Last month we announced that the first 5 Suggesters to reach 100 suggestions would win a $100 Visa gift card. The first Suggester to reach 100 suggestions was OpenInnovator, Suggester #512. The race is still on for the remaining 4 spots! We realize 100 suggestions is a tall order, but we know you have great ideas and that you just need a little nudge to get started. So here you go. Nudge, nudge.

Here are a few tips to help you get to 100 suggestions faster:

• When you come up with a great idea, chances are more than one company can benefit from it. Submit your suggestion to the intended company AND their competitors.
• Think about the companies you interact with on a daily basis: your favorite websites, lunch spots, supermarkets, gyms, movie theaters, online stores, doctor’s office, dentist, hotel/spa, bar/club, video games, etc.
• Support others’ suggestions. Read the suggestions from your fellow Suggesters. Get inspired. Make suggestions that complement their ideas.

Get started with our SuggestionBox or check out Zappos’

Here are the other top Suggesters as of today:

1. Suggester #460 - LRL
2. Suggester #340 - CW
3. Suggester #613 - Nick
4. Suggester #628 - Rayn Spanish

Check back soon to see if your name is on the short list.

With SuggestionBox.com, you can make a suggestion to any company, even if they do not yet have a SuggestionBox page. When you search for a particular company, if there are no matches, a new SuggestionBox is automatically created. If there are results, but none of them are appropriate, you can click the ‘First to Suggest!’ button and create a new one.

Simply enter in the company name, an email address (if you know it), your suggestion and click ‘Preview’. A new SuggestionBox page will be created and your suggestion will be delivered to the company.

In addition, our community of Suggesters can now edit a company’s details that appear on their SuggestionBox page (if they are unclaimed). Simply click on the ‘Edit company info’ link to update the company information. Here’s a list of the items you can update and what impact they will have:

• Website: adds a link to their website
• Contact Email List: email address that should receive any new suggestions
• Address: displays their address and automatically adds a Google Map
• Company Details: displayed on the SuggstionBox page and in search results
• Icon/Logo: displayed on the SuggestionBox page next to the company information

We review all edits to make sure there is no funny business. If you have any suggestions how we can make this process better, you know what to do.

Improvement is a continuous process. We combine your suggestions and our web analytics (Google and CrazyEgg) to understand what is working and what needs improvement. 23 design revisions and 14 copy changes later, we launched a new homepage.

Here are some of of the things we learned:

• Suggesters search before they suggest - they find the SuggestionBox page before they make their suggestions
• There needed to be a better explanation of how the suggestion process worked
• Show, don’t tell - Suggesters wanted to see the suggestions, the community and what we were up to

The goal of the new homepage is address all these things and to show you, as a Suggester, how you can use SuggstionBox.com to “Make _____ better.” You fill in that blank. It can be any company, product, service or event, whether they are in our system or not.

To get started:

1. Enter any company, product, service or event in the big text box
2. Select the suggestion box you want to submit your suggestion to
3. If there is not a suggestion box, you can create one on the fly
4. Make a suggestion
5. We deliver it on your behalf, when the company responds you will get an email

The new homepage features Suggesters from the community and the things they want to help make better. Keep an eye out, you may just see yourself!

In addition, the new homepage now displays the latest public suggestions from all SuggestionBox pages. Check out the latest suggestions, post your comments, or follow them to receive updates.

Let us know what you think. Send us your suggestions to make it even better!

We are happy to announce that we have rolled out an update to SuggestionBox.com that includes a number of interface enhancements, updates to the RSS feeds, and a new message preference center with email notifications.

Hungry? Feed on some RSS
The latest suggestions RSS feed, which displays all newest suggestions for all suggestion boxes, now includes the current status of the suggestion. This change has also been added to each suggestion boxes individual RSS feed. Add the feeds to your favorite reader or start page (I love Netvibes).

Stay informed with email preferences & notifications
Within your account there is now an ‘Email Preferences’ page under ‘My Suggestions.’ Here you can turn on and off various types of email notifications for both your suggestions and your suggestion box (if you have one). The different types of messages and their content is outlined below.

• New account activity - sends emails when there are status updates and new comments on your suggestions and suggestions you are following. In addition you will get a notice when a friend you have invited signs up.
• Private messages - sends emails when you receive a new private message in response to one of your suggestions.
• Features & events - receive our monthly newsletter (coming soon!) and other exciting news.

If your account is setup to manage one or more suggestion boxes, you will also be able to set your preferences for the following emails:

• New suggestions - sends emails when there is a new suggestion in your suggestion box.
• New comments - sends emails when there is a new comment posted on one of the suggestions in your suggestion box.

Thanks for all your great ideas, keep the suggestions coming! As always, if you have a suggestion for us, submit it here.

Here at SuggestionBox.com the core of our uniform starts with the t-shirt. While our design team has slightly different taste than the developers, you can always expect to see something cool. With that said, we needed our own set of distinct t-shirts. Let us know which are your favorites and check back often as we will be adding some more designs.

You can check out our SuggestionBox.com t-shirts on Zazzle. Show some love, tell your friends.

If you are wondering what some of these designs mean, don’t worry, we are too…

Send us your suggestions for new shirt designs. We would love to hear them!

12seconds, a new video status update website is the topic of the day. The team at SuggestionBox took the time to demo out the tool for all of you. Here is how we envision using the tool to provide the companies we love with our very own video suggestions. So enjoy our 12 suggestions using 12seconds:

Suggestion: Swedish Fish - attach the zipper seal to the bag on 12seconds.tv

Suggestion: Ralphs - see rewards points on website on 12seconds.tv

More Noodles!! on 12seconds.tv

Blackberry Suggestion on 12seconds.tv

Cubes on 12seconds.tv

ThinkGeek - Cubes Suggestion on 12seconds.tv

Lord of The Rings on 12seconds.tv

CardScan Executive Suggestion on 12seconds.tv

Startup Schwag Suggestion on 12seconds.tv

Less Dye Arrowhead! on 12seconds.tv

Suggestion: 12 seconds favorites please on 12seconds.tv

Suggestion: 12 seconds default in my location on video form on 12seconds.tv

More info about 12seconds
12seconds is the best place online for video status updates. It’s a super easy way to share what you’re doing with your friends and family using short video clips. You can use your web cam or mobile phone. Show your friends where you are, share your thoughts, or tell them how you’re doing. We are building a video status platform that will help you keep up to date with your friends 12 seconds at a time.

What better way to grasp the importance of customer feedback than asking someone who is embracing it in so many ways. I recently had the opportunity to email interview Andy Beal, well known blogger, speaker, author and analyst. I’ve had the opportunity to interact with Andy as a founding Gooru on Gooruze.com and as a customer of SuggestionBox. I sent Andy 3 questions covering customer feedback, how he is using it for Trackur and the benefits of publicizing your “customer interaction points.” Enjoy.

Why is it important to listen to your customers and capture their feedback?

For years, customers have discussed companies, products, and services in their homes, offices, and coffee shops. Now the conversation has shifted to the internet, we shouldn’t cover our ears. Instead, we should realize that, as businesses, we have a huge opportunity to learn from our customers and provide a better experience.

The customers that take the time to provide feedback are generally the ones that sincerely hope you’ll listen and make the improvements they’d like to see. Listening to that feedback–especially when echoed by more than one customer–allows you to build better products, provide better service, and ultimately, improve your profits.

How are you applying the above steps to the development of Trackur?

I’m all ears! I’m learning from blog reviews, Twitter feedback, customer questions, and services such as SuggestionBox. Does it make me wince, when I receive some negative feedback? Sure, it does. But then I see the opportunity to make Trackur even better. When you build a service that includes feedback from your customers, you gain their loyalty and they’ll take partial ownership in your success–they’ll be active in helping your grow.

What effects could a company expect by publicizing their “customer interaction points?”

How many companies can you name, that seem to care about the feedback you provide. Chances are, your list is very short, but the ones you can name stay top of mind because you are impressed by their radical transparency. With that in mind, why wouldn’t you want to have your feedback show up in multiple places online.

If I’m torn between a similar product from two rival companies, as a customer, I’ll more likely buy from the business that demonstrates it listens to its customers and gives them a platform to share their reviews, suggestions, and general feedback.

Thanks Andy!

If you want to learn more about Andy Beal and his work:

• Attend his Online Reputation Management Workshop in Raleigh, August 7th.
• Learn about his new book Radically Transparent
• Monitor your reputation automatically with Trackur

We are happy to announce that we have rolled out an update to SuggestionBox.com that includes easier ways to make suggestions, keep track of your stats and get credit for inviting your friends & family.

Make A Suggestion On The Fly!
You can now submit a suggestion without creating an account. If you provide your email address, we will notify you when the company responds to your suggestion. Any suggestions you make with your email address can later be claimed when you create an account using that same email, and all of your suggestions will then be accessible via your Suggestions Dashboard.

Creating an account allows you to vote, follow your favorite suggestions, comment, and read private messages. In addition, all your suggestions are centrally located and searchable in your Suggestions dashboard. Think of it as your Suggestion Headquarters.

Suggestions Dashboard Improvements

On your Suggestions dashboard, you will now find the total number of friends who you have invited and signed up. In addition, we have fixed a small issue with the suggestion counts that are displayed on your dashboard and throughout the site. The total number of suggestions in each category are now consistent and accurate.

Stay tuned as we continue to roll out new features. Let us know what you want the most by submitting your ideas.

I setup this Zimbio poll called “What way do you capture feedback from customers?” and there have been 20 votes thus far. I’d like to share a bit of the history on the creation of this poll.

A. I posted a question on Twitter asking what polling tools people recommended and received 3 responses:

1. ask500 @BJ re fast polls, you can put a poll on Ask500.com from twitter like this: @ask500 Q: question here? answerA or AnswerB (follow @ask500)
2. PaulSoldera @BJ www.surveymonkey.com is pretty popular as a general survey app, used it once and was very easy
3. GroovyBrent @BJ I really like SurveyMonkey. Not sure if it would suit your needs.

From the responses above I could see that Survey Monkey was the clear winner. But, I still wanted something I could literally setup in 5-10 minutes and just launch that day. So I found Zimbio that had a poll tool integrated into it.

B. I created the question and the answers as seen here.
C. I then began posting to Twitter, IMing around to friends and shot a couple emails.
D. I received the “Sure, I’ll check it out,” “Will do” and “I’ll pass it to 30 more people.”

So now I’m at 20 votes and I’m asking for more help to gain a larger sample to truly see what tools companies are using to capture customer feedback.

Current Results:
It’s not so surprising to see that most are not even capturing customer feedback. Admitting that you aren’t is the first step towards recognizing that it’s time to reach out to your customers and find out what they think. So I’ll be posting my thoughts as the poll comes to an end over the next week.

We have been getting a lot of customers asking how they can post and promote their suggestions on their website. Each SuggestionBox has its own unique RSS feed that displays the most recently updated public suggestions. You can view the feed for SuggestionBox here. Here are a few very simple widget platforms that let you integrate your suggestions into your site. They all allow you to customize the look and feel and dynamically update.

SpringWidgets
Use their express widget to create a simple RSS feed widget. It is free to sign up, and you can add a header image and customize the colors.

Grazr

Another free service that allows you to create a reading list with multiple feeds. Use their simple interface to build your custom widget. You have to create an account, but it is free.

YourMinis
Last but not least, is YourMinis. Personally I like this widget the best because it is super simple and you have the most flexibility over the colors and formatting. The service is free and you don’t even need to sign up!

Pick a widget that you think integrates well with your site. When a visitor clicks on one of the suggestions they will be taken to your SuggestionBox page. From there they can comment, vote and submit their own suggestions.

What other ways would you like to be able to promote your suggestions? Submit your suggestions here.