What you told us you wanted - APO reader survey and site upgrade

Back in September and October 2007, we asked you, the readers of Australian Policy Online, about your experiences with both the website and our weekly newsletter and for your opinions and suggestions on how APO could be improved.

Although it has been some time since that survey we thought it would be useful to publish some of the results that have helped inform the development of APO to the point where we will be able to launch an upgraded site in April 2009.

APO readers – who are you?

First of all we thought it was interesting to know a bit more about you. At the time of the survey we averaged 5,300 individual visits per week and since then, for the last year we have averaged over 7,600 individual weekly visits. Then we had around 8,000 subscribers to the weekly newsletter and now we have over 10,000.

About 10% of readers responded to the survey and were identified as “regular readers” (92%) and “new users” (8%). If it is possible to generalise from these numbers, we know that our readership is made up of 41% government sector, 31% academics and students, 17% other professions such as legal, research, media etc, 9% NGOs and community groups and 2% of you are currently not working.

According to the survey 41% of readers first heard about APO from a colleague and 10% from friends, so thanks for the good work in spreading the word. Other readers come via links from other sites and a large proportion continue to come from search engines – so we hope many of you stay.

We also know that among the readers who answered the survey the majority were based in NSW and Victoria (53%), Queensland (15%), ACT (13%) with SA, WA, Tasmania and the Northern Territory together accounting for (19%).

Comparing our survey sample to web analytics programs we note however that there are actually more readers based outside Australia than was revealed in the sample. At the time of the survey nearly 8% of readers were based in 139 different countries other than Australia, and that currently nearly 10% of readers are based outside Australia and in 199 countries. We’d love to hear from the two readers in Burkina Faso one day by the way.

How you currently use APO

Regular visitors to APO accounted for 58% of those surveyed, defining themselves as weekly readers. A further 20% visited the site at least once a month. Most respondents (70%) browsed and downloaded new reports predominantly and 50% read the Comment & Analysis articles. Others aspects of the site were used much less frequently such as the Topic archive (23%) or the Research tools area (10%) but these are features on the new site that we hope to make more useful.

Improvements to APO – what you wanted

We found that most readers consider the Weekly Briefing newsletter when they think of APO rather than the website. Therefore comments regarding APO’s improvement focused on the delivery and length of the Weekly Briefing as well as the content. The current format of the Briefing includes randomly ordered reports that are ordered into 23 topic areas on the website, but not made explicit in the Briefing. Comments about this format ranged from,

“Your newsletter is a key part in me knowing about lots of things without having to look. To get it regularly, to have it easy to read are the key things.. you already do this. Thanks!”

to

“I find it a useful way to find out about current thinking in areas related to my work. I tend to scroll down a long list and would find it easier if the list was organised into broad subject areas.”

and

“Improve the categorisation of reports in the listing - at the moment it is one big list which is hard to digest quickly.”

In fact when asked explicitly, 96% of respondents were “very or somewhat interested” in more specific subject categories for browsing and searching.

Therefore the new website will be ordered into 10 more obvious topic areas and the Weekly Briefing will carry these headings as well. For people with less time and more specific interests it will be possible to subscribe to one or more topic areas, ensuring that they are not bothered by less relevant material.

New content

Interest in APO offering more enhanced content was rated very highly amongst readers with 94% of respondents requesting “additional and enhanced research related news items”; 91% requesting “report reviews” and 96% requesting “research guides to key policy issues and publications”.

At the same time more people fell into the “somewhat interested” camp for more opinion pieces, book reviews, book listings and audio and video content.

“Please do not overload the site with discussion sections. Many other outlets provide this… Very few provide the APO service of pure compilation of academic/governmental reports which is very useful.”

Although some were quite keen:

“podcasts are a great idea - you can listen while jogging...”

“Video podcasts would be amazing! I frequently download video podcasts and have found them to be a wonderful insight.”

Other people contributed some good ideas for ways we could further develop the site’s content:

“Very valuable resource - a centralised repository for Australian policy research is fantastic. A listing of such research currently being undertaken would also be of use.”

“It's great, but could be enhanced by keeping up to date summaries of what current policy approaches are and (what) alternatives are on offer from different political parties. For example under immigration - a summary of current policy and a list of alternatives from Labor, the Greens, the Democrats etc.”

As the new site develops we hope that we will be able to answer more of these requests and to provide space for engaged readers to contribute content - such as alerting us to gaps and recommending key current and historical reports.

Better ways to Browse and Search

In survey responses, there were also quite a few comments about how to better organise older reports in archives and locate them with enhanced search functions, such as:

“I enjoy the site a lot and always read at least a few of the articles and reports. I very much like the idea of being able to build my own library of reports and links etc, as I often go back to my e-newsletter to try and remember where I saw a link to a report.”

and

“I didn't know you had research resources on the site until this survey.”

Some useful comments for ways we could improve on APO’s usability as it’s known in the web industry, included:

“I've noticed titles are listed in various colours - I don't know if there's any significance to colour (eg subject). It isn't obvious, anyway.”

And many people critiqued our cumbersome search function describing it as “glacially slow”.

These kinds of comments have been taken into consideration with the new site where the design will more clearly denote the topic areas. Simple bookmarking will also be available to build reader libraries and in the future we hope that these will be able to be shared amongst readers. We also expect our search facility to be markedly improved, in speed but also by adding options to filter search results, enabling readers to find information along multiple paths.

In summary

The main messages we’ve taken from the survey and have built as features on the new site include:

• Ten major topic areas with lots more subtopics to drill down into specialist areas.
• Cross-referenced topic areas
• Faster and more sophisticated searching including post-search filtering options
• Capacity to bookmark and store favourite reports
• Video and audio sections
• Web resources and policy guides
• Space for books and submissions listings
• A cleaner and more elegant graphic design
• The option to comment on reports
• Better forms and payment methods for advertising events, jobs and courses on APO

And what we hope to bring you in the near future

As we all become accustomed to the new site we hope to add a few new features as we go. We had a reasonably strong sense from the survey results that bells and whistles weren’t a priority for most of you, however time does move on and features that were regarded as fancy in 2007 may soon be seen as standard. Therefore we would like to able to promise space on APO that allows for you, the policy community, capacity to interact and provide reviews, critiques and contexts for the reports we post. We would love you to provide us with annotated bibliographies of policies – where they’ve come from and what they’ve built on to date and we plan to open a comments section for your ideas and discussions you may want to have with others in the community.

More information

Feel free to email the APO editors anytime with your comments or feedback at admin@apo.org.au

If you would like to receive updates on the site's development and provide feedback visit or join the Friends of Australian Policy Online group we have set up on Facebook. You don't have to join to see the information there but you will if you want to post comments. If you are Facebook phobic just email your comments to admin@apo.org.au and we will post them for you. APO editors