Survey results: Does the website need an upgrade?

This article highlights the results of sportanddev’s community consultation exercise, focusing on how the website can better serve its users.

The International Platform on Sport and Development (sportanddev) launched a survey in May 2020 to ask members of the community what they would like to see in a new or upgraded website. The specific focus of the survey was how the existing website could be improved and what should be prioritised in a new website.

About survey participants

Of all respondents, 47% identified as male and 44% as female. Compared to our 2019 annual survey results (50%:49%), this is relatively consistent with a slightly higher proportion of male respondents

The majority of respondents were aged 31-40 (33%), again consistent with our 2019 annual survey results as the highest responding age group (36%). Of the remaining respondents, 23% were aged 21-30, 16% were 41-50, 12% were 51-60, and 6% were 61 or above.

Respondents were primarily based in Europe (52%), followed by North America and Sub-Saharan Africa (13% each), Oceania and Asia (8% each), with the Middle East, North Africa, and Latin America and the Caribbean making up the remaining 6% between them.

Finally, the survey was made available in English and French, with 11% of respondents completing the French version, and 89% responding in English.

We recognise the need to increase the diversity of responses across regions, cultures and contexts, including the need to diversify into other languages. This forms part of our strategic plans at sportanddev, including the planned website upgrade.

Opinions on the existing website

An overwhelming number of respondents (96%) felt the website should be rebuilt or upgraded, with just 4% believing it should remain the same. However, the 4% did also suggest there need to be improvements to the look and layout of the website, and improvements to the connect section were required.

Of those who thought the website should be rebuilt or upgraded, several reoccurring recommendations were made for improvements:

General user experience improvements: site layout, navigation, interactivity
Improvements to organisation and Team Player profiles and the interactive map
Advanced search functionality to find and filter through content
Content engagement mechanisms and analytics of the articles
Online courses and qualifications on the website

Required of a new website

Respondents were also asked which three features or services they would prioritise for a new website. The feedback largely mirrored the improvements suggested for the existing website, with a number of novel ideas:

Virtual spaces for collaborating and networking
A board highlighting funding requests and opportunities
A volunteer and mentor matching system
Opinion articles that enable interactions and discussions
Academic and applied resources compiled into a single location
Increased content in multiple languages

Next steps

A number of respondents offered support to sportanddev in the form of time, expertise, testing and developing content. We greatly appreciate the offers and continued support from the community, and where appropriate we will reach out to those individuals at a suitable time.

In the coming days, we will be releasing a ‘Request for Proposals’ to design and build a new/upgraded website. The progress of this project depends on our ability to fundraise for the work to be done, but we are hopeful this will be achieved.

sportanddev is a community-driven platform so we thank everyone who took the time to complete the survey and provide valuable feedback. While we are not able to promise to implement all suggestions made, we take all suggestions seriously and will carry out as many as possible.

To provide any further feedback and/or suggestions, and if you think you could help with this project in any way, please email [email protected].