For the first time on our site we have provided our readers with the ability to make direct comment on the page or article they are reading. Before we relied on email for feedback, but found that very few used this facility to get in touch and let us know what they thought. Instead this was used almost exclusively by readers seeking help with their Keurig brewer problems; which is why we are here of course.
So why have we moved to allowing comments on the site? Well in reading about what others have experienced and based on the work by Pat Flynn over at Smart Passive Income and more recently the work of Dan Norris and his team at WP Curve, the ability of our readers to comment and interact we hope will provide them with greater value in visiting our site.
We realize that our type of site is not necessarily one that people will return to on a regular basis once they are able to solve the technical problem with their brewer or move onto buying a new unit. But what we hope we can provide through using comments is to help build more of a community on the site where people will be willing to helping others. In addition to our input and support we hope that others who have come up with solutions to Keurig problems will be willing to help other readers.
And we wanted to provide a means for our readers to have a more public and easier way of commenting on how we can improve the site. Design and layout are not necessarily our strong points and we know we can make the site easier and quicker for readers to use. So we hope people will take the time in providing constructive feedback that we can then take action on to making the site better.
In listening to a recent podcast interview between Pat Flynn and Dan Norris they spoke about this very issue and in particular using a WordPress plugin Disqus, which we have included on our site. We hope this will provide a stable and easy environment for comment while keeping out the spam that can ruin comment sections and soak up webmaster time. This is the first time we have run a comments section and so will be keeping a good eye on what comes through; making sure it does add value for our readers.
And while we talking about adding value we noticed that the search function on our site wasn’t always that helpful for readers. So we have updated the site with a new plugin called Swifttype. We hope this will enable readers to more quickly find what they are looking for. So for example if they type in NOT READY MESSAGE this will more accurately pull up all the information we have about this problem.
We would welcome feedback on these changes from our readers as at the moment we think we can do better in helping you get straight to the information you are looking for. In addition to his upgrade in search functionality we are looking at a layout change on the front page too so people can just type straight in the issue they are needing help with rather than having to trawl through loads of information.