From the CTO: Website Survey Results
Thank you to all 89 clubs who filled out the CIO Website Survey!
The $25 Starbucks/Chipotle gift card winners are, *drumroll*:
The American Parliamentary Debate Association (APDA) and The Latino Student Alliance (LSA). Congrats!
I got valuable information out of the survey that will help Student Council better serve your tech needs. The results of the survey were difficult to interpret however, because as much as we love all of you, some of you are n00bs (11 identified, hehe) and so there was inconsistency between answers in an individual response, therefore it is difficult to draw direct conclusions based on the responses. Some also wrote in answers describing an option that was listed. So take the percentages with a grain of salt. I have tried my best to understand what you were trying to say, but part of why we wanted to do the survey was also to figure out how much technical knowledge students have to determine how well they are able to use the services we provide. So think of it as your voice, cat on the keyboard, our vision.
Look, A Graph!
N=89. *Not To Scale* MoE +/- 133.7%
Frequency of Update
Cool, but “Evently” is not a thing.
How often would you like to update?
| More often | 55 | 61.80% |
| About the same | 34 | 38.20% |
| Less often | 0 | 0.00% |
Hmm, this is surprising. I would have thought at least someone would want to be lazy.
Services Used:
Lots of confusion here. Everybody uses some combination of HTML/PHP/CSS, so that should have been checked by all 89 clubs. All websites are built on this code to some degree.
Platform Used:
A lot of the idk was from people who had their own HTML code or were using WordPress and didn’t know it was WordPress…
Media Used:
Text should be 100%…. srsly u guys.
Target Audience:
Makes sense. But I don’t know why a website wouldn’t be used for club members.
Hosting Service:
What surprises me here is the degree of certainty. I think this is the technically hardest question on the survey. Although many people said they had outside hosting when they really just had a separate URL. Others checked WordPress.com when they used WordPress installed on our server. And others said they were hosted by the Student Council Server when they were actually being served by another service at UVA – mostly for people connected with Darden or a particular department.
Social Media Sites Used:
A few groups said all they needed was Facebook.
Webmaster:
This surprises me some because many clubs approach me and say we don’t have a webmaster, but we used to, and they graduated, and I need to update. But I’m glad most of the web design is being done by students.
Recommendations:
I went through each response to determine what each club’s needs were and most people would be better off moving to WordPress or a similar page. Some are already on WordPress so transferring their site will be simple. A few clubs seemed to get by just fine without a website, although I think they would also benefit from a WordPress page even if they rarely update it.
Issues and Requests:
| Transition issues | 6 |
| Best Practices for FB/Twitter | 5 |
| Workshops | 4 |
| Social Media is sufficient | 4 |
| Getting Traffic | 3 |
| Wants to learn wordpress | 2 |
| Tutorials | 2 |
| Permission issues | 2 |
| Consultant | 2 |
| Wants support person | 1 |
| Wants redirect | 1 |
| Wants money | 1 |
| Wants SEO | 1 |
| Wants fully writeable 777 access | 1 |
| n00b | 11 |
I compiled most of the identifiable requests, comments, and issues I saw listed. As expected, many people have trouble with permissions and access to their website when alumni graduate. Some groups want to step up their social media use or switch to only or mostly Facebook/Twitter. Many asked for learning materials in the form of tutorials, best-practices, and workshops. Some asked Studco to make their website for them. One group asked for cash. Another group asked for fully writeable 777 permission, which interestingly nearly caused the server to melt yesterday. (No srsly, the downtime was due to a couple sites being hacked because they were left globally writeable… it had to be shut down or it would have overheated.) We will definitely work on the resources that were requested. Expect to see emails coming out after Spring break to notify you when they become available.
Questions: studco-cto@virginia.edu