December 9, 2006
Ranking system fixed – thank you, guys!
Hello!
A few days ago we changed our rating system to thumbs up/down one. After a couple of days with the new system in place we were surprised and frustated by its results – having more negative votes than positive ones.
We thought that there are problems with the software we present you, but the strange thing was that more than 90% of comments were positive!
A lot of visitors didn’t even bother to download the products seeing those 60%-70% negative feedback…
We identified the source of problems two days ago, it was about the usability: lots of our visitors clicked the “thumbs down” button only to see if there are any negative comments, not to vote against the program! Strange, but while we were investigating possible problem sources we even didn’t think about it and become aware of the usability issue only thanks to our community members who reported their suspicions on the potential misunderstanding caused by our rating buttons placement. We finally knew what happened.
Thank you, guys! Yesterday we implemented the usability changes and we have voting results that are much closer to what we see in the comments – and now much more people download the products enjoying them, because now we get over 90% thumbs up votes which truly reflect the opinion of our users on the great software we select for them!
I prefer the star rating system personally. It is more readable than number of votes and percentages.
I notice when the Thumbs Down is clicked, it prompts for the reason. However when Thumbs Up is clicked, it automatically adds a + without any type of confirmation! Why not treat both buttons the same with a confirmation reason? As it is now, it seems that you have reversed the given scenario to now inflate the Thumbs Up.
However, the way it is set up now makes sense. Clicking Thumbs Up means you like the software. Clicking Thumbs Down means you don’t like the software and GiveawayoftheDay would probably want to know why you don’t like it so they can take that into account when they offer software in the future.
Sorry to be OT, but pleeeeease add a feature to the activation program that allows for the activation to be re-tried. EVERY time I run it, it’s blocked by Windows Firewall and I have to re-run it (after allowing it through Windows Firewall) to activate the app. Midly annoying.
Thank you!
So for all this time, I will bet you, the people who write in comments like “Nice one!”, “Another winner!”, “I give it A+”, etc. think they are voting “thumbs up”…I have been visiting your site for a over a month and this is my first visit to your blog. And I’ll bet I’m not alone. This info should be made public if you want a real tally!