Hi,
I have also had to consider this issue and thus far have persuaded people to avoid using registration on the assumption that it will deter users, though I am also sympathetic to the need to find out more about our online audience.
As you also asked about experience of using surveys, I am giving some details below. When we launched most online surveys were only simple feedback forms, and we needed more detailed information about how people were using the site and what they wanted as well as the overall feedback type questions.
We have had a fairly extensive user survey in our Learning section for about 3.5 years now. The level of contributions has varied according to how much we plug it and whether or not we offer any incentives. The survey has a very short first page with one question, and a very long second page with about 15, so it is possible to see the comparative levels of submission. Since August 2002 we have had 1176 people answer the first question, 772 went on to the second page, and only 317 completed the second page. It's a pretty small percentage, but it does give us some indication of what people think of the site - and how this is changing.
I don't have detailed stats for the site for 2002, by from Jan 1 2003 to Mar 1 we had over 750,000 visitors making 1,139,294 million visits - which gives you some idea of the kind of percentage of visitors likely to actually fill in any sort of form question.
It would be interesting to see if having a more intelligent survey which perhaps asked every visitor one question - but included a number of questions which were rotated - could actually provide the kind of information we now need. Is anyone using such a system?
Jane
Date: Wed, 8 Mar 2006 12:54:13 -0000
Reply-To: Museums Computer Group <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Museums Computer Group <[log in to unmask]>
From: "Gray, Peter" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Registration vs online surveys
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Mark said:
> 1. As a user, there's nothing more frustrating than a registration
> barrier. I'll do anything to avoid it, particularly if
> registration doesn't
> seem necessary for the functioning of the website.
I agree, it's pointless deliberately annoying your visitors. You wouldn't dream of doing the same thing to visitors to a physical site. In any case won't requiring registration affect the ability of other sites to link to your content? And the ability of spiders to index your site?
> 2. There is evidence that many think this way - look at the
> popularity of bugmenot (www.bugmenot.com). Or the prevalence of
> obviously bogus user names (Mickey Mouse etc) in registration
> logs.
<shock>You mean Mickey Mouse _isn't_ _real_?</shock>
> 3. There's another way of harvesting user profiles - using compact
> online surveys such as Survey Monkey (www.surveymonkey.com).
> I know that overlong surveys don't work, but has anyone in the
> museum/culture sector had good
> results from short, straightforward surveys of this type?
Or if you don't want to pay, and are happy to use Excel for your analysis, there's this rather good freebie which makes it easy to set up questionnaires and email yourself the results as a text file:
< <http://www.pentri.com/pentri/index.php?id=26> http://www.pentri.com/pentri/index.php?id=26>
Best wishes
Pete
--
Peter M Gray
Museums Officer
www.eastlothian.gov.uk/museums
www.eastlothianmuseums.org
www.prestongrange.org
Jane Sarre
Access & Learning Officer, Access & Learning
Museum of London
150 London Wall
London. EC2Y 5HN
Tel: 020 7814 5772
Fax: 020 7600 1058
Email: [log in to unmask]
www.museumoflondon.org.uk
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