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In our April newsletter, we asked for your feedback on our online databases, the databases that provide the data and images for your Add Automatically screen.
We created 5 surveys, one for each database, and asked you to rate a list of possible problems, choosing from “Not a problem for me”, “Could be improved” and “Yeah, this sucks!”.

We’re happy that a lot of people took the time to complete these surveys. We received 3,251 responses!
Thank you all for you help!

We have created nice bar charts of the responses we received for all 5 surveys, with orange bars for “Not a problem”, blue bars for “Could be improved” and purple bars for “Yeah, this sucks!”.
Looking at the charts below, we’re happy to see a lot of orange and only small purple areas. It seems that overall, you all are quite happy with the results of our online databases. 🙂
Read on for results in more details, for each of the five online databases.

The “Other” box

BUT: before we discuss the survey results, I just have to get something off my chest:

I just finished reading all the comments in the “Other, please specify” boxes, the boxes we added so that you could notify us of problems that were not listed in the survey.
And I was amazed to see many comments, suggestions and even support questions about our desktop software, the mobile apps and Connect, issues totally unrelated to our online databases. (including lots of suggestions for features that have already been available for years!)

Some examples:

  • I wish your programs would remember the position, height & width from last session.
  • The ‘Find Covers On Line’ feature just does not work. I can choose a cover, but I can never apply it to my collection.
  • I would like to be able to sort by rating, so I could see instantly what G or PG movies I have, etc.
  • how to delete incorrect publishers from the drop down list of options
  • my original book program has been erased. DO I have buy it again and start all over?
  • has problems with windows 7 and I get error messages
  • can’t clone books

Not what I expected at all. Why put that in the “Other” box of a survey? The survey was completely anonymous, so we can’t get back to you on questions typed into the survey. Can you imagine how frustrating it is for us to see many people obviously struggling with questions and problems that are very easy to answer / fix?
I mean, we have so many ways that you can contact us (the Support pages, the forum, Facebook and Twitter) and we always reply quickly, with friendly and helpful answers.

So here’s my request (and suggestion): If you ever run into a problem with our software, if you ever have a question, or if you want to tell us about a suggestion you have:

Please just contact us, so that we can HELP you! 🙂

Ok, with that out of the way, let’s continue:

Online movie database

First, the chart with the response distribution for the preset list of problems:

Interesting results here, because the results from the chart don’t match the feedback we see by email and on the forum. We hear about missing IMDb ratings, no localized plots, badly written english plots, lacking data for TV series and about barcode coverage. So we were expecting those to be the “winners” in the survey.

However, the chart shows the most important problems to be cover images and movies not found. Maybe these problem descriptions were too generic, so many people just voted for them? (everyone must have encountered a missing movie or image. The number of people requesting plots in other languages was soo low that the chart grouped them into “All Other Responses”. Strange…

But still, many people indeed reported the two problems we were expecting to be “popular”: TV Series and IMDb ratings.
The comments in “Other” box gave us some cool new ideas too: pricing, movie posters, trailer links, etc… Great stuff!

Our plans and priorities, based on the survey results:

  • Continue adding more movies, with a focus on “foreign” titles.
  • Work on adding more TV Series and more episode data.
  • Try to find a way to provide IMDb ratings, movie posters and trailer links.
  • Add more plots and titles in other languages. Yes, even though the survey says it isn’t, we still believe this is important, if only to attract more european customers. 🙂
  • Ask our users to submit missing movies. Please… submit missing movies?

Online book database

The chart for the problems listed in the survey:

As expected, you all indicated that the main problem is “books without ISBN”.
We are indeed aware of that problem but it is very hard to solve. I won’t go into the details here, but the main issue here is that without an ISBN there is no way to uniquely identify books (something that is essential when managing a central online database).
Other things that are obviously important to Book Collector users:
Cover images and ISBN coverage (both in general and more specifically: for european books).

Browsing through the entries in the Other box, two things stood out:

  • A number of people still reported that searches were very slow. I was surprised to see that, because we never hear about that anymore. All performance problems should have been fixed with the server upgrade we did a couple of months ago. Were you still referring to the pre-upgrade problems?
    Anyway: if you encounter slow searches: let us know, so that we can fix it!

  • Lots and lots and lots of support questions about the Windows and Mac programs.
    Again: please contact us for help!

Our plans and priorities, based on the survey results:

  • Add more back-end sources for book data, with a focus on european books.
  • Add more and better cover images.
  • Ask our users to submit missing books. Please… submit missing books?

Online music database

The chart:

I was expecting barcode coverage and “classical music” to be the top ones here, because that is what we hear about most in Support. But it turns out that among the total user community these are not the main problems.
What is important? Multi-disc albums (though one) and cover images (of course 🙂 )

In this survey, no extra information from the Other box (most of it was about the desktop software and mobile apps).

Our plans and priorities, based on the survey results:

  • Add more cover images.
  • Ask our users to submit missing CDs. Please… submit missing CDs?

Online comic database

Chart with your ratings:

A few surprises here:
First, that many people are reporting getting “no cover images”. While our stats show that our comic database returns a cover image for most comics downloaded by Comic Collector users, especially since our collaboration with Diamond…
Then, the amount of users reporting incorrect creator and character lists. That is something we rarely hear in Support or on the forum.

From the Other box there was one common suggestion: make it possible to download pricing / current value information. That indeed is the most important feature request we get for Comic Collector.

Our plans and priorities, based on the survey results:

  • Find missing cover images and fill the gaps.
  • Ask our users to submit missing series and comics. Please… submit missing comics?
  • Long term: find some way to deliver pricing / current value information.

Online game database

The problem chart:

Finally, here’s one where the results were more or less what I expected (maybe because I am an avid game collector myself?).
Problem areas that I suspected to be reported (and indeed were): classic games, downloadable games and, as always: cover images.

What I didn’t expect was the low number of users reporting barcode coverage as a problem. Personally I see this as the main thing lacking in our online game database (we simply don’t have a good data source for barcodes). On the other hand, searching by platform and title works so well for games… who needs barcode searching 🙂

There were only 39 responses in the Other field, most of them about Game Collector for Windows…

Our plans and priorities, based on the survey results:

  • Complete our lists of games for the “classic” consoles.
  • Start adding downloadable and mobile games.
  • Ask our users to submit missing games and cover images. Please… submit missing games?