Sitephocus.com Survey results...

Thanks to all of our subscribers and followers for the input into our recent survey. The results are as follows with responses given (as well as a little commentary). If you have any questions, please feel free to email me directly at cwhitis_at_sitephocus.com.

1. How do you utilize sitephocus.com's photo library?

Presentations 76.9%

Idea generation 76.9%

Reports/ Master Plans 23.1% 3

Other 7.7%

Responses - to see whats out there

2. When we cover a particular site, do you feel our photography has provided an in-depth view of that project/ place?

Yes 83.3%

No 16.7%

Responses –

- Try to get more pictures with people in them. Otherwise, great photos.

- need better quality photography - have you guys had any photographic training - maybe bring in someone like Caroline Allison to make suggestions on technique

- Sometimes the photos are a bit "design heavy"; that is, they show the design, building or space but do not show how people inhabit them. I would like to see more people in the pictures. Not always, but sometimes would be good.

A couple of the responses highlighted the need for photos showing people and how they use the space. Different times and days provide different activity levels and photographic opportunities, but we’ll work to provide more user focus in future updates. While we try and capture spaces being used, we’re also very limited on the amount of time we can spend in a place and still allow us to capture other projects in our focus city. To highlight this, Brian and I headed to St. Louis recently for an action packed day of shooting. In the morning, we hit the New Town at St. Charles TND which didn’t have activity happening in public spaces. Had we been there that evening, maybe the central amphitheater or town center would have been more alive. In contrast, we hit the recently opened CityGarden sculpture park downtown after we left New Town, which was buzzing with visitors.

We also invite the criticism of our work in order to better ourselves and our content for our users and would love to hear more as to what we can improve upon - composition, perspectives, color balance? By no means do we consider ourselves true professional photographers, nor could we devote the hours a pro dedicates to setup, etc. to capture that one shot of a space and still provide a great deal of content covering details within a space.

3. What types of sites that we photograph do you enjoy most?

Urban Development/ Cityscapes 66.7%

Landscape Architecture/ Plazas/ Parks 66.7%

Neighborhood Development (TNDs, conservation developments, single family) 25.0%

Retail/ Lifestyle Center 33.3%

Responses - details and close ups

- all

4. What features would you like to see on sitephocus.com to increase efficiency and productivity while utilizing our site?

slideshow 30.0%

email a friend specific photo links 10.0%

ability to hover over thumbnails for larger view 80.0%

ability to leave comments with tagged photos to communicate in-house 0.0%

responses –

- BETTER SEARCH CAPABILITIES

- open source access

- the daily limit sometimes hinder use. can't get to it every day - would like to be able to download 200 images at once for example and miss a couple days.

- individual picture purchase

- better, more precise searching

We had some great suggestions here and these confirm our line of thinking for future sitephocus.com tools and formats that we’re currently exploring. I’ll try and provide some of our thoughts on each response.

In terms of searching, this provides use with an opportunity to highlight the functionality of searching on sitephocus.com. All keywords we use are industry specific to the design professions, and if there’s ever a specific keyword you’re looking for, let us know and we’ll add it to our list. Terms can vary by region and we want to be as accurate for our searchers as possible without having “keyword overload” that you see on some stock sites.

Say you’re searching for a wood gate. If you type in “wood gate” (no quotations), sitephocus search will pull up any photo that’s been tagged with “wood” or “gate.” So, you may get a wood boardwalk or CorTen steel gate. To search more accurately, simply add + to your search: “+wood +gate” (again, no quotations). This will only bring up images with “wood” and “gate.” There may be a few instances where a photo has those and isn’t a wood gate, but it will drastically filter the unwanted results you might get.

Open-source access has been a goal of ours and we’re currently working out the logistics of how to make that happen. Our vision is to develop an approval process for photos to be added so we can ensure the quality of our content remains high and focused on the design professions. This will also help exponentially expand the content and reach of sitephocus.com for our users as we’re only two guys with so much that we can realistically cover. If you have images and are interested in being a contributor, send us a link to your portfolio, such as a flickr account, so we can see what you have and we’ll have more information for those interested in contributing not long after we roll out the sitephocus.com site updates.

The daily limit we have instituted is by design in order to protect the content of our database. This will be changing slightly when we move to a pay-per-image credit system in the future. While I’m on the pay-per-image subject, our plan is to provide a system that maintains the 1 yr subscription level with unlimited download abilities and for those not looking for the 1 yr level, we’ll be offering a credit option where you can purchase the images you need at the level that fits your budget. We hope to have this in place at the beginning of 2010 along with the survey questions listed above.

5. For our 1 yr subscribers, would a pay-per-image option affect your decision to maintain a 1 yr subscription

(unlimited downloads w/ 1 yr subscription)?

Yes 40.0% No 60.0%

6. As a subscriber, would you be willing to do a testimonial/ blog post for sitephocus.com on our blog, moresitephocus.com?

We’ll be in touch with those who volunteered soon and thank you for the willingness to take time to do that for us!

7. Our last question is less of a question and more of a chance for you to let us know, in your own words, what you think or would like to see on sitephocus.com.

1. Love the site, [firm name omitted] uses this often for presentations images and idea generation. We love the diversity of your images and are always able to find something that inspires our work. Thanks!
2. Need better tagging so that searches can be more targeted
3. a focus on more interesting images/spaces less generic
4. It would be great to have more examples of good suburban development. I know this is hard to find, but oftentimes we need to educate folks on "better" not just "best." Also, I think it would be interesting to have a follies section. Kind of like a "what not to wear" section that shows people what bad design actually is.
5. Slide show, ease of sifting thru search results
6. PHOTOS WITH MORE PEOPLE USING THE SPACE!
7. More images of bad development/examples

Many of these responses were addressed in previous questions, but we’ll also work to do a better job providing images that are more suburban in orientation, as well bad developments. Any leads on places that you’d like to see – good, bad, or ugly – let us know and we’ll get those on a must-see list.

Thanks for taking the time to respond to our survey. It’s been very helpful as we determine our next steps and we’re excited with what lies ahead. Hopefully you will be as well.