The SpoilerTV 2015 Reader Survey - The RESULTS Posted

Hey all,

Recently we asked our readers to complete a simple survey to help us better understand our readers and what features we could look to improve. We have received over 230+ replies which is awesome. Thank you to everyone who took the time to fill out the survey.

These annual surveys REALLY DO help us here are SpoilerTV to improve the site and focus on the features that people want.

I personally read every single survey form that you post.

So lets dive into a selection of the Findings. We're be using the same section headers as last year.

Self-Praise Section

We've been overwhelmed by how much positive feedback we got. Below are just a small sample of some of the great comments.

I love the site so much.
Thank you for your efforts!
Just that U are doing a great job and it's a pleasure to comeback everyday and discuss everything U post.
You are the best!!! :)
Thank you for the awesome site and all the work you put into in. Your work really shows. :)
thank you for such a great site
"Whenever there are updates on other websites (like google or tumblr) it's often met with a lot of groaning and complaining because the format is all screwed up and things are harder to find. But here, the updates are always so great and only help to make the website easier to use, more streamline, and more aesthetic.
You're doing a great job! Keep it up!"
You are wonderful, patient and helpful, always very quick if we have questions. Thank you for everything.
this is great site
You guys do a wonderful job and I'm very grateful for it
You guys are beating many major TV spoilers websites, hope you'll continue the great work.
This is amazing site! Guys, you are awesome!
Keep up the great work. You all ROCK!


Ok with that back patting out of the way lets look into some of the specifics.

What is the favourite thing you like about SpoilerTV?

We had a vast amount of differing opinion which is great because it means that we're catering to a large audience and making them happy.

Here is just a selection of the things you like most about SpoilerTV.

The total coverage and great community of readers/commentators
Provides news about favorite TV shows as soon as it is released. All TV show news available at one place.
I like episode previews and new information about upcoming shows
The yearly competitions.
Stv plus database
Open discussion with all the members.
I like being able to discuss my shows with other fans. I think everyone here is respectful of others.
The friendly discussions
What did you think of polls
Constant updates. Usually one the first to posts ratings and renewal/cancellation news.
The accessibility, particularly with the browser extension.
I love the ease at finding information
Detailed ratings news
The quick updates and vast selection of shows/movies
The community, by far. People here are respectful and are allowed to disagree as long as they keep it polite, and if things ever scalate, there is always someone from the crew ready to step in and put things back to order to avoid conflict or disrespectful comments
Very professional and friendly team, always delivering TV news quickly.
Cancellation Predictor and Daily Ratings.
"The friendly and respectful vibe of the site and comments.
Also that you guys try so hard to maintain that.

And the constant updates and being on top of all the news"
The comment section and constant moderation.
"1. Diversity - I'm no expert but it seems to me that you cover every tv series imaginable.

2. Adaptability - as far as I can tell you react to your readers' requests in no time at all. "
Press releases, Promos, Photos for every show.



Again, that was just a sample of the comments we got. They gave us a nice warm feel and gives us great encouragement going forward that we're doing things right.

What ONE thing do you dislike about SpoilerTV

Ok, like everything in life we're not perfect. And that's why we like to ask the hard questions about what we're doing wrong. We take this very seriously as this is your site as much as it is ours. You're the ones at the end of the day using it.

I was very pleased to see that the majority of people simply put "Nothing", or "Perfect the way it is" type comments for this section which was nice to see :) My favourite comment was

"Honestly? Nothing. I love this site. I realize that's totally unhelpful – sorry."

But we did get some great feedback about certain things that I'll try to cover below. This is not all of them but it covers the majority of the popular complaints. These will be split by section.


Comments

There were a few complaints about the comments. Unfortunately these are actually out of our control as they are run by an external company called Disqus. You would need to contact their support team here if you are having specific issues.


Ads on the Videos

Everyone hates ads, myself included, but they are the only way a site like SpoilerTV can exist. They pay for the huge bandwidth and storage space we eat up for the videos. We try our best to provide Region-Free videos so that everyone can enjoy not just those from a particular country. This unfortunately costs time and money and the ads you see before a video pay for that privilege.

People also ask why we can't use YouTube. We've already over the years tried YouTube, it too has ads, and they delete our accounts. Using our own Video Player we can control much better what is posted and they can't delete our account.

We will be looking at ways we can improve our current video player over the next few months.


Trolls

We take our community very seriously and it's one of the things we want to get right. If you think someone is trolling or spamming, simply report the comment using the Flag option next to the comment and we will take action. We want the comments to be as friendly and welcoming as possible.


Android App

Several People ask if the Android App could be improved so that they could select only the show(s) that they want. We hope to have this feature available by the end of the year.


Cleaner Homepage

A number of people asked if they could hide/disable the sidebar. This feature has now been implemented and is available in the Configure the Site section. You can read about it here.


Cancelled Shows

Several people asked if we could improve how they can search for cancelled shows. We've recently added a drop-down for cancelled shows and moving forward all cancelled shows will appear in this dropdown. You can read about it here.


Spoilers in Headings

Despite being a Spoiler site we understand that not everyone can watch the latest episode of their shows at the same time as others. We will do our very best to make sure we don't reveal any big spoilers in the Article Heading. If you think there is an unnecessary spoiler in an article heading please let us know by emailing us.


Misc Items

- The ratings table for each night, I don't understand what the 18-49s mean (Answer: Check out the Ratings FAQ from the menu or via this link)
- How multiple people cannot vote from the same household (Answer: This is to stop cheating in our polls)
- All the shows should get a favourite scene poll please, instead of just some. (Answer: Every show gets a premiere and finale poll, if a show does not get enough votes/comments then we stop doing polls for those shows)
- Too much shows i dont like. (Answer: Try using the SpoilerTV Dashboard www.stvplus.com where you can setup your favorites)
- Repetitive USDs on certain shows (e.g. Revenge, OUAT) (Answer: These are user submitted and randomly picked. Submit some of your own to improve the chances of a poll that you'll be interested in being posted)
- how many year have the show been on (Answer: You can already see that in the Episode Database www.stvplus.com


There were also a number of items that people did not provide enough detail on. If one of these are yours please use the Feedback Forms to send us detailed suggestions.

Below are some of the items that unfortunately we can't act on as they were not detailed enough.

- I find the site a bit messy. I think the stucture could be improved (How?)
- Lack of completely in the polls. (Don't understand)
- Some of the posts seem unnecessary (Which ones and why?)
- They are a bit short,15 sec.is not much.... (What are?)
- The search box rarely finds what I am looking for. (Can you provide some examples etc)
- Separate database with ratings/ articles for cancelled shows (Not sure I understand. All Cancelled shows are already in the Episode/Ratings Database)
- Avatar section (No idea sorry)
- Music in some episodes (No idea sorry)

Some people had obvious support issues. If you ever have any issues with the site just email us at support@spoilertv.com and we'll get you up and running.

- sometimes it crashes my computer
- I'm never able to leave a comment on the site, log in errors out.
- sometimes the video player doesn't work
- sometimes hard to navigate

The Site Owner Dilemma

Being the site owner it's always a VERY hard balancing act between adding more features, maintaining levels of coverage, site speed, costs, technical capabilities etc.

This is why we ask you want you like, dislike and would like to see.

Here are a couple of examples of the problem we sometimes face. These are real comments from the Survey

What ONE thing do you dislike about SpoilerTV

what are you watching tonight....?
Too Much Movie news
The emphasis on The CW shows
Heavily moderated comments section, clearly biased moderators.
Too many polls


What's your favourite thing about the SpoilerTV/ New Feature Requests

The Daily What are You Watching polls
The Movie News
Great coverage of my favourite CW shows
The great moderation and friendlyness of the comments
more polls

As you can see 2 sets of totally opposing views. I've always been of the opinion that we would rather have something on the site like "More Sneak Peeks" rather than less. It's easier for someone just to ignore something rather than not posting the info for those that do. That is our philosophy.

IF you could add ONE NEW feature to SpoilerTV what would it be?

Lots of great ideas here, some of them we've already implemented or already have available. Some are not practically possible. Below is a run down of some of the items posted. It's not all of them just some.

Note: Most people simply put None, Perfect, or "Can't think of anything" etc


fullHD video
We always post at the highest resolution that we have been given. You can click on the HD icon on our video player to play the video in HD where available.

Hiding comments for certain users
As mentioned earlier, you would need to contact Disqus to suggest that feature.

Regular cancellation prediction updates
These are already updated daily. We can't update anymore than that :)

Better layout of the articles
If you can provide some examples we would be happy to look into them.

larger number of shows with their own Twitter notifications
We can only realistically manage so many. We already have 50. When shows end or are cancelled they make room for new ones to be created.

A Full Ratings Table Archive of previous years
Not quite sure what you mean but we have full historical ratings of all shows and episodes in the ratings database.

The option to view only information about shows I'm interested in on the main page.
This is not possible with the server/software platform we run on. However this is available in STV+

What did you think poll/discussion for popular movies.
We will be doing this in the future for some of the large blockbuster movies that we cover.

Mobile version of the site
We already do :) m.spoilertv.com

A site-wide RSS feed
We already do :) It's in the Help section as well as in the menu in the Social Section. See this link for all our RSS Feeds.

Pictures of the people being cast put in the post about the casting news would be nice to see. Saves me from google :)
Where possible we try to. However, we already recently added a new feature that should help. Just highlight the name of the person you are interested in and then click the little popup. See this link for more details.

A Promos button so that they're easier to find
Best to use www.stvplus.com for this. You can find any promo, sneak peek for any show and any episode.

Add the ability to block or ignore specific users.
You would need to contact Disqus support and suggest it to them. The comments system is out of our control sorry.

Bring back the downvote count
See above.

Live Episode Discussion
We will see next season what we can try to do in this area.

What ONE show that we don't currently cover would you like to see added?

This section surprised me the most. I thought there would be one show that we missed, or overlooked but there were very few entries in the this box. Some were

The Royals
State of Affairs (We already cover that doh!)
Pretty Little Liars (We already cover that double doh!)
Please Like Me

There were however some generic entries.

More BBC/UK Shows
Animation
Canadian Shows
etc

We do try to add new shows all the time but it's a juggling act of if we can find people to cover it, have access to information/spoilers etc and if there is enough interest in it.

And finally, a number of people suggested reality, competition and other non-scripted shows.

We will NEVER cover these types of shows ever. I personally hate them with a passion and is one of the reasons I started SpoilerTV so that we can focus on scripted dramas. There are plenty of other sites that cater for those shows, SpoilerTV will not be one of them :)

Right then, onto the stats for those that like this sort of thing.

Stats Breakdown

Top 5 Most Popular New Shows

The Flash
How to Get Away With Murder
Outlander
iZombie
Agent Carter


Top 5 Most Anticipated Shows for Next Season

Legends of Tomorrow
Quantico
Supergirl
Blindspot
Scream Queens


Click the images below to enlarge them if necessary.

What we've learned

Some of the things that we've taken away from these results.

1) Overall we're doing a good job, but like anything we have to a) keep our standards high and b) keep on improving
2) It's great to see that so many people have been visiting the site for years as well as attracting new fans.
3) People visit the site multiple times a day which is great. We need to ensure that we have something new and interesting for them each time
4) Looking at the breakdown of how many shows people are interested in, over 80% of our readers follow 5 or more shows. We need to ensure that we continue to cover as many shows as we can practically.
5) Facebook and Twitter are by far the 2 biggest Social Media sites that our users use.
6) We're pleased that compared to last year (43%) our readers share our content more this year (54%)
7) Nearly 20% of you have used our Chrome Extension compared to 17% last year
8) Mobile use rose from 71% last year to 82% this year
9) The Android App has also increased from 18% to 22.3%
10) The Episode and Ratings Database increased from 35% to over 38%
11) More people are using their own banners on the site
12) More people are using one of the different themes on the site
13) The Email Subscription Notifcations have increased from 9% to over 14%
14) Search box usage is up from 62% to over 73%

Thanks once again to everyone who filled out the survey, it is REALLY appreciated and it's the best way that you can help us make the site even better for you.

We hope you enjoyed reading the results and if you have any questions please don't hesitate in asking in the comments below.

And remember you don't need to wait until next years Survey to submit any ideas/suggestions/bugs to us. There is a feedback link at the footer of the site as well as in the menu at the top where you can submit feedback at any time.