Observatory website survey reponses now available

Thank you to everyone who completed the Observatory’s recent website satisfaction survey. We have taken all of your responses and comments on board and are now working on making our website more user friendly.

As part of our review of web services, we’re planning the following actions based on your responses:

• Improve the profile of research gaps on wmro.org
• Ensure all records in the Resource Catalogue have a metadata summary page
• Remove the Directory of Specialists from the website, create a network group in LinkedIn and encourage users to relocate their profiles there.
• Remove the organisations directory from wmro.org

Following more investigation with users, we’ll also review the future of the Register of Consultants.

We’ve decided to remove some of our website services (Directory of Specialists, organisations directory and possibly the Register of Consultants) based on the results of the survey.

The results showed that these areas are rarely used, are not valued and of limited importance.

This will allow us to concentrate our efforts on those areas of the website we know are of high importance to most users:

• Our research and data
• Resource Catalogue
• Research gaps
• Interactive maps

Summary of survey feedback received from respondents

The majority of our website users work in the public sector and work mostly in policy or research. However, a few respondents work in other sectors including intelligence, marketing, information communications, training, media and business support.

• The Resource Catalogue and research gaps appeared to be the most frequently used and valued services on wmro.org.
• For the website in general, respondents found the Observatory’s publications, newsletters, this Observations blog and enquiries service useful.
• 72% stated that they would like to be directed to a summary page when selecting a resource in search results
• 69% stated the datasets available on the website were easy to use.
• On social networking, 34% of respondents said they used it for work.
• The most popular social networking sites were LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.

We asked respondents for any other comments about the website. The majority of respondents stated the website was easy to use, attractive and looked professional. However, some respondents said that it looked a bit cluttered, there should be more maps and graphs, and less text.

You can see the results from the survey. Please note that the open-ended responses and comments are excluded and all responses are anonymous.