Rural Community Gateway

The aim of the survey was to find out more about how people use the Rural Gateway, how people network 'off site' and to gather general comment about the site. The results provide some excellent feedback, with great comments and suggestions.

Norette Ferns, editor of the Rural Gateway said, "We'd like to thank everyone who took part in our recent survey. We were delighted with the postitive response, and we are glad that so many people find the website interesting and informative.

"We also appreciate the many useful suggestions that were made, and hope to follow these up in the near future."

Survey results

Around a third of respondents (32 percent) use the Rural Gateway two or three times a month, while 31 percent only go to the site when prompted by the Rural Update email newsletter.

60 per cent of respondents use the site for their work, 43 per cent for personal use and 42 per cent for community or voluntary work. A small proportion of respondents use the Rural Gateway for school, college or university work.

News is our most popular feature, with 93 per cent of respondents looking at this part of the site. Not surprisingly, the next popular was funding news with 67 per cent, followed by events with 55 per cent.

Almost a quarter of respondents, or their organisations, had featured on the Rural Gateway. Of these respondents, 44 per cent were contacted as a result of featuring on the site.

One organisation who took part in our Your Project feature were contacted by five other organisations and individuals as a direct result of their article on the Gateway. Another respondent, whose organisation took part in our Ask an Expert feature, felt that people had more of an idea of what their organisation does as a result.

Positive feedback

We were delighted with the positive feedback we received.

It keeps me abreast of developments and thinking across the country and is a valuable source of information on rural issues.

It is an important communication tool. The sharing of information and ideas brings people together and helps us understand each other's point of view.

You can download a summary of survey results, and a full list of general comments submitted, from our documents library.

Suggestions

Respondents' comments and suggestions are valuable, and we were pleased with the constructive comment that we received. Look out for follow up to some of your suggestions coming to the site soon.

Newsletters

One respondent commented on the email newsletter and wondered if it could be improved to be easier to read, with links going directly to the website. In January 2007, we launched a new format for our newsletters. You can now choose which format you would prefer - the original plain text version, or the new colour format with links direct to the website.

Many people are still receiving the plain text version, and may not be aware of our new version. If you are receiving the plain text version, but would prefer our updated format all you have to do is go to My Newsletters and select to receive your newsletters in html format.

Archives

We also received a comment about making things easier to find by introducing archives for our regular features. We recently introduced some new archives for features such as Rural Rambling and our photo competition.

Following up the respondent's suggestion, we will introduce archives for Rural Round Up and Rural Jobs Round Up in the near future.

Content

We received some great suggestions for areas of content that could get more coverage on the site. We are particularly keen to follow up the suggestion to have more on rural sport and recreation and will be looking at ways to increase coverage on this topic.

We would also like to get more young people involved with the site, and are currently looking at ways of attracting them to the site.

If you are involved in a coaching, sports or youth project that you would like to feature on the Rural Gateway, particularly in our Your Project feature, please get in touch by emailing editor@ruralgateway.org.uk. Or if you are a young person who would be interested in contributing articles to the site we'd love to hear from you.

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