Survey Results

Here's is the promised synopsis of the survey results. First let me thank all those who participated for their responses. The information you have provided will be very useful.

What people do and don't want

It's pretty clear that most people are most interested in reviews of DSLRs and lenses. That came through as the #1 priority and it's not really a big surprise. About 90% of all respondents owned a DSLR and 95% owned an SLR lens. The least interesting current content were reviews of books, software and digicams.

I will continue to attempt to get cameras and lenses for testing, but it's not easy. Most manufacturers aren't to interested in providing equipment for review. If you're reading this and you happen to be the CEO or Press Agent of a major photo equipment manufacturer, please don't hesitate to get in touch with me!

The new feature that most people wanted to see was some sort of facility for users to post their ratings of equipment. I'm going to look into ways of doing that which can be integrated into the existing site. I may need to write some custom software, so it may be a few months before anything shows up, but it's now on my list of "stuff to do"!

The feature that people showed least interest in was a classified ads section, so that one is at the bottom of the list. There was some interest in various "picture of the day" schemes, so that's another thing I'll look into.

What people think of the site

96% of respondents found the level of advertising at least tolerable, and 84% found it at least occasionally useful, so I'm quite happy about that. Advertising is what keeps this site running so I'm glad that only a very small percentage of viewers find it to be a problem and that most viewers find it useful at times. I try to keep it focused on photography, so I'm not planning on running any ads for cell phones, mortgages or dating services!

87% of respondents found site navigation usable and 65% thought it was good or excellent. Again, pretty good numbers, but with room for improvement I think. What did come as a surprise was that around 50% of respondents had no idea that the site had a search facility! There's a search box at the top right corner of just about every page on this website, and those who found it thought it was useful. Obviously I need to figure out how to bring it to the attention of the other 50%! Maybe something like the footer I've used on this page.

So again, thanks to all those who participated in the survey. It's given me some ideas and indicate where I should concentrate my efforts. I'd particularly like to thank those who added written comments to their survey. I've read all of them and taken note of what you said. Thanks for the compliments and even some of the complaints!

Bob

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