Reader Feedback: What I'm Hearing From You

Photo by Miguel Pola Photographers

Isn't it nice to have the blog back to its normal shape and size? The Disney Wedding Awards were fun, but it feels so good to have some breathing room again. Plus, I have to admit that those photos-only posts were starting to drive me crazy. I know I mostly post photos these days, but not having the option to put in text was actually really rough and now I have all these posts saved up to share with everyone!

First, though, I wanted to do a blog business post. This is sort of a big round-up of reader feedback from the past year. It was just about a year ago that I really started putting time into this site to make it something that would be useful and relevant for people planning Disney weddings, while also keeping a lot of the eye candy that we past Disney brides and plain old Disney fans enjoy. I think it's going well, but naturally there's always room for improvement. Which, btw, is where you come in. I have plans to keep improving the site during 2011, but if you feel like I should be going in a different direction I'd really love to know!

I'm actually really lucky that you guys are such a vocal community because you aren't shy about letting me know when you love something or hate something or don't understand why I'm doing something, etc. Still, I thought I'd open up the floor for more comments just to see where you, my reader friends, were at. I'd love to hear back from you, either in the comments (very helpful because we can all share in the conversation!) or, if you're more comfortable, in a private message. Even if you have criticism, please share! If it's constructive, it's really really helpful.

So, here's some of the feedback I've received over the past year and what my plans are:

Real Spotlights

• Of all the feedback I receive, I'd say half has to do with the real wedding/engagement/event spotlights. 

• The biggest question is when I'll get a particular spotlight up. Unfortunately, I usually don't know. I have about one hundred saved up at any given time and although I try to get them out as quickly as possible, there's no way to know when that will be for most. All I can tell you is that I try to mix up the spotlights by location and event type so that they don't all look the same and spotlights from vendors on the Recommended Vendor List are more likely to be up faster than others.

• Initially, I got requests for more spotlights. I really cranked it up and tried to do about five spotlights and two articles per week. However, I'm starting to hear from people who miss the planning articles, DIY projects, and other types of posts, so I might cut back on the spotlights a bit to see if I can find a good balance.

• I do get lots of requests for spotlights that we don't have many of, such as spotlights in certain locations (such as in the parks) or spotlights that feature same-sex couples. Unfortunately, if you aren't seeing much of it on the blog, it's probably because I don't have a spotlight to share. Most of the spotlights that I have saved up are using the same five locations and the more unusual a spotlight is, the more likely it is to pop to the front of the line.

• I have gotten requests for more Spotlight Directories, including directories organized by photo type (family photos, character photos, first dance, etc.) and directories organized by year (2008 weddings, etc.). They are on my to-do list, but they're pretty far down so if you really want to see these directories, let me know and I'll make them more of a priority.

Overall Blog Content

• As I mentioned, I have gotten feedback from people who feel like there are too many spotlights on the site. I'll be trying to weave more planning articles and other types of posts into the content this year.

• Lots of people were having a hard time loading the site until I added the "page jump" feature, which is the link that you have to click on if you want to read the full blog post. I have gotten some feedback from people who are annoyed that the whole post doesn't load automatically on the front of the blog, but I think there's been more of a positive response than a negative one to that change.

• This site started as a budget site and I've gotten more requests from readers for posts on saving up money or making money for the wedding. I don't know that this is something the majority of the community is looking for, but there seems to be a demand, so I'm going to start a weekly round-up of deals and opportunities for people looking to either save money or add to the wedding budget. I'll do it every Friday as part of a weekly update, so look for it at the end of this week.

Reader Community

• Tons of questions and requests to make the community bigger. I love that you guys are so interested in interacting with each other!

• Forums: lots of people want me to add a forum to the site. I've thought about it a lot and almost launched one a few months ago, but I just don't know if it would be a good step. On the one hand, I know many of you from forums and I know tons of people in the community have built strong connections that way. Plus, it's the easiest way to give you guys a voice. That being said, forums invite trouble if they aren't moderated well-enough and I'm not up to that much moderating. However, I am going to add a feature in the next couple of days that will at least add some conversation to the site and I'm working hard on figuring out how to add threaded comments to the blog so you can talk to each other.

• Many of you have used my Facebook wall to throw out general questions to the community and I think that's a great idea. The response time is usually very quick and it's likely that if I don't know the answer, someone else will.

• I would like to share more content from readers and will actually be calling for some brides who are in the planning process to start contributing to the site soon. If you're planning your wedding, you might want to think about whether or not you'd like to be featured regularly on the blog. I'm going to be looking for somewhere from 2-5 great contributors.

Comments

• I started moderating the comments about six months ago when we had a few problems. I know that many of you think comment moderation is a pain because you can't tell if your comment went through right away and you have to wait for me to put it up. I've also gotten complaints from people who feel like I should let people comment without screening them. For now, anyway, that's not an option. I'm actually a little more on the side of people feeling like they should be able to say what they want, but since I'm the one who sees all the comments I can tell you for a fact that there are some downright mean thoughts out there. I'd like to be more fair about it, but ultimately it is my site and I've decreed it a drama-free zone where we're all nice to each other. Enjoy it! There aren't a lot of places like that left on the Internet.

• I would really, really, really like to see more comments from people we don't hear from. I probably get comments every week from the same fifty people, with the occasional wild card thrown in, but there are thousands of people reading this blog. Where are you? Why are you so quiet? If there's something I can do to encourage commenting, please let me know.

• Comments are a great way to talk to each other and, as I mentioned, I'm going to try to add threaded comments so you can reply directly to each other on each blog post. Still haven't figured it out yet though...in the meantime, feel free to engage each other in the comments section.

Email, Twitter, and FB Messages

• I know, I've been really bad about getting back to people. One of my resolutions this year is to stay on top of my communications so that people don't get lost in the shuffle. So far, I'm doing ok, but it's likely that I'll fall back a little, especially after the baby is born. Please don't take it personally! If you haven't heard back from me, it's really likely that your message got lost in a big stack somewhere and I didn't mean to ignore you. That being said, if you've sent me a message and you need to hear back, please give me at least 24 hours before you message me again. I'm often away from my email and coming back to five messages from the same person just makes me slower at getting back to everyone.

• I'm also trying to be better at Twitter...slowly getting there, not there yet...so thank you to people who mention me and retweet my stuff and do all those nice things. I do notice! I just might not notice for a month or so.

• Facebook: I love that you guys use my FB profile so often. However, the only hiccup I've had is when people comment or ask a question on something I posted on my wall a few days ago. Honestly, I'm terrible about scrolling down and checking to see if there are new comments on an old post, so sending me a message or leaving a comment on top of my wall is a better plan.

The Disney Wedding Awards

• I hope most of you had fun with the Awards this year! Although this is the third time we've had an awards program, it's only the second year that we've done the event (both the 2009 and the pre-2009 happened last year), so I'm still figuring out the bugs.

• There were a few complaints this year. Some people felt like anonymous nominations opened up the contest to people who self-nominated over and over to make sure they got in. There were also complaints that the prizes made it too competitive and it stopped being fun. I also got a few suggestions for categories that people wanted to see in the competition.

• If you have any comments on this year's DWAs or suggestions on how to make it better, I'd love to hear them!

Recommended Vendors List

• Most of the feedback I've gotten on the Recommended Vendors List has been coming from vendors, not from readers, and a lot of it has been positive. I'm not sure how many readers are using the lists, but I know many of you have connected with vendors I like, so that makes me happy.

• It's still sort of difficult to get on (and stay on) the list because I'm being very picky about it. So, if you've recommended a vendor you used and you don't know why I haven't listed them, it's not because they're terrible people. I might just not have looked into them yet. If you do have a vendor you'd like to see, feel free to let me (and the vendor!) know so that we can possibly connect. Good wedding vendors are surprisingly hard to find, so if you had a good experience you should definitely share it!

Giveaways

• I was doing a lot of giveaways for a while there and I know that the community enjoyed them, but I ran into tons of problems on my end...the biggest being Etsy sellers who flaked out and didn't end up sending prizes out. I have basically no way to force an Etsy seller to donate a prize, other than to send them irritated emails, so there were a handful of winners this year that I couldn't help out. So disappointing...disappointing enough that I've pretty much stopped doing Etsy giveaways. I may bring them back for special events (like The Disney Wedding Awards or theme weeks such as the one where we built a Welcome Bag) but I don't think I'll be doing a weekly giveaway like I used to.

• I'm also considering doing more giveaways with bigger businesses. I started doing Etsy sellers exclusively because I wanted to support small businesses, but when I was doing giveaways with people like Epson, I didn't have the problem of flaky people not sending out prizes. However, I feel like too many big corproate giveaways might change the site and bring in readers who aren't really here for the weddings. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this!

Meet-Ups and Events

• We were supposed to do a meet-up this year, but I'm having a baby and our event didn't happen. Absolutely no idea when I'll be able to actually organize a meet-up, but one of these days I'd love to see it happen! In the meantime, if you're looking to get together with some people in the community and you want me to spread the word, just ask! This is especially true if you'll be traveling to an event, such as Disney's wedding showcase this March, and you're looking for travel buddies, roommates, dinner company, etc.

The Disney Baby Blog

• The Disney Baby Blog has been up for about a month and many of you have dropped me notes about it. I need to get more organized over there, but if you have content you'd like to share, feel free to drop me an email. I won't talk about that site much over here, though, because the audiences aren't exactly the same. I just wanted to thank you for your support as I try to get the site off the ground and let you know that I'd love to feature photos of your cute kids at Disney!