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This Website - the 2013/4 Opinion Survey
First I need to explain a lack of thought and design to the questions. I forgot to ask whether the respondent was actually resident in the parish - so the survey mixes parishioners with a minority (assumed) of people who might live far away. In querying the satisfaction or disappointment level felt by the respondent I also forgot to ask whether he/she obtained successfully any needed information from the site or whether they were "just browsing" anyway. As I receive about 12 messages each year from media or publishing people requesting copies of some photographs, I should have asked whether the respondent was on the site pursuing work or school-work related topics. One question in the survey asked whether the viewer has noticed any faults on the website or any way things could be improved. Some 80% of users found nothing to report. Basically the size of the site catches people out. They find it confusing because there are a number of separate indexes and apart from clarifying some of the links I cannot see a way of overcoming that. I do wonder why people do not simply go to the search box on the home page and type in one or two keywords - that is what I do when I forget where exactly I have put something. I can tell from the server statistics that the search box is under-utilised. In programme terms the search box simply uses Google itself to run a local search for you. Google has spidered over every word on the site and usually gets to present everything that will be relevant, as long as you enter (separately) two or so sensible keywords. Another question asked the viewer "were they pleased with the site". Some 88% were pleased or fairly happy while three viewers expressed their disappointment. These three had good reason to react to my unfortunate mistake in reporting - I will try not to do it again! One viewer expressed his dislike of the rather large "Blisworth Images" label spread across all the archival pictures saying it was absurd, unnecessary and spoiled the presentation. He has a valid point but is the first respondent to ever mention this 'fault'. I suppose I should have gleaned whether or not he managed to get what he wanted from the site. Many respondents thought there was a 'hole' in the coverage from about 1950 to 1980 which of course includes the time when the village was enlarged considerably and the years in which a majority of the present residents grew up. I hope the recent inclusion of a group of old posters covering this period goes a little way to compensating for the gap. The other omissions some wished to point out were that there is no message board and there is little on recent news. I agree and I tried it once but gave up. I have wondered why no-one has started up a Facebook page for the village and suspect no one can afford the time. One viewer noted that there seemed to be a preponderance of articles by just one author and maybe the appeal of the website would be raised by including many others. Suffice to reply to this by saying the authors who do contribute form an exceedingly small minority of people in the village who actually feel the urge to either research or research-and- write and these people often have to be pestered to offer their work. I see no quick fix to this shortcoming! One question asked "how often did the viewer return to the site". They were given the choice of Annually (24%), Monthly (49%), Weekly (6%) or simply Frequently (18%). There were 8 viewers who answered "Never". Five of these had stated earlier they were happy with the site (but presumably weren't interested) and the remaining 3 were the same disappointed three mentioned above - so I believe I may have lost them for good! There was good support, 75% in fact, for the website in terms of providing a useful service alongside the other Blisworth-based websites. There was a more muted support for the website funding to be continued by the Parish Council if the present private funding (ie. from me) were to cease. The voting here was 60% in favour of continuing, 30% didn't know and 10% thought "no, let it continue by other means". An auxiliary question might have been a good idea; I should have looked for "how many of the don't knows doubted whether it would be an acceptable part of the brief of a Parish Council". I always avoid doing surveys offered by members of our complex services business sector, thinking they should damn well know what they are up to and don't deserve to receive any of my details. Not so true for this website which has benefited in some small ways from all your suggestions, without asking for your details, but even as a convert - I still won't do surveys! Nevertheless I hope you will do this one which is still available, if you haven't already done so. And thank you, all. Tony Marsh February 2014. |
