December 1996 € Volume 6 € Number 12
December 1996 € Volume 6 € Number 12
Soon after APICS opened its web site, I created a questionnaire to find out more about our visitors and their needs. Since then, I have inflicted this missive on just about everyone who has submitted a request, kudo and, yes, even a complaint from the net. In all, the survey has been sent to more than 500 people. Roughly 10 percent of you appear to be using an account that I cannot respond to, while 175 people -- about 38 percent of the remaining folks -- have responded. Given the length of the survey, the response rate has been very good.
So what has this survey taught us? Before I get into the results, I should give you an idea of what I was looking for. The survey opened with a series of questions designed to tell us a little something about you:
Right away, we hit our first surprise: While most of you work in a manufacturing-related field, half of you are not APICS members. You have been online for one to five years, prefer the web and e-mail, and you're online primarily for research and education. Like the rest of the world, you show an overwhelming preference for NetScape's browser (Navigator) and, as I reported last month, you like to use Yahoo! to find sites. Most of you use the web at home and at work and you spend more than 20 hours each month on the web! To cap it all off, you are 31-50 years of age, which suggests that you are precisely the kind of experienced professionals that APICS hoped to attract.
While APICS has only been surveying people for a few months, the responses are remarkably constant. Two trends appear over time: More of you are using Microsoft Explorer, and many of you are beginning to experiment with other search engines. I'd like to say that my article in the November issue of APICS -- The Performance Advantage was responsible for the latter trend, but I cannot, for the simple reason that as I write this article the November issue hasn't yet been published.
Next we asked a series of questions designed to help us improve our web site. Since some folks do send us mail directly, we began by asking if you have visited the site. To date, 91 percent of respondents have seen the site and have gone on to complete this section of the survey.
Sixty percent of you have found what you wanted on the site, and 58 percent of you are using the Quick Index to do it. In fact, both of these figures have improved over time as we have expanded the site and added new features to the index. At this point, the index is about as good as we can make it without constructing some sort of dynamic search facility, and, based on your feedback, we're looking into that option now.
To date, most respondents are visiting About APICS first, with Conference and Certification in a dead heat for second place. The Quick Index takes third place here.
Our next question was, "If we had to drop one area from the home page, which should it be?" Many of you either wimped out here or told us that everything was important, but most of you voted to move the Business Index. As a result of your feedback, we have changed this option to Other Services and placed both the Business Index and Job Referral beneath it.
Next we asked you to rate our site in terms of graphic usage and overall utility. Almost 80 percent of you think that our site has a pretty good balance of graphics and text. Overall, you rated the APICS site as follows:
|
Excellent |
14 percent |
|
Good |
50 percent |
|
Satisfactory |
23 percent |
|
Needs major improvement |
3 percent |
|
We flunked |
0 percent |
|
No answer |
9 percent |
Personally, I think you have been generous in your praise, but given that the site is less than six months old, I think we can permit ourselves some small measure of satisfaction.
The final section of the questionnaire is intended to help us nail down a few design and service issues.
First we ask, "How do you prefer to obtain information?" This question goes to the heart of how one organizes information on a site. Responses to date are as follows:
I want to read it online, page by page
22 percentI want to look at it online and print it out in one shot
30 percentI want to download entire documents and read them later
20 percentI'd like summary info online, with the opportunity to request printed details
23 percent
These responses have large implications for site design. For example, while it is the least popular option, it seems that many of you would prefer to download entire documents. At present, most of our pages are set up for page-by-page review, with links to drill down to more information and more detail, and we often refer people to printed documents. Given your feedback, though, we are trying to condense information into fewer pages and are pursuing the use of Acrobat files for complex topics.
The next two questions deal with online purchasing. Thus far, 39 percent of you have purchased materials or services online, and 73 percent of you are interested in purchasing APICS materials online. This tracks well with responses from my request for feedback in a previous article. As a result, we are looking into several options for the upcoming online catalog.
The final question on the survey asks how often you plan to return to the web site. I am happy to report that most of our visitors say they do plan to return somewhat frequently. In fact, 19 percent of you plan to visit us once each week, and 36 percent plan to visit us once each month. Based on this feedback, we are working on plans to shorten our update cycle and make it easier for you to find updated items on our site. Your feedback is actually being used to help us develop the site. This will be an ongoing effort. As such, the survey will change about once each quarter as we identify new issues and require more feedback about specific developments.
If you have Internet mail and use the web, I urge you to visit our site and participate in this effort. Our site is located at http://www.apics.org, and you may obtain a copy of the survey by sending a blank mail message to [email protected]