[Linux-aus] Membership Team update - results of recent survey and key insights

[Paul Gear]

On 23/04/16 11:51, Kathy Reid wrote:
> ...
> The Membership Team Website Survey 2016 opened on 27th March and was
> available until 22nd April. There were 55 responses.
> ...
> From the survey, it's very clear the most Linux Australia members who
> visit the website do so very infrequently. This is likely due to the
> site not featuring content that members want prominently, such as
> upcoming events. A key goal of the Membership Platform and website
> redevelopment project is to provide content that members are looking
> for, thus increasing the frequency at which Linux Australia members
> view the site.

Hi Kathy & team,

Firstly, thanks for your efforts on the survey.  Secondly, this may have
been covered elsewhere, so please point me at that elsewhere if it has.

There is a significant preconception at work here which doesn't seem to
have been discussed on the list (at least not that I can recall).  The
preconception is: increasing the number of hits on the Linux Australia
web site is an important goal.  (Or perhaps more accurately: increasing
the frequency at which members use the site.)  The purpose of my email
is to question whether that is an important goal, and, if the answer is
affirmative, understand and quantify/qualify why.

My main reason for questioning this is: I don't like seeing good people
invest substantial effort on a commendable project and then feel
frustrated when they didn't make the impact they had hoped.  We're a
volunteer organisation, and I value the time that all our volunteers
contribute.

Here are a few questions to flesh out what I'm getting at:

  * What end does increasing the frequency of member views on the site
    serve?
  * Would the content provided by a new LA web site fill a gap that is
    not already well-served by other sites?
  * If so, what sort of content would that be?
  * Would this be sufficiently appealing/useful to members to increase
    the frequency of their visits?
  * Are there other ways to engage LA members which might be more
    effective/efficient in terms of money, time, and effort?
  * What does member engagement of a successful software freedom
    lobbying/support organisation look like?

Speaking for myself, there are a few reasons why I don't visit the site
regularly:

 1. LCA and elections only happen once a year, and I know the general
    time of year when that will happen, so I don't really need the site
    much between February & September (...ish).
 2. There's no obvious RSS feed - at least, there's no reference to
    "feed", "atom", or "rss" on the front page.
 3. I already have too much information coming into my life, through
    email, IRC, RSS, Twitter, etc., and if it were just general Linux
    news and aggregation of people's blogs, I probably wouldn't find a
    reason to add the site to my list of monitored feeds.  I'm a busy
    person, employed by a Linux company with a broad reach, and
    reasonably well-informed about the industry.  From my perspective,
    it takes a fairly special web site to get me to come back
    regularly.  Thinking about various other organisations which I
    support (financially or otherwise), endorse, or appreciate, I don't
    visit their web sites very much at all, and I don't necessarily see
    this as a big problem.

Fixing #2 is probably the only one which would increase the frequency at
which I visit the site, and it may not do so for very long.

If creating a new web site is something our volunteers want to do
anyway, then go for it!  But I think there may be other possibilities we
should be exploring (at least in parallel) given the investment which
this effort will require.

Paul

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