I just wanted to thank you guys again for taking a moment to complete my reader survey last month. I was thrilled with how many people responded and got some really interesting results.  Your feedback has been a big help as I work on the blog redesign.  Just in case any of you are curious, here are some of the results from the survey.

Accessing Joyfully Jay

  • 70% of respondents read the blog at least several times per week
  • The majority of readers read by visiting the blog itself. 64% always read through the blog, and 22% frequently read at the blog.  About 36% always or frequently read through a feedreader, and about 30% always or frequently read through email.
  • Even people who read through email or a feedreader often come to the site through those links, mostly for commenting or to read other posts.
Reviews
I gave a list of different features we often include in reviews to see which ones readers find most important.  The features that were listed as the most important included:
  • Book author
  • Book length
  • Picture of cover
  • Links to buy the book
The date of publication was the least important, with over 60% of readers finding it not that important or not important at all.
Joyfully Jay Features
It turns out people aren’t using the sidebar features that frequently.  The two most commonly used features are the list of my favorite blogs and links to blog tours and other events.  The least used feature was the list of followers on Google Friend Connect. So I will be playing around a bit with that on the new site.

Conclusions
So one of my goals with the redesign is to make it easier to find past posts.  I find the Blogger search tool iffy at best, and it seems that most folks aren’t using it.  Hopefully WordPress will have a better search engine.  My plan is to also add some quick search features, including the ability to find reviews by reviewer, by rating, by genre (contemporary, historical, etc) and by author.  This should make it easier to find what you want.

I will also be revising the review layout a bit to get the key information up front and put the lesser used information toward the end of the posts.

I appreciate everyone who took the time to fill out the survey.  You all are the best! And of course, if you ever have any feedback for me, you are welcome to just send it to me any time!  Jay

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