by Rob Zorn
from the March 2003 Newsletter

Last month I encouraged readers to provide feedback on the newsletters by way of an online survey. My aim was to get some gathered feedback on how the newsletters were being received and how they could be made better. As many readers noted in their comments, the newsletters "must take a lot of work to produce," and I would rather work smarter than harder, so I wanted to get an idea of what was worthwhile and what was a waste of effort. I am grateful to all those who took the time to respond.

At the time of this writing, roughly 2-3 weeks since the survey was released, I have received 597 replies. A few responses continue to trickle in each day, but I have to draw the line somewhere in terms of the collected body of data I'm going to work with.

The results were overwhelmingly positive. That's pretty much to be expected, I guess. I'm well aware that only regular readers were likely to bother with the survey, and if they didn't see some value in the newsletters, then they wouldn't be regular readers. I truly appreciated the few who weren't so keen on the newsletter who gave me their feedback anyway.

Results

I have posted a summary of results at http://editor.actrix.co.nz/0303surveyresults.htm.

I toyed with the idea of posting all the comments too, just for curiosity's sake. I would have removed all possible identifying words or phrases (and references to our competitors that it would have been bad form for us to publish), but in the end I decided I couldn't really do even this as people filled in the survey without me having mentioned posting results (even anonymously) beforehand. 

The Comments

Some of the comments were really helpful and thoughtful. Many took the opportunity to voice their disapproval of one thing or another that Actrix does or is doing, and I made sure that such comments were forwarded to the appropriate managers or departments. Many took the opportunity to ask questions but neglected to say who they were, so I was not able to get back to them. Some did leave their details, and I think I have replied to most of them. A couple of respondents pointed out that my questions were leading. I admit I probably could have worded some of them better, or provided more options to choose from, but I wasn't trying to skew the results and did try to provide a fully negative option for each question. At least one person noticed this and chose the most negative option at every opportunity. Heh heh.

Statistics

At time of writing 259 females, 333 males and five who didn't want to indicate their gender replied. Two thirds of respondents were over 50 years of age. Respondents in higher age brackets tended to favour articles on how to make the most of the web or their software. Younger respondents tended to go for the Interesting Sites and the News Snippets. The one thing that surprised me in the results had to do with the articles that were the most popular. The ones most liked were often the ones I spent less time on, researched less deeply, or didn't think were as interesting as the ones I had worked harder on, or enjoyed more as I wrote them. I guess that underscores the value of this sort of feedback.

As stated above, if you're interested you can see a results summary here: http://editor.actrix.co.nz/0303surveyresults.htm.

Content Changes

The message was reasonably consistent that no significant changes are needed for the newsletter in terms of layout or content.

There were a few recurring themes when it came to requested content. One or two thought a regular staff profile would be good. This is an interesting idea and I wouldn't mind doing it, but I doubt many Actrix staff would like having their mugshot and rap sheet on display. I don't think I'd get a lot of internal company co-operation on that one.

Lots of people indicated that they'd like to be able to print individual articles more easily. This has always been possible via the Archives Page, but from now on I will endeavour to make this a lot simpler by providing a link to a "printer friendly version" for each significant article.

Quite a few people mentioned the idea of a readers' forum, where people confused about a net-related topic or something peculiar to Actrix could write in requesting help. I think this would be a valuable addition and I'll include an invitation to readers to do so in this newsletter. Perhaps some of the help desk staff could have a go at responding. If it takes off we'll keep it as a permanent feature of the newsletters.

A small number wanted the articles to be more technically in depth, but most who addressed this issue would prefer articles to stay about the same, or perhaps be written even more simply, or deal with topics aimed at the greenest of novices. Each month I do try and get a good mix of material but it will often depend on how much time I have to research and plan, or which staff members are nearby and willing to write something for me. I'll continue to aim for a good mix of material.

Well, that's probably enough in terms of a survey report. Please check out the results summary and feel free to e-mail me if you think there are other conclusions that I could have drawn from the data.