by gin soak

I was reading about The Hawthorne Effect today and wanted to post something.

I read that…

The Hawthorne Effect is the tendency for people to act differently when they know someone is watching.

Which means, when you request for a critique, people might NOT experience or even feel about your site the same way as what they’re telling you if they were on your site.

So having said this, this is what I think.

1. If you didn’t generate the kind of response you hoped to receive from others (like people telling you to change certain things), don’t feel terribly bad because your site may be just fine.

2. If you ask for a critique and willing to test what others are telling you, it’ll be a big help if you can return to the same thread and update what happened instead of just asking for a critique and never return to report to those who took time and responded to your thread.

3. If you still insist that you‘d like others in the forum to critique your site (which is a good idea), it might be better to treat such as the FOCUS of the research instead of letting it to be THE RESEARCH for the very reason The Hawthorne Effect might play how others respond to your thread.

4. If you have specific things you‘d like other members to take a look, the response your thread generates may actually become worthwhile following. If you just do the usual, “Here is my site, URL, please let me know what you think, thanks!” it might even come across as spamming the forum. You can always ask people to refer to your signature line, too.

On the other hand, you might want to consider testing with Crazy Egg service (I love it).

http://crazyegg.com/

It gives you the “heat map” of what visitors are doing on your site and nice thing about it is they don’t even know that they’re being watched.

You can register and have a few pages tested free and it’ll give you actionable data.

Anyway, just something to think about when you request a critique within any forums you participate. Just always remember that people are taking their valuable time looking at your website.