Summary of Survey Results

[Craig]

As promised, I'm compiling the results of the latest Fencing.Net Reader Survey and publishing a summary here. I will be using the responses (especially the written comments) to make changes and additions to Fencing.Net as time and resources permit.

How Often Visit Fencing.Net: 36% visit daily with close to 80% of visitors coming to the site at least once/week.

The most visited areas are the Forums, News, and Training Tips areas.

60% describe themselves as competitive fencers (combination of nationally competitive and regionally competitive) - This is an increase from last year.

Fencing Equipment Brands:
Top 3 Brands in the "Top of Mind": (Unaided awareness - Shown alphabetically)
- Absolute
- Leon Paul
- Uhlmann

Top 3 Vendors (Aided awareness - Alphabetical)
- AllStar USA
- Blue Gauntlet
- Leon Paul USA

Most Used Vendors
- Absolute
- Blue Gauntlet
- Leon Paul USA

Areas of Fencing.Net receiving highest satisfaction ratings:
- Forums
- News
- Introductory Information

Areas most in need of improvement:
- Fencing Club Listings
- Product Reviews (not enough products listed - based on written comments)
- News

This was interesting. The news had one of the highest satisfaction scores, but also one of the higher dissatisfaction scores. People either like the content or expect a lot more from it - there was much less of a middle ground to responses on this one. (Though the "high" dissatisfaction rating was 7% between "somewhat" and "totally" dissatisfied.)

Weapons Fenced:
- Epee
- Foil (very close second)
- Sabre

USFA Magazine:
Most fencers read the entire magazine, but almost 30% just flip through to look at photos. Regardless of usage, the magazine content ranks as "average" overall with slight bumps on the "expert" columns and photos.

Reader Comments:
There were a lot of comments for both what you would want to see in a magazine and what you would like to see in Fencing.Net overall. I was grateful for all of the "rah rah" comments that Fencing.Net received and think I see a few themes in what people are looking for - and some very good suggestions.

A few common requests were for additional resources for club owners and parents. There are also some other great ideas that were submitted but I need to collate them together and come out with another article detailing both what was in the written comments and, more importantly, what I'll be driving Fencing.Net to do to ACT on your requests.

Craig

[KD5MDK]

Thank you for the report. I'm very surprised Allstar USA was a top vendor, they're rather small for my notion of that.

[Craig]

Here are the action steps that I'm taking as the first round of actions from your responses in the user suvey:

1. Improve the Fencing Club Listings

This is highly important as we receive a good number of emails and phone calls from people looking for a place to fence. I've implemented the zip code search tool for fencing clubs, but need to get updated information from more of the clubs. (Club owners or reps - come by our booth at the Atlanta NAC to help the process!)

I also want to add some more information for the fencing clubs including the types of classes offered and programs for Youth, Teen, Adult, etc. Make the listing akin to a AAA listing to be easy for prospective fencers to find somewhere to fence.

2. Product Reviews

This will take a little more time, but I'll be moving the reviews to a new engine that should integrate a bit better with the forums and also expand for more products to be listed. There is a lot of cross-pollenation with reviews in the Product Reviews area as well as in the Armory discussion. There may be some way to get threads about a product highlighted in the product reviews area - gotta get a coder to look at that one.

3. Fencing News

This will be an ongoing process, but something I'll carve out some more time to dedicate to. It's more open ended than the first two (more of a process than a project), so will take longer to refine.

[mlr2fence]

Please add in a search by city to the club listing. If visiting an area one doesn't always know the zip code and a by city search would save having to look up a zip code.

[Craig]

Please add in a search by city to the club listing. If visiting an area one doesn't always know the zip code and a by city search would save having to look up a zip code.

They can go into the state directory for that. The problem with a by city search is that for a large metro area what do you put in? "Atlanta" could mean Atlanta, Apharetta, Dunwoody, Chamblee, East Point, etc...

The zip code based search was an off the shelf application I could purchase. Not sure there is a similar application that would do the same thing with just City/State entered.

Craig

[mlr2fence]

Thats the problem--also list the suburbs of a city, by the major city. If I, as a visitor, was looking for a place in Atlanta and saw a listing for some of those cities I would be clueless that they might be actually across the street from my hotel, unless I looked at a map. Or, do as Askfred does, with a link to a map.

[noodle]

Thats the problem--also list the suburbs of a city, by the major city. If I, as a visitor, was looking for a place in Atlanta and saw a listing for some of those cities I would be clueless that they might be actually across the street from my hotel, unless I looked at a map. Or, do as Askfred does, with a link to a map.

could possibly tie the search results into the google map API, displaying a map of the results?
would that fix your problems?

[Craig]

could possibly tie the search results into the google map API, displaying a map of the results?
would that fix your problems?

I'm looking for a better way to utilize that. The Maps API interface that I had for the clubs listing was slowing down the connection for a lot of users, which is why I had to move that. Either way, I don't want to be supporting multiple applications!

[noodle]

I'm looking for a better way to utilize that. The Maps API interface that I had for the clubs listing was slowing down the connection for a lot of users, which is why I had to move that. Either way, I don't want to be supporting multiple applications!

i think it was slowing down because it was displaying all of the clubs. if you reduce it to search results, they'll only get what they request, so it'll be much faster. i thinks.