Comments on: Testing the AskMeGo Live Q&A Toolbar

By: Enrique Allen

Enrique Allen — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 05:53:16 +0000

Gonzague, you’re absolutely right- we should be thinking international. Merci!

By: Camron Flanders

Camron Flanders — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 18:47:56 +0000

Enrique,

I think that’s a good way to approach it.

thanks for your response.

By: Gonzague

Gonzague — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 12:03:38 +0000

I forgot to add : brilliant idea anyway :-)

By: Gonzague

Gonzague — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 11:58:58 +0000

Shame, it doesnt work on Chrome ^^

I have to agree with the others : the toolbar isnt very beautiful. Its too big and looks like Facebook’s one.

Also I think that translating the app to some other languages ( for i.e my french readers wont like english so much ) might contribute to the success of your website.

Again, I totally get the fact that you just launched the service and that all those things do take time ;-)

Gonzague

By: Enrique Allen

Enrique Allen — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 06:40:04 +0000

Hey guys, thanks for your feedback. For full disclosure I have been working on user interaction design and usability research for AskMeGo this summer.

Phil, I think you are spot on that AskMeGo should not distract users and should be more tightly integrated with Paul’s content eg the bubble can feature relevant information from the post. Sometimes people have questions that are inspired from blog content but don’t necessarily warrant a comment. Rather than encouraging people into a forum, which is potentially a bigger distraction, we want to help people find what they’re looking for through meaningful conversations (instantly if possible).

Rarst, we work with Firefox 2 & 3, Safari 3, and IE 7 (but not in quirks mode). Shoot me an email (enrique.allen @ gmail.com) if you want to chat about trialing it on your blog- Live Q&A is free and our focus is making you all happy. We removed the bubble last week to test and our questions dropped .2%.

Camron, great point- we’re an engineer heavy startup that would love to meet some design hot shots. Maybe we should do something similar to Wufoo in terms of UG stylesheet customization?

James, fair enough- I like hot looking girls too :)

Let me know if you have more questions/feedback, I love learning.

Thank you,
Enrique

EnriqueAllen.com
twitter.com/EnriqueAllen

By: James

James — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 06:09:25 +0000

The toolbar is ridiculously ugly, so I’d never install it (and am tempted not to even click it) personally…

By: Camron flanders

Camron flanders — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 23:23:49 +0000

Their clear aping of facebook chat, and that massive yellow button screams cheap website, not the usually clean style you have achieved. Askmego needs to offer the ability to style the toolbar with your own stylesheet.

I will return to reading this site exclusively via RSS as long as it’s here.

By: Rarst

Rarst — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 20:50:03 +0000

Interesting one. At first I didn’t really understand concept because toolbar on site doesn’t load in Opera, had to switch to Firefox to take a look.

I agree that it probably works exactly because it is intrusive. :)

They are out of beta? I don’t see any beta signs on site. Might try it at my blog.

By: Phil Bowell

Phil Bowell — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 20:24:27 +0000

I would agree with those people who emailed you saying it seems to shout louder than your site does. You have a strong identity here but when you first land the bar at the bottom grabs attention away from the post as well as from your logo/header area.

I didn’t use it as I didn’t know what it was, my first thought was a Facebook style chat, and now you’ve explained it I likely won’t use it.