Instant Consumer Feedback

I've been in SEO and online marketing for over 20 years and I'm here to share the wealth of knowledge , hints and tips I've amassed over that time . Hello there , welcome back to SEO is not that hard .

It's me here at Dawson , as usual , and today I'm going to be talking about something that might not be typically top of mind when we think about SEO , but it can seriously enhance how we optimize and refine our sites and our products , and that's instant consumer feedback . So what is instant community community , you're probably asking .

Well , this is where you use a service like picfu , which is spelled p-i-c-k-f-u , um , which is a platform that lets you get near instant consumer feedback from anything from product concepts to website designs , headlines , all sorts of things , and if you're wondering how this ties in with su , then don't worry , we'll get to that , but it must be .

The impact of this-time user feedback can be a real positive for your strategies , your user experience , um , both of which critical elements nowadays in seo and conversion optimization , which is what we all want to . You know , we all want to get good traffic . We all want to get good traffic . We all want to convert that traffic .

So if you've ever felt unsure about whether a landing page design or a product image , a tagline or a content layout , if you ever just wished , you could ask a panel of potential customers which option they prefer and , more crucially , why , then this episode's for you , okay ?

So I hope by the end of this you'll you'll be clear what I'm talking about with instant consumer feedback and how it could help you make better decisions , save time and boost rankings and your bottom line . So let's start with the actual problem that we're facing here . So this is uncertainty .

So if you own a website it could be a blogger , e-commerce site , software as a service , any kind of digital publishing you're bound to run into moments where you're just not sure if your audience is going to respond well to something . You could spend hours designing something new homepage layout , writing content , choosing images , all those kinds of things .

You think you've got it spot on , but you just don't know if it's going to work .

And this can get even more complex if there's more than one person in the decision-making process , because different people even if you're on the same team , you work together you might have different ideas about what does and doesn't look good , and this is something that's really hard to make decisions on , because you're relying on a combination of gut feelings ,

feedback from certain colleagues or certain customers , maybe a little bit of data from analytics or , you know , occasionally use a survey . But all these methods that can be slow , that can be imprecise , they can be biased , because we've all got our own biases .

You know , colleagues , friends , even yourself might not even be your target audience , and it can just sometimes take weeks , weeks to get traditional surveys , to get meaningful results . You could do , you could do a b testing on live site , and we've talked about a b testing before , but again , that's that can be a lot of work to set up two versions .

Even then , what two versions are you going to ?

You're going to choose to do this , um , and it can take a lot of time , a lot of resources , a lot of cost and , you know , sometimes , even with all that , you can still be left stuck between two or three choices , like you know , like a logo design or product name or a page layout and you can't necessarily wait to work out which one the market prefers .

So this is where services like pick through come into play . So what they do is they promise near instant feedback from your target audience . These are people who are either your ideal customers or they can be a broad sample internet users , and you can show them two or more options .

So this could be like images , text snippets , headlines , product concepts , websites anything visual or textual and in a matter of minutes you can get results . And this feedback is with written explanations from those people who provided the feedback about not just what they're voting for , but why they're voting for those things .

And this kind of combination of the speed and the depth is what makes it a really exciting tool to use . So you probably might still be saying to yourself what's this got to do with SEO ? Well , as we know , seo isn't just about keywords , backlinks , technical tweaks .

Okay , those things are still very much important , but , as we know , there is so much more nowadays rewarded on user experience .

So you know there's been a lot of noises last year on Google Cycles and updates around site engagement , dwell time , bounce rates , all those kind of things , and there's , we know , google's watching how users behave on site , how satisfied they are and how well your site meets their needs .

So if your site is difficult to navigate , if it doesn't speak to your audience , if the homepage visuals confuse people , they're going to bounce , okay , and that sends a negative signal to search engines .

On the other side , if you create content that resonates with your audience , makes a good first impression , the kind of site that people want to stick around , want to explore more pages and convert them , these are the kind of positive user signals that will help with your SEO and will help with your ranking .

So these kind of interesting consumer feedback services like PickFu will help you optimize this user-facing side of your site and , instead of having to guess what people will respond to , instead of just relying on gut instinct , you can actually rely on sample data from real people , where you will get the kind of feedback that will let you sort of mould your site ,

mould your content , mould your products into those that people actually want to use and actually want to buy and actually want to engage with , which means better satisfaction , better , better SEO performance , okay . So why would we want to use that ? What are the reasons we're going to use it ? So let's think of some . Okay , so we've got .

So reason one validate your assumptions before you launch . So if you've got a new product feature or a new home page or a fresh logo , you might think it's great , your designer might think it's great , maybe even friends are telling you it's great , but do your customers think it's great ?

So if you run a quick poll with , say , two different home page concepts , you can instantly see which one your audience would actually prefer . And the earlier you do this in your process of design , the the less effort you're going to spend on , maybe , designs and concepts that people don't like .

You can sort of work out what the majority of people are going to like at the early stage . You'll also get comments about what they do like or what they dislike , and it helps you choose the winning kind of design or the concept you want to go for . But it gives you those kind of insights into what's important to people .

So you know it might be color schemes , it might be graphics , it might be calls to action , all those kind of things . If you know upfront , it helps you launch with much more confidence . Another reason is to speed up your decision-making process . It's so easy to get bogged down in decision paralysis , like you know . Again , should we say this ?

Should we say that ? Should we go here ? Should we go there ? You know , with something like PickFu , a test can quickly let you see people prefer out of the two options . If you've got two options you can't decide , put it to PickFu , let the people decide . This isn't just saving time , it also saves money and reducing friction associated with guesswork .

And the faster you can make decisions , the faster you can iterate , the faster you can improve work . And the faster you can make decisions , the faster you can iterate , the faster you can improve .

You know , which is a huge competitive advantage compared to having to , like you know , go all the way , create something , wait for response and then let then respond back to it . This , this , can really speed up your process . The third reason is to it really helps you understand the why behind user preferences .

So you know you can see data on analytics on how people respond to things and how people using your site , but you still don't know why . You might see them prefer in certain kind of pages or certain kind of messages , but you don't necessarily necessarily know why . From that , with these kind of panels , you get the why , as well as the pure choice .

So you don't just get like a click they voted for this . You get a why they voted for it , really important .

So the reason this has come up is because we're looking at how curious people use some , some new , some new functionality , some new concepts , and we just wanted to know which of the , whether the concept we're looking at how it will perform against our current site , and you know we'd had discussions internally about , you know the pros and cons of different ways

of doing things , um , and we had all had different opinions . Okay , which is fine . Having different opinions can be a real strength because it makes everybody questions their assumptions and it also brings more options up for us to explore and think about . What you don't want is group think where everyone just thinks the same thing .

Difference of opinions can be really , really powerful in business , but obviously , at a certain point , we've got to decide which way we go , and there is that's where we need data , that's where we need other people's opinions who haven't got , you know , skin in the game , necessarily people who you just want to give them .

Like , which of these two things at first first impression do you prefer ? And we put one up , we put a pic foot and we got a real strong , really , really strong response for one compared to the other , which was really , really interesting . It was only an early test .

It's something we'll definitely test more on , because there were two very different concepts , but just having that kind of very quick steer was absolutely fantastic . Now , what are the downsides of doing this ? Well , unfortunately , services like this aren't free .

It would be absolutely fantastic to put every single decision , every single thought , every idea to a consumer panel , but , for example , we did a pick-through . That we did , we put it to 30 people and it cost us $60 . And , as good as things are , we're not in a position where we can spend $60 or more on every single decision .

But when you've got those big decisions or big inflection points that it's really valuable , then to use this kind of thing to say , right before we step off in a big direction any one way or the other , or if we've got a sticking point internally that we just can't get past with each other , we need a third party to look at this , this is that it's really

really valuable to use a service such as this . Okay , so that's it for today . I hope that you found that useful and it's given you something new to think about . And yeah , until next time . Remember , keep optimizing , stay curious and remember SEO is not that hard when you understand the basics . Thanks for listening . It means a lot to me .

This is where I get to remind you where you can connect with me and my SEO tools and services . You can find links to all the links I mentioned here in the show notes . Just remember , with all these places where I use my name , that Ed is spelled with two Ds . You can find me on LinkedIn and Blue Sky . Just search for Ed Dawson on both .

You can record a voice question to get answered on the podcast . The link is in the show notes . You can record a voice question to get answered on the podcast . The link is in the show notes .

You can try our SEO intelligence platform , keywords People Use at keywordspeopleusecom , where we can help you discover the questions and keywords people are asking online , poster those questions and keywords into related groups so you know what content you need to build topical authority and finally , connect your Google Search Console account for your sites so we can crawl

and understand your actual content , find what keywords you rank for and then help you optimize , continually refine your content , targeted , personalized advice , keep your traffic growing . If you're interested in learning more about me personally or looking for dedicated consulting advice , then visit wwweddawsoncom .

Bye for now and see you in the next episode of seo is not that hard .