DRB Reader Survey Analysis

So instead of writing everyone another lengthy email, I figured it'd be relatively simple to include this all in a post. I'm still waiting to get some final results in from all of you -- there were a couple answers that got lost and need to be re-entered, so sorry -- but the reader survey was really enlightening.

So far, we've had 80 responses to the survey, which seems like a pretty fair sample size. I suppose one could argue it's not statistically significant considering we get 2000+ unique readers each day, but eh, it's good enough for me.

Here are the answers for the first question: How important are each of these features to you?

I was somewhat surprised with how high the Rays Tank rated; I didn't anticipate that so many people liked it. But that's encouraging, because it means that by and large, all of our daily features also tend to be really well liked. People love seeing breaking news. They love our daily analysis/feature pieces. They want the Rays Tank, the major league recaps, and the series previews.

And even though the minor league recaps, #TWSS, and Monday Morning recaps rated slightly lower, they're still very well liked. I think their low rating is more due to the fact that they're features that appeal to particular audiences, while everyone wants to read major-league recaps and breaking news.

Apparently people don't really care about podcasts, though. Maybe that's because it's something we don't do all that often, but this jives with the general response we've seen on the site when we've run it.

Now for the second question: Rate the quality of the following features.

The main thing that jumps out at me that in general, people tend to think that we're doing almost everything well. People would like to see series previews with more regularity -- that was about the only feedback that got submitted by multiple users -- but eh, that's about the only real feedback to draw from this. All of the things we're doing frequently right now? They're going great.

That's...that's pretty crazy. People always have something to complain about, and I can't think of a time when we solicited feedback and received so many positive comments and so little constructive criticism. Things are going really well right now, which is a testament to this staff of writers...because honestly, I've been on cruise control for the past few months and have been very hands off with the day-to-day running of the site. You guys have been rocking it out, so definitely be proud of yourselves.

And now the final question: how important are these factors to you?

A little bit of everything, but with an emphasis on the analysis and writing. I actually expected the community aspect to rank #1, but I think this gives us some good perspective on the commenting crew at DRB. They're awesome and lots of people (even lurkers) derive enjoyment from reading the comments, but there are a lot of readers out there that read every article we write and don't care about the comments. The writing and analysis comes first, as it should.

I'll include the long-form feedback in a separate doc, so you can go here to find all that. The comments were generally positive, with the couple repeat comments stressing...

• Figure out the modding situation. We haven't been very intentional on who is a mod, so we should think about that some.
• Series previews. Lets do 'em every time. Let's make that happen.
• Bit better breaking news coverage. We used to do more analysis of moves and write more on them, but we've had a tough time now that I'm working. This is definitely something for us to feel out and work on.

Any thoughts yourself?