CleanTechnica

Published on June 23rd, 2012 | by Zachary Shahan

CleanTechnica 2012 Reader Survey Results

June 23rd, 2012 by Zachary Shahan

OK, time to finally reveal the results of our 2nd annual CleanTechnica reader survey!

1. What technologies are you most interested in seeing CleanTechnica cover?

Solar is again the leader (same as last year) — no surprise. And wind again comes in second.

This year, Energy Storage shot up to take the #3 spot, knocking Energy Efficiency down to #4 (it tied with Wind for #2 last year). #5 and #6 were EVs and Alternative Fuels, showing pretty strong demand for pieces on those Clean Transportation topics.

More or less, the overall split looks fairly similar to our content split. So, generally, I think we’ll keep doing what we’re doing (and several of the additional comments suggested that). Though, it looks like even a little more of a focus on Solar and Energy Storage may be in order.

2. Which aspects of cleantech are you most interested in?

Other than a strong preference for scientific advancements/news (same as last year), this part was extremely evenly split. Surprising, in my opinion. But, given that we currently cover all of these different arenas a bit, I guess the point is that we should, more or less, just keep doing what we’re doing.

Though, I think we will try to focus a bit more on cleantech science news and see how those posts do. As with #1, these results were quite similar to last year’s, except that the Consumer Options choice became less popular (a surprise to me).

We also had many interesting additional comments/suggestions. Will try to tackle some of those as we can.

3. How would you most like us to cover the topics above?

Another insanely even response (with plenty of additional comments).

Regarding one specific request, the printing of articles: I can try putting some different printing options on here, but I have always found it very easy to just highlight and copy the whole article and paste it into a Google Doc (or Word doc). Whoever added that comment, feel free to let me know if that would work for you.

4. IDEALLY (in a perfect world), how many articles would you like to see CleanTechnica publish in a day?

Luckily, I think the responses in #3 were clarified a bit with answers to this question. Very surprisingly to me, it looks like most readers don’t want us to publish a lot, with almost 80% of respondents wanting 8 articles or fewer published per day.

I think we’ll go ahead and try to satisfy that preference, but it is mighty hard given that there are SO many big cleantech stories every day, and that we have readers interested in a broad range of topics (see above). Also, wanting to remain the top cleantech site in the US, or even the world, it seems we should be the go-to site for all the most important goings on in the industry each day. But… maybe that can just be included in roundup posts?

5. How often do you visit CleanTechnica?

Just interesting to see. Wonder if the folks visiting more than once a day largely represent the minority who said they’d like to see 9+ posts a day.

6. How do you typically visit CleanTechnica?

More or less as expected. Though, I actually thought a little more of you were accessing the site through Google.

7. Are you a professional in the cleantech industry?

Decent percentage of readers actually in the cleantech industry.

8. Where did you first find out about CleanTechnica?

9. How long have you been a reader on CleanTechnica?

Any thoughts?

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Tags: cleantechnica survey, surveys

About the Author

Zachary Shahan spends most of his time here on CleanTechnica as the director/chief editor. Otherwise, he's probably enthusiastically fulfilling his duties as the director/editor of Solar Love, EV Obsession, Planetsave, or Bikocity. Zach is recognized globally as a solar energy, electric car, and wind energy expert. If you would like him to speak at a related conference or event, connect with him via social media. You can connect with Zach on any popular social networking site you like. Links to all of his main social media profiles are on ZacharyShahan.com.

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Sirsparks Electrical

Unfortunately our world is full of nutters!
Origo1

Keep reporting as you are doing curently. I am interested in technology that uses water as a fuel. I have developed two systems for use aboard motor vehicles. One system dissociates water using light and photocatalysts for vehicles with internal combustion engines modified to use hydrogen as a fuel, or vehicles equipped with fuel cells. This would give vehicles unlimited range, since the water is recycled over and over. The other system is a hybrid diesel/steam engine-also giving vehicles unlimited range, using only water as a fuel, which also is recycled.
CleanTechnica articles keep me up to date on the latest advances having to do with hydrogen production, and voltaic cells that harvest infrared as well as visible light.
Currently I am developing an electro-mechanical system for accelerating photosynthesis in vegetable plants, with a view to mitigating world hunger.
Origo
Mike Diethelm

Transparency and auditing are cool things to do. Any chance we can see how cleantechnica.com responded to comments over the last year after receiving them? I realize that it’s your puppy and it is a very amiable one. But i like the idea of commissioning.

What were your choices in the poll? We like you and want to know.

Question 6: It’s my homepage (I’d like this to be an option). And I’d hate to miss your news; I feel honored to be able to read it.
- http://cleantechnica.com/ Zachary Shahan
  
  How we responded to individual comments on posts? Basically, we just respond as appropriate. Maybe I’m misunderstanding this one.
  
  I didn’t actually complete the poll this year. Maybe I should go through it and see where i fall…
  
  damn, it’s sort of hard. for the first one, i want to put: solar, wind, energy efficiency, EVs, and bikes. (maybe i should have actually offered an “All of the Above” option — will do so next year).
  
  #2 — Policy & Consumer Products
  
  #3 — Numerous posts
  
  #4 — 13+
  
  #5 — More than Once a Day
  
  #6 — Directly
  
  #7 — Yes (Cleantech Media)
  
  #8 — another blog or news site
  
  #9 — more than 2 years
  
  that was fun
Hephaestus

After question 7 are you in the clean tech industry you should have asked …
8 Are you in the fossil fuel industry?
- http://cleantechnica.com/ Zachary Shahan
  
  lol. didn’t cross my mind.
Sirsparks Electrical

I agree Zachary is doing an excellent job. I don’t always agree with his thinking but I am always amazed at his daily throughput and the dedication that must require,
wattleberry

A possible explanation of your perplexity on the small Google route could be some ambiguity in the choice. For instance, I always seek your site directly as an i Google gadget.
Luke

It’s neat to see a blog/news site actually publish the results of a reader survey to the public, openly, for all to see!

I think you’re doing great, Zachary – I always check back in once or twice a day and read the latest news. It’s freshest right here!

On a few unrelated notes:

Something I would like to see in the future would be a redesigned homepage (a la TreeHugger) where articles could be classified more specifically and there’d be “most read”, “most commented”, “in depth” sections/divs, etc.

Also, perhaps widen the page width a bit? I know it’s a goal to support legacy monitors, but I’d hazard a guess that most visitors to this site would have larger than normal monitors (technology-based websites seem to). But that’s for you to decide and I assume you have under-the-hood analytics/statistics about your web visitors that you can refer to.

(Under monitor size, whenever you see 3840×1080 / 1920×1080 – that’s me :D).

Apart from my suggestions – keep it up! I love this place…
- http://cleantechnica.com/ Zachary Shahan
  
  thanks a lot. appreciate it.
  
  i’m all about being open. and really greatly appreciate all the feedback i’ve gotten from readers over the years.
  
  will see what we can do about ‘most popular’ and ‘most commented’, and have something else in the works at the moment. not sure when we’ll be able to get a whole new custom theme, and nothing non-custom seems to make the cut.
  
  i’ve discussed a wider main area a lot with folks, but feel that we still have too many people reading on smaller screens. that’s why i stuck that ‘how to enlarge the page tip in the left sidebar’ — i view the site enlarged myself. and Chrome is nice enough to remember the size for me.
  that previous theme we tried had auto-resizing options, but people weren’t very into it.may just go ahead and widen the page anyway soon… we’ll see.
  - Ross
    
    Another vote here for most popular/commented.
    
    I’d like a anti-renewable energy myth debunking section.Screen size varies but 2560×1440 most of the time.
    - http://cleantechnica.com/ Zachary Shahan
      
      sounds like a great category on the Solar Facts & Wind Facts pages.