Using Feedback to Improve the Customer Experience

USA.gov Blog Before Redesign

Audience feedback was the driving force for improvements and changes to the USA.gov blog.

Through comments in our customer satisfaction survey, we learned that some of our visitors had a hard time differentiating between the main USA.gov website and the USA.gov blog, and they didn’t know how to navigate between them.

When originally launching the blog, we intentionally made it look and feel very different from the USA.gov website. We wanted people to know it was not a replacement for the site, but an additional source of information.

However, we now know that our good intentions were confusing our visitors. To them, the blog wasn’t a separate website. It was an extension of USA.gov and they expected to be able to seamlessly navigate between the blog and the site.

These sample comments illustrate the problem:

• Unfortunately, I had no idea it was a blog :(
• I couldn’t navigate within your site as it is very confusing and lacks helpful instructions
• I don’t have any idea what a ‘Blog’ is, however, I do know that there’s always something worthwhile to look at

Once we identified a trend in the feedback, we knew it was time to make changes to improve the customer experience. The easiest way to help eliminate the confusion and make navigation easier was to make the blog look the same as the main site.

USA.gov Blog After Redesign

The new design launched two weeks ago and we are actively reviewing customer comments to see if the changes solved the problem. We hope the redesign creates an all around improved user experience.

For more information check out Howto.gov’s Common Customer Feedback Options.

Do you survey your readers? If so, what are you learning?