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Every year, DPRP uses the opportunity of the annual readers poll to ask their visitors what they
think about the pages, how they rate them and what could be improved.
This part of the DPRPoll Results looks into that evaluation by the participants.
Visits per Month
The average DPRP visitor comes to the page 9.7 times per month, which is a significant increase
compared to last years 6.7 times. Most people visit DPRP one to twenty times per month, but there
are also people who visit the pages daily or even more times during one day !
The major cause for the increase in visits would probably be the introduction of the DPRP Update
mailing list in March.
Rating of DPRP
We asked the participants to give an overall rating to DPRP on a scale from one (very bad) to
ten (excellent). On average, the pages got a rating of 8.4, which is slightly higher than last
years 8.3, of which we were already very proud.
A big majority of the people (75%) thought that DPRP has improved during 1999. See the table
below. One of the three people who claimed that the pages are worse then they used to be added
the following remark: 'You're too much prog-rock oriented'. Errr .... okay, say no more. ;-)
| Change ? |
Participants |
Percentage |
| It has improved a lot ! |
207 |
39.0% |
| It has improved a bit |
190 |
35.8% |
|
No Opinion |
84 |
15.8% |
| It stayed the same |
47 |
8.9% |
| It's worse than it used to be |
3 |
0.6% |
Evaluation of the Various Sub-Pages
Besides an overall rating for DPRP we also asked the participants to tell us which sub-pages
they visit on a regular basis and to give a rating to those pages. The results can be found in
the table below.
This table includes the percentage of participants that visited the page in 1998 and 1999 and
the average rating the page got in 1998 and 1999.
| Page |
Visitors 98 |
Visitors 99 |
Rating 98 |
Rating 99 |
| News |
79.4% |
84.0% |
8.3 |
8.0 |
| CD Reviews |
69.5% |
77.6% |
8.0 |
8.3 |
| Releases |
60.9% |
54.7% |
7.9 |
7.8 |
| Band Pages |
55.1% |
52.1% |
8.2 |
8.2 |
| Counting Out Time |
N/A |
50.8% |
N/A |
8.9 |
| Prog Links |
43.4% |
48.7% |
8.2 |
8.3 |
| CDelight |
38.5% |
44.7% |
7.8 |
7.9 |
| Concert Reviews |
44.6% |
42.8% |
7.8 |
7.8 |
| Art Corner |
N/A |
28.0% |
N/A |
8.0 |
| NL Gigs |
31.4% |
26.5% |
8.3 |
8.2 |
| World Gigs |
27.1% |
24.1% |
7.7 |
7.2 |
| Specials |
19.7% |
20.5% |
7.6 |
7.9 |
| Vision Pit |
N/A |
13.5% |
N/A |
7.8 |
| UK Gigs |
12.6% |
10.5% |
7.3 |
7.0 |
| Forum |
6.8% |
6.8% |
6.9 |
6.9 |
| DPRS |
11.7% |
4.7% |
7.5 |
7.3 |
I think we can easily claim that out 1999 Prog History column Counting Out Time was a great
success. Half of the visitors came to the CoT pages and rated it with an amazing 8.9 !
Favourite Band Page
More than half of the participants (52%) regularly visit the band pages, and the
overall rating for these pages is very good (8.2). Now let's have a look at which band pages
are most popular.
| Band Page |
Votes |
% Visitors |
| IQ (Lush Attic) |
149 |
28.1% |
| Arena (The Cage) |
117 |
22.0% |
| Spock's Beard (Gibberish) |
86 |
16.2% |
| No Specific Page |
37 |
7.0% |
| Pallas |
31 |
5.8% |
| Jadis |
15 |
2.8% |
| Landmarq |
13 |
2.4% |
| Wolverine |
11 |
2.1% |
| Twelfth Night |
10 |
1.9% |
| Threshold |
8 |
1.5% |
| Treasure Land |
3 |
0.6% |
| Forever Times |
3 |
0.6% |
| Chinawhite |
2 |
0.4% |
| Helreidh |
1 |
0.2% |
| Monolith |
1 |
0.2% |
| Triangle |
1 |
0.2% |
| Karibow |
1 |
0.2% |
Last Year's Wish List
Last year we asked the participants what should be improved or changed abut DPRP. The most mentioned
remarks were:
- More Sound Bites (& different media) (mentioned 15x)
- More (frequent) Reviews (15x)
- Improve Lay-Out/Design (13x)
- More up-to-date pages/regular updates (6x)
We haven't (re-)introduced Sound files again in 1999, mainly because the copyright
protection organisation Buma Stemra is witch hunting web sites with sound files and forcing
them to pay monthly charges for them. As a non-profit 'organisation' of volunteers DPRP is
not able or willing to do that.
As far as reviews are concerned, I don't think we did bad in 1999. Last year we reviewed no less
than 160 albums. That's an average of more than 13 per month. We hope to increase that number
even further in 2000.
The Lay-Out and Design of the DPRP pages got a complete facelift around this time last year.
With the help of graphic artist Mattias Noren we got the quality look we deserved, including
some page specific logos.
Finally, 1999 probably saw the most updates ever. Those of you who joined the DPRP Update
list know that we do several updates a week, sometimes even more in one day. Some sections
which could however have been updated a bit more frequently in 1999 were the UK and World Gigs,
News and Releases pages. Don't worry, we're working on that.
Improving DPRP
This year the participants in the DPRPoll 1999 mentioned the following things most often as
potential areas for improvement.
- News Page: updated every week/more regularly (mentioned 39x)
- More (frequent) CD Reviews (32x)
- Releases page: More frequent updates (21x)
- Loads too slowly (new layout/grafics) (10x)
- Sound Samples (MP3) / Samples with reviews (10x)
We agree that the News and Releases pages have not been updated as often as we would have
wanted them to be. We hope we can do a better job in 2000.
As far as reviews is concerned, 160 albums in one year is not too bad, as far as we are
concerned. We do understand that you want more of this popular column though. We do hope to
increase last years average of 13 per month. In January we already succeeded in publishing
46 reviews. However, do understand that writing a good review is an extremely time-consuming
activity and we also depend on what promo material we receive from bands.
The number of complaints we had from people that say that the pages load too slowly are
fortunately small in number. We know that Netscape has more problems with this than Internet
Explorer does. It is caused by the tables that are used in the lay out. Since the large
majority of the visitors uses Internet Explorer and since people seem to like the 'new'
lay out, we are not considering changing it. Sorry, we can't please everybody everytime.
Sound samples have already been explained in the previous section. As far as samples with the
reviews are concerned, we will not do that. However, we often include links to the band's
homepage, where you will normally be able to find sound samples.
Some of the other remarks that were made will soon be discussed in a DPRP feedback special.
Click here if you want to return to the DPRPoll index.
You can also check out what the DPRP Team voted for themselves.
Click here if you also want to see the list of prizes and winners.
For comments about the poll, please e-mail Ed Sander.
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