Background

The research is being conducted as part of the process to develop the Conscious Evolution website and newsletter, and to gain insight and feedback from those people who use this service or will potentially use this service in the future and from lapsed users.

The newsletter is in the process of being developed; as such it will aim at soliciting traffic and interest in the site, as well as promoting the Conscious Evolution message of spiritual development and a less power and material driven society.

The research has also provided the opportunity for some rudimentary astrological research to be conducted. This will explore some basic astrological assumptions, and it not intended to be the main stem of this project. This will be reported upon at a later date, as it requires significantly more analysis.

To enable the maximum benefit from the research to be obtained the following core objectives have been identified as being pertinent to this activity. This research will assist the team in the:

• Identification of current site usage, in terms of active participation and observation only users, i.e. the talkers and the watchers

• Distinction of low volume users and high volume users needs, were possible

• Prioritisation of pre-specified site improvements

• Potential uptake for variety of proposed educational courses, which will allow any resulting academy activity to be focused in the subjects most likely to be of interest this audience

• Gain insight into other site improvements and opportunities

• Benchmarking the current degree of satisfaction with the site, and in the likelihood of users to recommend the site to other people

• Provision of insight into the most convenient distribution method for the newsletter and general site development

• Find possible contributors for the newsletter

• Identification of the subject areas, which are of most interests to the audience, and provide a ranking of these subjects allowing the planning of content to be audience focused.

In addition to this, although not a specific aim of this research, the research will also provide an astrological research resource, which will allow various discrete analysis projects to be conducted.

Where possible any potentially revenue generating opportunities will be identified, and reported upon separately. Currently the site has no means of financially supporting itself and thus creates a financial burden on its owner, although the site is not intended to be significant revenue generator, it would be desirable for running costs to be covered and any expansion of service costs to be covered, thus reducing it’s burden status. It is unlikely that the research will offer significant insight into this area, but if the opportunities arise, they will be reported upon separately.

Method

The questionnaire has been initially developed in full conjunction with the Newsletter Development Team. It has been designed as a self-completion questionnaire for administration via the Internet, which is the most appropriate method for this audience.

The questionnaire had two main sections, the first section being designed to quantify site development and the second section aimed at gaining crude insight into lifestyle issue for use of astrological cross-analysis. Respondents could opt to answer only the first section or both sections, this was necessary as some respondents may have had difficulty seeing the benefit of the latter part of the questionnaire.

The population is identified as current members of the Conscious Evolution site and any of their friends or acquaintances that are willing to participate. Although it will not be descriptive of any identifiable generic population, the sample will be truly representative of people who are current users, and lapsed users as well potential new users.

An invitation to participate will be sent out to all registered members. This accounts for some 2,318, registered members (some of these may be invalid), however non-members were also welcome to participate therefore some 1-2% can be added to this figure as the potential population for this research (in reality 5 people participated who were non site users of the discussion forum or viewing articles, this cruelly accounted for 4% of the total sample). It’s feasible to assume approximately 2121 respondents represent the overall population for the research.

As a result of the research it has been identified that the live membership may fall between 1800-2000, which is a “good guess” as opposed to being factually proven.

Self-completion questionnaire typically have a much lower response rate than alternative research methodologies. A good response rate would be 25-30% (C.583).>

The achieved response accounted for 6.3% of the sites “estimated” population. The overall sample size achieved was 115 completed questionnaires. Section two received 105 of completed returns. This latter figure is actually higher than a normal two-part questionnaire where losing as much as 20% is not uncommon. As it was less than 9% screened out at the mid-way point. People generally responded well to the spirit of the research and completions of individual questions were suitably high.

The resulting sample is robust and can give strong indicative information about both “Frequent Users” (of discussion board) and “Infrequent Users”.

There are many reasons that the overall response rate was lower than 25-35% of the population.

There was not incentive for participation in an ideal world an enticement would have been desirable.

The issue of multiple site accounts may have had a minor impact on the response rate. The age of some of the data base contacts could increase non-response. Inter-site cultural conflicts may all add to the lower response. It’s possible that the live population is smaller than originally thought.

There may also have been objectivity issues, that the questionnaire was hosted onsite and open to the research team.One can but hope that this had only a minor effect on completions.

The “season effect” must also been taking into consideration as mid summer (in the northern hemisphere) is never a particularly fruitful time to conduct self-completion research.

Given all the possible barriers the research did have the positive effects of stimulating lapsed users to become more active. As a PR exercise alone this process can be considered to have been successful.

International Community

Conscious Evolution has a truly global service provider, with registered members’ coming as far a field as Australia, India, Singapore, Brazil, Israel, Norway and other European countries, with the bulk of membership being from the US. Africa is possibly the least represented continents, which may reflect the lack of Internet availability.

The following table reports the spread of respondent’s countries participants of the survey. A few respondents did not complete the country data.

South America	2
Africa	2
Other	2
Aust/Nz	7
Canada	9
India	13
Europe	18
USA	57
Non Resp	5
	115

Within the sample both Africa and South America were both poorly represented attributable to low Internet access and language issues. It may well be worth considering a forum of second language at some point in the future, alternatively an international forum where multiple language threads can be hosted which may encourage non English speakers to translate for each other.

Where appropriate there will be three groups reported. The total sample, representing everyone who participated, “Frequent Users” defined as people who use the discussion forum at least every week and “Infrequent Users” who use it less frequently.

Site Usage

Respondents were asked to rate their usage of the site on the following scale, which is the key for the following two charts.

Every day

Most days

Twice a week

Weekly

Monthly

Quarterly

Less frequently

Never

Frequency of use of the discussion board serves to create two subgroups in the data and much of this report will contrast between these two groups with the overall total, where appropriate

.

This chart is reporting respondent numbers not %

The majority of people either infrequently use the discussion forums or never use the site. It’s important to remember that 23% of the total sample fall into the never use the discussion forum, however due to the sample size, these have been included with the “Infrequent User” category.

Visiting the site to read information rather than participating in the discussion forms was the other usage statistic gathered. The following chart reports the visitation for reading question.

This chart is reporting respondent numbers not %

Very few people visited the site daily for information. Obviously the majority of Frequent Users (discussion forum) visit to read as well as to participate. 55% of the overall sample tended to visit the site less than once a week. 17 (15% of the total sample) frequent discussion board users did not actively visit to read onsite information frequently, presumably focusing their energies on participation rather than online articles.

5 people, 4% of the total sample had never used the site for either online articles or discussion forums. 21% of the total sample only came to read articles and never take part in the discussion forum (this figure excludes the 4% who have never used the site). A fifth of participants are essentially “watchers”, whose needs are particularly difficult to anticipate. The opportunity exists to encourage these “watcher” to be more active exists.

Technical

Fieldwork was active between 22^nd of July and the 5^th of August. During this time, one follow up email was sent out to encourage participation. This assists greatly in increasing the sample size with self-completion questionnaire administered via the Internet. The two+ week period was chosen to enable the maximum opportunity for participation as many people may be holidaying around this time.

This research report will articulate the research findings. Where data is reported as showing “significant differences” the data will have been checked at a 95% confidence level. This means that the differences in answers are large enough that they could only happen randomly 5% of the time, so the answer is liable not to be attributable to quirks of sampling alone and thus highly significant. Data from market research is never normally distributed and as such we rely on the theory of central limits, which states that data will behave as if normally distributed if the sample size is large enough. Tests usually are conducted on a one tailed distribution.

The Newsletter

The overall aim for the research was to identify the distribution method/’s most appropriate for the maximum readership. It also provided a vehicle to explore topics of interest for this audience and understand how Frequent and Infrequent users needs differ.

Unfortunately for the technical elements of the team, the distribution method desired is highly fragmented. This may be due to lower versions of browsers or that people look to keep a record of each month’s. There may be some element of technical ambiguity in the respondents understanding.

The following chart reports the desired method of Newsletter distribution.It reports respondent numbers as opposed to percentages (which are in brackets above the columns).

Most people have no preference 31%. Acrobat was the least preferred distribution method, with only 5% of people choosing this option. Both HTML and Onsite hosting were fairly evenly desired at 18-20%. The major outcome from this question is that 20% of respondents desire the newsletter via simple text (approximately half of which were from the US). This indicates that at least two different reporting formats need to be produced to ensure maximum readership.

The second key output targeted for the newsletter, was an indication of the popularity of specific topics for articles. The question focused on the topics of interest for both the newsletter and site development.

Respondents could choose a maximum of 10 topics of interest. The overall top ten ranking subjects are reported below. These are the ones considered to be more newsletter related as opposed to site development.

	Res# 115
Astrology	78%
Dreams	39%
Healing	38%
Meditation and spiritual development	37%
Science and spirituality	36%
Extra Sensory Perception	34%
Numerology	30%
Lexigrams	27%
Feng shui	25%
Creative writing	24%

Many topics of interest could be run as on going articles or regular slots in the newsletter. Introduction articles could be a good start point to introduce a broader selection of interests. It is also possible that broadening the subjects of interest may very well be useful in attracting a wider user group of members who are less interested in astrology. The full list of topics is reported in the top-line report that has been distributed.

The Frequent users and Infrequent users had slightly different rankings of interests. The following table reports their preferences with ranking scores; these are reported in full below.

	Frequent	Infrequent		Frequent	Infrequent
Resp#	51	68		51	68
Astrology	80%	72%	Out-of-body experience	16%	21%
Dreams	31%	43%	Reiki	22%	15%
Healing	31%	41%	Global Cultures	16%	18%
Meditation and spiritual development	33%	38%	Visualization	14%	18%
Daily and monthly horoscopes	35%	35%	Reading / book reviews	14%	16%
Online astrological charts & reports	33%	37%	Environmentalism	18%	12%
Science and spirituality	33%	35%	Source list for rare books	12%	15%
Personal readings and consultations	29%	37%	UFO information and ideas	12%	15%
Extra Sensory Perception	35%	31%	Online book shop	16%	10%
Numerology	24%	34%	Religion	18%	9%
Tarot	31%	25%	T'ai Chi	20%	7%
Lexigrams	16%	34%	Poetry	12%	12%
Feng shui	29%	21%	I Ching	18%	6%
Creative writing	22%	25%	Rune stone reading	12%	10%
Mythology	33%	16%	Politics and spirituality	14%	7%
Parapsychology	20%	25%	Psychometry	6%	13%
Philosophy	22%	24%	History	8%	9%
Animal rights	20%	24%	Travel	2%	12%
Occult	16%	24%	World politics	12%	3%
Prophecy	24%	18%	World health	10%	3%
Knowflake specific	27%	13%	Playing music/singing	4%	6%
Witchcraft/Wicca	14%	24%	World debt	4%	0%
Out-of-body experience	16%	21%	Don't know	2%	0%
Reiki	22%	15%	None of these	0%	0%

These figures give excellent grounding for discussion and planning of content for the newsletter. The different user groups have marginally different taste, which the newsletter can go a long way to filling gaps within the current site topics

The final objective for the Newsletter information capture was to identify the likelihood that people would actively contribute articles for distribution via the Newsletter. This will take the onus off the Newsletter team to always produce a specific number of articles each month. The survey found that the majority of people are willing to actively contribute. Only 41% were unwilling to participate or make some contribution. 24% will actively send articles in and 35% can be re-contacted once a long terms article plan is available.

Site Development

The second focal point of the research was site development. Several questions were designed to measure this; including ranking of some proposed development, proposed course, overall satisfaction with the site and the likelihood to recommend the site to friends. There is an underlying need to actually generate sufficient revenue to cover site running costs, this will largely be covered in the analysis of the course schedule, so that the most popular courses are not run in tandem such that enrolment will not requite a trade off between several courses, this will be address later in this section.

As identified in the Methodology section of this report, the majority of people are infrequent users. Approximately 45% of participants visit the site or participate in the discussion forum each week or more frequently.

Respondents were asked to spend 100 points across some pre-selected site developments. This forced respondents to make a purchasing decision regarding the specific improvements on offer. The following graph represents the overall survey findings. This chart reports the average spend for each improvement. Several topics were preferred in terms of volume of attraction, however largely the ranking is similar to the ranking of scores below.

Mean Data

There was an 8-point difference between the most desired improvement and the least desired improvement, which represents a difference of 58 respondents, (with scientific discoveries attracting 99 people and competition 41).

There are clear leaders “Feature articles on scientific discoveries and spirituality” and “Library of articles on esoteric subjects & practitioners” are the forerunners, have a difference of 3-points and the next area. This difference is deceptive as this is an “average score” therefore the difference is quite large and is probably significant.

“Structured Discussions or Lectures” and “Moderated Forums” were the next most prominent, “Academy Courses” lags 1-point behind these two. Largely resources should be focused on these five key areas. Thus liable to generate the maximum satisfaction for the resources invested.

These results differ between Frequent Users and Infrequent users. In particular the value of moderated forums falls dramatically. Given that this group does not gain benefit from the forums this is unsurprising.

Predictably the more remote facilities, such as a tarot facility or numerology calculator are more desirable with the infrequent users. They perhaps are attracted by the lack of interaction that these services can offer. To provide these facilities may increase site traffic. In terms of broader site development; the following are site developments that represent 15% or more of overall sample.

Astrology	78%	Mythology	24%
Dreams	39%	Animal rights	23%
Healing	38%	Parapsychology	23%
Daily and monthly horoscopes	37%	Philosophy	23%
Meditation and spiritual development	37%	Occult	21%
Online astrological charts & reports	37%	Prophecy	21%
Science and spirituality	36%	Knowflake specific	20%
Personal readings and consultations	35%	Witchcraft/Wicca	20%
Extra Sensory Perception	34%	Out-of-body experience	19%
Numerology	30%	Reiki	18%
Tarot	29%	Global cultures	17%
Lexigrams	27%	Visualization	17%
Feng shui	25%	Reading / book reviews	16%
Creative writing	24%	Environmentalism	15%

Some of these issues are more appropriate for the Newsletter, but they do offer viable insight into potential hosted lecture/specific discussion sessions.

Academy

The Academy on the old site was one of the key revenue generating facilities. The research posed a question in which people were asked which courses they would be most interested in paying a small fee to participate in. A word of caution, when people express attitudes towards spending, it doesn’t always follow through in their actions. None of the courses received more than 36% of the overall sample, however classes of 15-25 people may well be achievable.

The following courses were most desired; they represent the courses where 25% or more of the sample found them desirable.

• Natural Healing
• Synastry and Compatibility Astrology
• Extra Sensory Perception
• Beginning Astrology
• Conscious Evolution / Creating New Age Realities
• Horary and Predictive Astrology
• Meditation and Spiritual Advancement
• Out-of-Body Experience (Astral Projection)
• Tarot

In terms of revenue generation, the temptation here would be to pick off the top few courses and run these as soon as possible. However many of the people who are interested in these courses were also interested in some of the other alternatives.

The data has been analysed to identify where possible conflicts may arise. This list’s numbers acts as a key to reading the heat chart on the following page.

1. Alchemy	11. Numerology
2. Beginning Astrology	12. Out-of-Body
3. C. Evolution, New Age Realities	13. Parapsychology
4. Extra Sensory Perception	14. Shamanic Practices
5. Feng Shui	15. Synastry and Comp. Astrology
6. Horary and Predictive Astrology	16. Tarot
7. I Ching	17. Visualization
8. Kabbalah	18. None of these
9. Meditation and Spiritual Advance.	19. Other
10. Natural Healing

The following table looks quite complex. The courses are numbered across the top, along with the number of people who chose that class. Reading the columns downwards, the numbers indicate the percentage of people who would have serious conflict between courses. Only data for 40% or more conflict has been reported. Red indicates a 60%+ conflict, Yellow a 50-59% conflicts, Dark Green a 45-49% conflict and Light Green/Blue a 40-44% conflict. The last row indicates the number of conflicts that course has.

Course	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	19
Resp#	15	33	31	35	24	32	11	21	31	42	23	31	20	19	35	27	26	4
1													45	42
2				43			64	43	42	40	61		45	42	43	56
3	53			49			45	43	58	48	48	48	55	63	43	41	54	50
4	60	45	55			41		62	65	52	48	74	60	58		59	73	50
5							45											50
6	40				42				45		48		50		54	44
7
8	47																46
9	53		58	57	42	44	45			57	61	61	50	47		63	73	50
10	73	52	65	63	46	50	55	52	77		61	71	60	79	57	59	77	75
11	47	42							45	33		39	30	47		48
12	80		48	66				52	61	52	52		65	58		59	73
13	60											42		42
14	53												40				42
15	53	45	48		42	59				48	52	42	45	47		44	46
16	40	45		46					55		57	52	40	42
17	60		45	54				57	61	48	43	61	50	58
19
Number of conflicts	13	5	6	7	4	4	5	6	9	8	10	8	12	12	4	9	8	5

An Example

If the site wishes to run course number 1, then looking down the column, you can see that it is in strong conflict (red) between course numbers 4,10,12,13 and 17.

It makes sense to check the respondent numbers for each column. Ideally you want to have the least volume of conflict between course subjects. By staggering the courses so they do not overlap and possibly with a time laps between them, the maximum revenue yield can be obtained. The alternative would be to have the same course run twice in any given year.

Satisfaction

One of the critical measurements in any services is how satisfied its users are. Ultimately this underpins growth and usage. In comparison to services that are paid for, the levels of satisfaction are usually elevated. In cases such as this, one looks towards maximising the excellent or top rating scores.

Base All Using site 99

Nearly 30% of the sample that have used the site gave it an excellent rating; the never used have been screened out for this question. This is further supported by 46% who rated it as either Very or Fairly satisfactory. However there is still room for improvement.

There are 5% who are not satisfied, although not large, this may indicate some problem that has not been identified in the quantitative data. Although small if applied to the overall population, estimated at 1800, this actually represents 90 people who are disgruntled.

In a purely commercial environment, these scores would be indicative of the likelihood of possible recommendation. Recommendation may not sound that “powerful”, however positive word of mouth can increase sales far beyond the reach of advertising or direct marketing. Negative word of mouth has far graver implications as an individual is much more liable to discuss a negative experience with more people who in turn discuss it further.

Recommendation scores can be proven in a commercial environment, to link directly to sales (with a 1-3 month lag). So in terms of increasing site usage scoring well does have obvious benefits.

Base All Using site 105

There has been a 10% increase in the top box score between Satisfaction and recommendation. This increase does indicate that participating in the research has been a positive experience. Note also the dissatisfaction extreme has reduced indicating that the dissatisfaction may very well be experience related as opposed to a general resentment towards the site.

Both of these performance metrics are enviable in a commercial environment. Only companies with world leading customer care normally receive such high scores. The site can be proud that it has built such wonderful relationship with its members.

Conclusion

The research has proven to have been a highly successful vehicle at providing the Newsletter team with useful information. Its secondary benefits are the attraction of lapsed users back to the site, which were greeted warmly. The main objectives of the research have been achieved.

Identification of current site usage, in terms of active participation and observation only users, i.e. the talkers and the watchers

• Pure watchers were few and far between, but the majority of people do not frequently use the discussion forum. This makes it doubly important to actively communicate with this group. They are a remote audience, the Newsletter can go a long way to ensuring they feel valued and included within the sites group.

• Many of the frequent users don’t actively read the articles. This is an area that may well improve with the addition of an online Library feature.

Distinction of low volume users and high volume users needs, where possible

• Where possible this has been achieved. In terms of site development, remote user’s needs focused upon the dialogue interaction type. There interests were not identical to the Frequent users, they had less desire for moderated forums, lectures etc. But the width of their interests was broader than the Frequent users. The opportunity therefore is to expand discussions out-with the Astrological bias and into much further spiritual issues. One way to do this would be via a structured discussion group or lecture where the notes for the lecture can be distributed to non contributing members.

Prioritisation of pre-specified site improvements

• This created a top five prioritisation for site improvements which will have the greatest impact on overall member’s satisfaction.

Potential uptake for variety of proposed educational courses, which will allow any resulting academy activity to be focused in the subjects most likely to be of interest this audience.

• The online courses proved to be reasonably popular with several courses having sufficient enthusiasm to indicate them as being commercially viable.

• It would be worthwhile to thoroughly review of costing structure of these courses to ensure they are within member’s budget. By having costs that are easily affordable, the revenue generated may be more due to higher volumes of participants rather than smaller attended pricier classes.

Gain insight into other site improvements and opportunities

• This has been done throughout this report.

Benchmarking the current degree of satisfaction with the site, and in the likelihood of users to recommend the site to other people

• The site has a large core of loyal members as can be seen from its history of three changes in URL. Members have followed the path and remained loyal to the site throughout. Overall Satisfaction and Recommendation scores reflect the warmth towards the site.

• The Recommendation scores indicate that there is positive word of mouth out about the site, which will go a long way towards increasing overall site traffic.

• The Newsletter also looks promising in terms of increasing site awareness and positive word of mouth.

Provision of insight into the most convenient distribution method for the newsletter and general site development

• Ideally a choice of distribution will maximise readership (Text and Web link), however on cross analysing the findings there is an indication that this question was poorly understood, as almost half of the “text only” respondents came from the USA, where it is highly unlikely that they do not have supporting technology. Of the remaining 50%, they were spread between developing countries and Europe. Only a few percent are liable to not have the technology to support Web link distribution.

Find possible contributors for the newsletter

• The majority of research participants were willing to submit articles. This should be encouraged to support the feeling of ownership of members and readers. Contributors are potentially liable to circulate their articles amongst friends and family.

Identification of the subject areas, which are of most interests to the audience, and provide a ranking of these subjects allowing the planning of content to be audience focused.

• Although not Newsletter specific, areas of interested have been ranked and can be a useful discussion point for topic planning.

It is important in the first issue of the Newsletter to extend thanks to participants for taking the time and trouble to participate. Very few people have actively refused to participate in future research, which suggests a positive experience.

A word of caution in terms of future research; over researching an audience can have negative impact. It is important that the frequency is appropriate. Quarterly or biannually is usually appropriate for most services. Giving feedback from research actively helps response rates in future research projects.