll be seeing, starting today:

• Simplified workflow for new users to sign up and get on-board
• Basic changes in the site layout to ease navigation and usability
• *Oh boy! this is a biggy* The Expert review services have been re-launched. We have been inactive there for a while now, but we’ll be kickstarting from today with an elite group of experts who have been involved with Concept Feedback in the past. (Yes, you can post your concepts to be reviewed by our experts at a fee of $119 per expert. See more about the pricing)

Now, over to what we're going to be doing with Concept Feedback in the next few months. (this is always fun :))

• We're working on a new and a better credit system (reputation score) which will increase along with your activity in the community. For Concept Feedback members who've been here for a while, don't worry, nothing will happen to your existing reputation scores. Whatever comes will be stacked on top of that
• We'll be working on a strategy to remove the 5 mandatory concepts before posting a concept criterion.
• In our effort of keep Concept Feedback valuable for everyone, we're going to monitor the reviews that are being posted. No more two word reviews like 'good design', or 'nice layout'. Concepts in our community deserve more than that, let's make sure they get it
• We will be organizing webinars with leading industry experts
• Eventually, we're going to be doing a major website re-design to make the process of reviewing, posting, commenting and viewing the concepts as simple as possible.

*Announcement*

We are actively looking to recruit more experts (Design, Usability, Strategy and Copy) on our panel for the expert feedback services category. So if anyone of you is interested in participating, drop a mail right away to info@conceptfeedback.com. We're waiting for you to get on-board!

On a closing note, I'd like to thank all of you for staying loyal to our community for so long and we assure you, we are committed to keeping Concept Feedback as an awesome community and making it even awesom-er.

If you have any questions or suggestions regarding any of the points mentioned above, do not hesitate to drop a mail at info@conceptfeedback.com.

As you might know, we have been looking for a new owner for Concept Feedback for quite some time. Someone who can give it the time and attention it deserves. And today with great excitement, I wanted to let you know that Visual Website Optimizer (VWO) has acquired Concept Feedback.

VWO makes what is the world’s easiest A/B testing tool and I have known Paras Chopra, the founder and CEO of VWO, for over 3 years. So when he expressed desire to acquire Concept Feedback, it sounded like a great fit and here we are today. I want to thank all 26,000 of you who have been incredible in shaping up this great community and giving great feedback to the world over.

On that note, I wanted to hand it over to Paras to share his thoughts on the community going forward.

Note from Paras

I first came across Concept Feedback in 2010 when we got great feedback from the community on the design of the VWO homepage, and one of the users even sent us a mockup for a complete redesign. So it goes without saying that we at VWO are very excited to be acquiring this awesome community of 26,000+ expert designers.

Concept Feedback ties in well with what we've been working on for the past four years; helping marketers make website and landing page experiences that truly rock. Our users frequently ask for expert help on their designs, so what better than to introduce them to the Concept Feedback community.

Going forward we have many interesting plans, but rest assured the core of this community will stay intact. The Concept Feedback community will only blossom more from here and I really look forward to interacting with all of you.

Sincerely,
Andrew and Paras.

NB - Here's the VentureBeat coverage.

It has been over a year since my last blog post here. So what happened? I'm glad you asked. Let me tell you!

We spent close to 2 years building Concept Feedback, growing the community and adding functionality. After amassing nearly 10,000 members, we hadn't made much progress on generating revenue. For those of you with business experience, you understand that the inability to make money can be problematic. In fact, it led me to launch Demo Duck, where I am currently Founder and CEO. We create explainer video (online videos that explain a business, product or service in around 60-seconds) for startups and web companies. We've been doing very well and having a lot of fun too!

In a few weeks, I'll be launching a new service (also created by the web wizards at DevBridge) called Video Brewery. Like Demo Duck, Video Brewery will offer web video production services for companies of all sizes. Unlike Demo Duck, everything will be done online, from payments, to contracts to project management. It's kind of like eLance for video. So make sure to stop and signup!

Concept Feedback will continue to chug along, and everything will remain free. We want the community to enjoy what we've created, and even though it's not making money, that's okay. I learned a lot from building the website and have been able to use those lessons in the creation and growth of Demo Duck and Video Brewery.

You can follow my new blog at Demo Duck or find me on Twitter. Thanks for reading!

A few weeks ago, Jens Schriver, a long-time Concept Feedback member and co-founder of the online marketing agency, ClickLab, approached me with exciting news -- he had lifted engagement on his website, WriteWork.com, by over 100%, and increased the number of people ending up on the payment page by 150%. Here's how he did it, and how you can do it too.

1. Gather Feedback on The Original Landing Page

After identifying the problem (high bounce rates and low conversion rates), ClickLab posted the original homepage for WriteWork.com on Concept Feedback and UserTesting.com. They did this before starting on a new spec, wireframe or design (also read Why Everyone Has The Feedback Process Backwards). This process helped them identify the main issues with the page, primarily messaging and poor use of space. They also discovered that they had too much info below the fold, the header was too large and their average user (students) was using a small-screened device, like a netbook.

2. Summarize Feedback and Create a Wireframe

ClickLab consolidated the advice from Concept Feedback, UserTesting and hundreds of user surveys, and started creating a specification for a radical redesign. Using Balsamiq, they developed a wireframe from the spec, which they refined using Five Second Test. Once they were satisfied with the wireframe, they again posted it to Concept Feedback. Leveraging the power of the crowd, ClickLab was able to get advice from multiple people, each approaching the project from a unique perspective.

According to ClickLab, "...we made a mistake here by working too long on the wireframe. We should have posted one of the first iterations, because the longer you work on a design, the more you invest yourself in it."

3. Design a Mockup and Test

Again, ClickLab consolidated the feedback in to a list and cleaned up the wireframe based on the feedback they received. From the wireframe, they created a design mockup, which they put through a number of simple usability tests. Once the design was polished, they once again posted it to Concept Feedback, where they received more nuanced feedback regarding colors and alignment.

Once the mockup was complete and coded, ClickLab started an extensive split testing campaign using Visual Website Optimizer (also see Using Split Testing to Validate Website Feedback). From running tests against the original version, they were able to track bounce rates and quantify the results with 99% statistical significance.

In less than 6 months, ClickLab was able to double engagement rates and increase revenue on WriteWork.com. According to Jens, the best piece of advice he can give is, "get feedback very early...you can save so much time by getting on the right track straight from the beginning."

If you have a conversion rate success story, process or technique you'd like to share, please let us know in the comments!

If you're like most people (see below), you wait until after you launch your new website before asking people for feedback. If your intention is to get a few pats on the back, then this might be the right approach, but if you're honestly seeking ways to improve your website, increase conversion rates and see an ROI, then you need to change your process.

Get Feedback First

Don't wait until your website is live to start asking for feedback. In fact, it should be one of the first things you do. Before you start developing a spec, hiring a designer or writing a single line of code, go out and get outside feedback on your existing website. Or, if you're building a new website, get feedback on a simple sketch or wireframe.

Getting feedback after launch is usually an exercise in futility. The team in charge is so emotionally invested in the new design, that making changes based on post-launch feedback rarely happens. Not to mention the time and money you'll end up spending on changes, and in some cases, a complete overhaul.

An outside perspective can help you identify ways to improve your user experience, clarify your messaging and increase conversion rates. Moral of the story: get feedback, but make sure to get it early!

You may also be interested in:

• 7 Steps to Better Website Feedback
• Qualitative Website Feedback: The Importance of Asking Why