Well the results of my SCCA website poll are in. I received about 40
responses with a lot of varying opinions. After sifting through the
data it appears that the majority of people are of the opinion that the
site could be a lot better, although the degree of disenchantment with
the site varied from person to person. Certainly it's easy to conclude
that the site needs some major re-work before the majority of the Solo
community will be happy with it!
While looking at the results below be aware that not everyone answered
each question and in many cases I had to try and put a written response
into a general category. Thus you'll see numbers don't always add up.
For some items I have only included a top-5 list since after that most
items only had 1-2 responses. Also in the case of Questions 4 and 5
many people answered more than one thing so I counted their top-3
likes/dislikes in the totals so not as to miss anything that was
generally liked or disliked by all.
When it comes to comments I tried to select ones that were both
positive and negative, however given that there were a lot more
negative comments I've included more of those. In some cases I've
edited your comments slightly or selected only part of a longer
response so as to be as clear as possible and not repeat the same thing
again and again. I hope that is ok, if anyone thinks they have been
severely misquoted please let me know!
Once I get your feedback I will send this to Garrett Mudd, the SCCA's
V.P. of Marketing and the one responsible for the web site and also to
SCCA President Steve Johnson. Hopefully they will take these results to
heart and make plans to address some or all of your concerns.
Thanks again to everyone who responded!
- Alan Dahl
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Question 1. What do you think of the look of the current website?
Positive: 6
Neutral: 7
Negative: 24
Selected comments:
- I like the new look and consistant theme used through out the entire
site. A lot of nice interactive little features also.
- It looks very cluttered to me.
- It's pretty... but so what
- I think it's absurd. It looks like one giant pop-up add. Tons of
flashy graphics, with poor organization.
- Very high class, almost like ESPN or one of the ISC racetracks
- Blows chunks
- Absolutely Hate It. Hate it. Hate it.
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Question 2. What do you think of the navigation? (the way you move
from page to
page, how easy it is to find what you want)
Positive: 2
Neutral: 8
Negative: 28
Selected comments:
- Overall navigation is improved. However, much of the specific
information was lost...
- It's horrible, very difficult to find anything.
- On the main page there are FIVE different sets of buttons for (CLUB,
RALLY, SOLO, PRO)! Three take you to the Solo page, one tells you Solo
news, and one does absolutely nothing. That's both redundant and
inconsistent, a difficult combination to achieve.
- It's also grown on me, but I'd rather be able to type things in like
www.scca.com/discussion
- The actual content of a page is squeezed into about 10% of the page,
and often untitled.
- Bad, it's also very hard if not impossible to bookmark a page on the
site or to look back through the history to pick a page. All pages are
title the same
- It sucks to say the least. More so when searching for Solo event
results
- I want to click around a site to learn news and info, not to
understand how a site works.
- Navigation is slow and clumsy. Requires too many clicks to arrive at
a useful section because of the menu structure.
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Question 3. What do you like best about the current website?
(top 5 choices listed)
News
Timely updates
Look
Colors
Forums
Selected comments:
- The interactive content and up to date articles right on front page
of every venue.
- There is a lot of information - stats/results - searches by a
person's name can get a lot of responses.
- Discussion forum
- Having changing news on the front page is kind of neat.
- Very professional in appereance....but I've always been told if the
page wont load in 10 seconds, most casual browsing will move on and not
wait. ...it must be intended for people who are willing to wait, most
likely members who need some info off of the page.
- Hmm, more pictures I guess? The different colors for the different
branches of the clubs? I really don't like it all actually.
- Speed. It is very_fast! Which is good so it doesn't take long to get
upset at the lack of content. Also like the Fastrack Archives. Keep it
and make it more complete.
- I honestly don't like anything I've seen.
- Closing the window.
- Flashy looking. Contemporary looking. Colorful. Nothing in terms of
content or navigation.
- I struggle to find something positive - it seems to be updated
frequently.
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Question 4. What don't you like about it?
(top 5 choices listed)
Slow load speed
Hard to navigate
Hard to read/cluttered
Hard to link pages
Too many objects to download
Selected comments:
- Just about everything. I am confronted with a hodgepodge of boxes on
each page with no clue how they tie in. Are they contextual? Are they
for navigation? The number of images that download with page are
ridiculous. Simplify simplify, simplify. I ran it through this page
(through an HTML validator) and it came back with hundreds of
noncompliance.
- I can't FIND what I want, even though I think it's there.
- Links can't be copied/pasted for direct linking
- Results only in PDF format
- Mainly the fact that we lost old results. Also, i hate the fact that
the current Solo National results are broken up into about 60 different
files. It's a real pain to compare classes, when you could easily just
scroll up and down.
- Navigation is terrible. URLs are way too long and incorperate
session-IDs for pages containing non-session specific info... Does not
use sensible permanent links, sensibly named.
- It's hard to read something when there's moving graphics on the same
page. All of the animated graphics aren't needed. In fact, they're very
distracting.
- Too hard to find the information you are needing.
- I don't like that it looks so cluttered. I don't appreciate having to
click and click through links to find information.
- A bit clunky. Not very intuitive. Poor labeling/menu names
throughout. You have to guess where stuff is, like results. Archives
that go back to only 2002
- It is very hard to get around and a lot of things don't make sense.
- HUGE page file sizes. I'm stuck with being on 28.8 dial-up at home,
and even with elements already in History and Temporary Internet File
folders, it still takes forever to load and display.
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Question 5. What would you like to see on the site that currently isn't
there?
- A site map.
- Ability to filter the listings of events and such, especially the
schedule on the Events page. Way too much data to sift through even
with the nice sort features.
- The full rule books
- Results from as many past Solo Nationals as is possible
- FastTrack in HTML format. Anchors in files so you can send a link to
a section. The ability to search FastTracks.
- Online membership renewal
- Links to regional results
- RSS/Atom feed of what's new in solo.
- The archived info that used to be there. Or if it is still there, a
better way to find it.
- Easier navigation. Ditch the whole .asp stuff. For a dynamic website,
like a commercial retail website, or a big media news site, that's one
thing. But this site is, in most cases, fairly static in nature.
- Tech articles would be a nice draw too. You know like the ones in
Sports Car, even if they're repeats from Months past.
- Password-protected members-only access to event results.
- A US map that could outline what clubs provide Solo racing in the
specific areas. It'd be much easier to FIND a club that offers Solo
events this way.
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Question 6. Is it more important for the website to serve non-members
(ie:
convince non-members to join SCCA) or serve the current membership?
Members: 13
Non-members: 0
Both: 23
Selected comments:
- The front page can serve both equally if the navigation is clearly
indicated, "new users go here", "members go here." There is no need to
shortchange one side or the other on a website with unlimited depth.
- This should be an even handed use of this sites' opening pages, and
we should split the two from the first few pages, giving non-members
access to tours and tutorials, and members the same plus some stuff the
non-members can't see, hopefully to keep the non-members from being
negatively influenced by all the rules talk.
- It's our Club's website. It should serve the members. It should
also be easy for someone interested in the club to find information on
how to get started, etc. I don't accept that it has to serve members
OR non-members better. It can do both. It should be obvious on the
home page that there is an area for non-members to show them what we
have to offer.
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Question 7. On a scale of 1-5 (5 being fast) how is the speed of the
current
website?
less than one: 4
one: 9
two: 14
three: 5
four: 4
five: 0
Selected comments:
- Is H-Stock a valid answer?
- At roll-out, 0.000001, as it runs now, about 0.5 to 1
- Its no slower than lots of sites on the internet. I.e. it frequently
sucks, but then everything else does as well.
- They should invite TireRack's web team to clean it up. TR's site zips
along.
- For me, especially on dial-up, definitely a one or less. It takes
forever to negotiate this site on dial-up.
- Basically it feels slow no matter what the timings might suggest.
- I'm on cable it's fine. Usually takes me so long to find what I'm
looking for that the time to load the page, or load the wrong page and
go back is insignificant.
- 1 or less, if possible. It takes a full two minutes for the initial
home page to load using my rural, slow dialup line
- I am going to say very slow (2); however, I know that this can be
misinterpreted, so I will qualify that by
saying that once you have the pages cached, it is much faster (4).
Still, that is no excuse for its initial speed. It can be engineered
better, so as to defray even the initial cost of first loading a page.
- Aaaarrggghh.. 0.1. It's the slowest website of any that I frequently
access.
- it was really slow with the old 200 mhz computer, but is fine with
the new one
- I'm on dial-up and the number of images that download with page are
ridiculous. Simplify simplify, simplify. I'm no html expert, but I
think the the rendering speed vs. amount of displayed data is poor in
comparison to other web pages. Something is choking the home page.
- This next item really frosts my shorts. Images, such as navigational
icons that are used repeatedly, have different URLs for different
pages. This causes them to be downloaded all over again as I change
pages. This is grounds for failing website design 101.
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Alan Dahl email:
alandahl@mac.com
Federal Way, WA, USA Yahoo IM: AlanBDahl
http://homepage.mac.com/alandahl ICQ: 52688023
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