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 330+ replies which is awesome and also our most ever recorded. 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 is submissted.
So lets dive into a selection of the Findings. We're be using the same section headers as last year and a number of areas are very similar.
Self-Praise Section
We've been overwhelmed by how much positive feedback we got. Below are just an extremely small sample of some of the great comments.
You are awesome! Thank you for your hard work.!!!
I love how quickly news is posted.
Great community, a lot of news
thank you for being my number 1 go-to website when it comes to information about tv shows (: you guys rock! keep doing what you're doing!!
I love this site and I think you are doing a great job. I hope you never change its rules.
Keep being awesome!
Everything, but mostly love that the discussions on the comments section are usually respectful, not full of insults like most sites.
Thanks for a great, smoothly run site with lots of new on TV.
Your site is amazingly complete! I love it! Keep going!
I love this place! Thank you guys for putting all the work and keeping us informed and up to date with all the latest TV developments, and maintaining such a lovely friendly and welcoming community of TV lovers!
Love this site - look here first or second for info. Thanks!
Comments! Very civil, great community
Thx for doing such an amazing job!
Well done, overall it's a fantastic site
My favorite website to check out the latest news and spoilers of my favorite TV shows. The team at STV are the best, keep up the great work.
Love you guys - haven't commented in years, but always lurking. Keep up the great work!
Excellent ratings coverage/charts and approachable staff (sorry, couldn't stick to one thing)
Keep up the excellent work.
Fastest place to find tv news
STV has come a long way in the 6 years i've been here. I would like to congratulate all the volunteers that work so hard in making STV what it is. Mostly i would like to thank Andy for starting this fabulous site. Last but not least to the commenters, the regular ( or old timers i like to refer to them by,me included!) commenters that have basically been here from the beginning. I say bravo! Bravo to us all as i stand here clapping wildly!!
This site has done a fantastic job! Keep up the good work :D
You guys are awesome! Thanks for all you do.
Great job! My go-to website when it comes to episode titles and descriptions and ratings
Just keep up the good work You're a wonderful team (a French fan)
Keep up your good work. You guys are truly the best site, hands down!
You guys are doing a great job!
Thanks for having this wonderful site. It's an easy access to all things related to TV series and movies. You are all awesome! :)
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.
I love how quickly news is posted.
up-to-date info in one place
Fast daily ratings news
Great community, a lot of news
Disqus comments
Able to find info on all my shows in one place.
No articles with spoiler pictures or headings, you can feel yourself safe from spoilers while visiting the site
Spoiled without ruining the show
I love discussing my tv shows with other viewers.
The variety of information on my favorite shows: posters, reviews, polls, etc
The people and the strict rules. It's nice to have a site about tv shows that does NOT want posters fighting and attacking each other all the time. 90% of the posters are usually nice and respectful. Also you cover a lot of tv shows including more obscure shows like From Dusk Till Dawn and UK shows.
so much information about so many shows in one place
Chrome Extension
Discussing shows with other people
It's usually the first site to post important news.
Promo's and community
The Character Cup
As I live in Britain it's a way to find out about the US shows I enjoy.
the total information about each series- it is very complete and easy to use
I like the ease of accessing everything I'm interested in all in one place and how the information is provided in a nice streamlined fashion (ie. ratings tables, tags for shows/articles, cancellation & renewal indexes, etc)
The fast and devoted crew
Range of content for hundreds of shows
The ability to quickly find all content related to a single show through the tag system.
The attention to detail when it comes to the site's content, the respectful vibe, and generally the people. Generally the fact that is a safe place for someone to induldge in their TV obsessions with a likeminded group.
Covers shows press releases
Giving a choice whether or not to look at a spoiler article
All information about shows in one place
The Contests
Polls
Ratings and episodes discussions
News about pilots and trailers
Videos available for all countries
cancellation predictor
Your reactivity and responsiveness.
Sneak peeks/promo videos
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 :)
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 suggestions 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.
The most common complaint here was that there is not a BLOCK option to hide certain posters. Again you would need to contact Disqus and ask them if they are planning to add this feature.
We have also left feedback for Disqus asking them for this option.
Videos Player and Ads on Video
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.
Last year based on the Feedback of our old video player we've gone with a new company, Playwire, and the number of issues/complaints has drastically reduced. Having said that, there are are still some people who have issues.
We will be working with Playwire to try an improve the video experience even more over the coming weeks/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.
The majority of the feedback was extremely positive in terms of our community, but we know that a few rotten apples can spoil it for everyone. If you see someone trolling, please use the Flag button/link on their comment and our moderation team will deal with it.
iOS APP
We will be looking to see what is possible to bring an iOS app out. Last time we looked it was extremely expensive.
Cleaner Homepage / Show Filters
A number of people asked they could filter posts/news based on shows that they they choose, or by only showing promos, photos etc.
This is not possible with the main site but this is available in www.stvplus.com. It allows you pick the show(s) that you only want to see and it allows you to additionally filter the type of posts.
Mobile Site
A number of people would like a better and more colorful, visually appealing mobile version of the site.
We're currently doing an internal project to come up with some cool things for mobile, so watch this space!
iOS Table Issues
Some iOS uses have issue reading the ratings tables. This is something we're working on but a lot of it is out of our hands as it's a known issue with iOS, Google and Embedded Spreadsheet.
You can long press the tab on the spreadsheet and open it full screen.
Update: We believe we have now fixed this. This fix has been implemented on the Summer Ratings Thread and will be added to any future ratings posts.
Reality Shows
A few (misguided :) ) 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 :)
Searching
We'll be looking at how we can further improve our search capabilitues.
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)
- Arbitrary decisions to not post things (interviews, pictures, etc.) (We get 100's of submissions a day and can't possible post all news/items. The site would be flooded. We look at each submission and decide as a team if the item is worth posting). We believe that we're doing a pretty good job here. If you disagree, please feel free to email me.
- The same shows always win in polls (Not sure what you want us to do about that)
- Moderators are too sensitive ( We would rather be too sensitive than running the risk of ruining the great community we have here)
- the amount of polls. too many (Polls are one of the most popular things on SpoilerTV. It's easier to just ignore posts you don't want to read) ie don't click on them, or better still use STV Plus where you can filter them out
- Too much movie news (Movies account for less that 0.2% of all posts on SpoilerTV. Like the above, just ignore them if you're not interested, or better still use STV Plus where you can filter them out)
- Background color (Use the Site Config to set it to any color you like)
- i wish to see news about MY shows only (Use STV Plus)
- inability to filter the newsfeed the way I'd prefer (Use STV Plus)
- Not anything on reality competitions (See above)
- How I'm blocked from making comments by Disqus ( Email us and we'll investigate)
- Too much censorship (We don't censor anything apart from trolls, spammers, racists etc)
- video not available in your location - Over 98% of the vides we post are region free. Sometimes we simply cannot get a region free version
- Not enough updates or not enough articles per day (Not sure what we can do about that? We don't want to start inventing news ;) )
- Shows should be tagged per network. I follow a lot of ABC shows, so I wish I could find everything ABC on a single tag, but I have to search every specif show. (Not something we can do on the site, but you can on STV Plus)
- needing to log in to write (Without that ability we would be flooded by trolls and spammers. You only need to login once and when you return you'll be automatically logged in)
- You have to go to a different page to view pictures. (Sorry but we have over 250,000 images that have to be housed on an external server. Nothing we can do about that I'm afraid)
- I don't always get notified when I get an answer to a comment I've made. (You would need to contact Disqus support)
- not enough polls (Ha some say too many, some say not enough.. can't win ;) )
- The "Waiting To Be Approved" spam thing (Contact Disqus support)
- Understanding the racing system (I assume you mean Rating System :) See this FAQ http://www.spoilertv.com/2013/10/renewals-and-cancellations-decisions.html
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.
- Too many e-mails (where and when?)
- Biased comunity (Biased how?)
- Not enough new shows are covered by polls or articles (Which shows? Which articles? Which polls?)
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.
And as I've repeated MANY times above use STVPlus to filter out news that you don't want. That's one of the reasons we built it ;)
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.
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.
Bring back the downvote count
You would need to contact disqus
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
Saving Hope (Already covered)
The Royals (Already covered)
Rick & Morty
You Me Her
Powers (Already covered)
Heartland
Degrassi: Next Class
The odd couple (Already covered)
Peaky Blinders
Portlandia
Bojack Horseman
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.
Right then, onto the stats for those that like this sort of thing.
Stats Breakdown
Top 5 Most Popular New Shows last season
Supergirl
Lucifer
Limitless
Quantico
Blindspot
Top 5 Most Anticipated Shows for Next Season
Designated Survivor
Riverdale
Conviction
Timeless
This Is Us
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 pretty good job, but like anything we have to a) keep our standards high and b) keep on improving
2) There are a number of areas that I personally would like to see improve over the upcoming weeks/months
- Mobile Site
- Video Player
- Loading Speed
3) More people are using more different devices and we need to cater for as many of those as possible. ie Mobile, Tablets, Desktop, Laptops
4) The sheer variety of shows that people like. We'll be looking to add more writers and try to provide better coverage of the "smaller" shows. We already cover the smaller shows more than a lot of the so-called big sites but we think we can do even better.
5) And most important of all, people care and are passionate enough about SpoilerTV to take the time to provide all this quality feedback.
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.
