The importance of feedback

Yet again I have been busy getting new features added to the SOCAP in Europe website. Unfortunately, we don't have the luxury of a development site so - although we try to be careful - sometimes this create challenges ....and problems! A few weeks ago, we updated our CRM system that integrates with the website and also provides the online event management system for us. I thought that the upgrade had gone smoothly and booked myself onto a couple of upcoming events without any difficulty. Therefore, I assumed everything was okay...
 
But, a few days later, our chair, Tim Oakes, returned from his travels (to the SOCAP International conference over in the states) and emailed me to say the website was looking 'funny' (I think this was his own 'technical' way of telling me it was broke!). I opened up my site in my browser and everything looked fine and so responded to ask for any more specific details to allow me to understand what could be wrong. But, in the meantime, I happened to look at the site using Internet Explorer (having both an IT and customer service background, I use Firefox, Safari, Opera, Chrome.... but not usually Microsoft's IE) and, oh dear, the website was broken! But now I knew that it was only broken in Microsoft's browser, I was able to search the Internet and find the problem and solution - and now the site is working again in all browsers.
 
But this also shows just how important feedback is - no-one else had fed back and even Tim wasn't sure the site was broken. He thought it didn't look right - however, he chose to feed back his opinion and of course that allowed me to correct a very serious problem with the site (as most of the visitors to the site still use Internet Explorer). We now know the cause of the problem and also we understand how to prevent the problem for occurring in future. But I am also sure that - because we want our site to continue to develop - other things will go wrong and they will need to be corrected but sometimes we can only know about them if we receive feedback - because problems aren't always visible to those working from the inside.
 
Anyway, please do contact me if you have any suggestions for improvement and any feedback about the website where we are getting things wrong.