Tuesday 12 June 2007

Adobe Acrobat 8.0 survey

Another poor online survey - this one by Adobe, who would like to know whether my company might or might not upgrade to Adobe Acrobat 8.0 at some time in the next year.

Amongst the horrors

  • Server errors when I first tried to respond - this makes a great impression

  • No Back button on each page to allow mistakes to be fixed; after a few uses of the browser's Back button, it got its knickers completely in a twist

  • Radio buttons with the instruction "please click all the reasons why..." - of course a radio button only allows you to click one

  • Inadequate list of business activities; although the Industry List includes Management Consulting, there's no selection in Principal Activities for consulting or project management, which is what I actually do

  • It didn't bother to ask if I recommend software for customers and if so, what the scale of this might be

  • Asking for a phone number for follow-up questions (no format indicated) and then refusing to accept a number in UK format or in +44 format


  • The people that put this survey together probably cost Adobe lots of dollars (or euros). It lookes to me as though a few dollars more, spent on proper design, review and testing, could have have given their marketing people some much more valuable results.

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