Receta Reader survey 2016 – the results
I’ll try to be more organised with next year’s reader survey and post it a bit earlier, as I really don’t like that I’m posting something with 2016 in the title. I’ve only just got my head around writing 2017 on forms (the first few things I signed this year had last year’s date crossed out and re-written), so it’s hurting my brain a bit to write 2016 this time.
Aaanyway, I thought I’d better share the results of the reader survey I posted before Christmas, in case anyone is curious about any changes I might make as a result of your feedback. If you’re not into graphs and pie charts (you heathen), feel free to skip this post and come back next time for another recipe. I won’t be offended (though we might all gossip about you once you’ve gone).
Before I get stuck in, a huge thank you to everyone who filled out the survey! I had over 200 responses, which I read in their entirety. There were lots of really lovely comments that made me tear up (if I could hug you all individually I would), some really useful suggestions which I will definitely try to work on, and only one or two responses that made me think ‘huh? I already do that!’ But every single response was useful in some way or another, so thank you all!
Okay, let’s get going.
Which of these best describes your diet?
Hello all! Everyone is welcome here – veggies, vegans and meat-eaters alike. Interestingly, the results of this question were almost identical to the results I got from this question last year – I had to double check I hadn’t inserted the same chart again. But no, apparently I just have a very stable readership!
Which of these are your favourite ingredients to see used in recipes?
Noted! I think this aligns quite nicely with the recipes I post already – I try not to use ‘fake meat’ in my recipes too often, and I don’t use tofu that often either. Probably once a month, tops. Perhaps going forward, I could try to share more recipes using beans and pulses.
What are your favourite kinds of recipes?
Main meals wins by a long way! I agree with you here, I find proper dinner recipes much more interesting than most other things. I’m quite surprised that soup was the next most popular kind of recipe – I always think soups are a bit boring personally! But if you like them, I’ll try to make soups more often.
Have you ever cooked an Amuse Your Bouche recipe?
Oh, aren’t you lovely! Only 11% of respondents had never tried one of my recipes. I suppose it’s not a particularly representative sample, but this one made me happy nonetheless. And to be honest, although I love reading food blogs myself, I rarely actually follow their recipes (not least because I’m usually trying to come up with my own instead), so hopefully even those of you who haven’t tried any of my recipes will still enjoy reading and will still gain a bit of inspiration from me.
If not, why not?
Most people said they just hadn’t got around to it yet, which was nice! Only 2 people said they hadn’t found anything that they were inspired to make. I’m taking that as a success.
(by the way, people who said ‘other’ did give extra explanations, but I’m not going to copy them all out here)
If I were to make recipe videos, which kind would you prefer?
Thanks for the feedback on this one! The blogging community is alllll about the video these days – supposedly it’s the next big thing, and all bloggers should be moving into video as soon as humanly possible, otherwise they’ll soon be outdated and everyone will start hating them. Or something like that. I guess the kinds of people who read food blogs aren’t necessarily the same people who watch recipe videos, so I can understand why 42% of you said you weren’t interested in video. It’s an interesting finding nonetheless, and I may decide to dabble a little in video over the next year. Depends how much time I get this year I suppose, what with a new tiny human to look after and all.
Would you be interested in buying an Amuse Your Bouche cookbook?
Always good to know! I do understand why 19% of you said you wouldn’t be interested in a cookbook – why buy the cow when she’s giving you her milk for free, right? (I have a feeling that metaphor is usually used in a slightly different context, but oh well). Thanks to the rest of you though! I often get asked about making a cookbook, so it’s interesting to see how many other people would be interested. If any of you happen to be cookbook publishers, hit me up.
I also asked a few questions where people were free to write their own answers.
I’m obviously not going to copy out all the responses here and respond to everything individually, but I did read and appreciate every single response. It’s not often I start my Thursday morning weeping my way through dozens and dozens of people saying nice things about me (shall we make this a weekly thing?). But the negative comments (which you all made very constructively, I must say) were really useful too.
Just a few things that I wanted to respond to specifically:
What’s one thing you don’t like about AYB, or that you wish I did differently?
“I don’t like the monthly recaps. I skip past them because they don’t give me any information I didn’t already have.” – noted! While this isn’t strictly true (each month I do also include recipes I’ve shared in other places, like on Brit+Co), I have been thinking of giving my This Month’s Recipes posts a bit of a revamp and trying to get a bit more variety in there. I’ll share my first attempt at the start of February – make sure you let me know what you think!
“WE WANT MORE OF PIP!” – ha! This sentiment was echoed by several other people too (though with less capital letters). I don’t want to talk about my dog allll the time as I’m aware that some people couldn’t care less about other people’s pets (even if she is insanely cute), but I’ll try to include her more in my monthly round-up posts.
To keep you happy, here’s a photo of Pip from yesterday, purely because this was becoming a bit of a wall of text and I felt it needed a photo. She thinks she’s a cat, and enjoys sitting across the back of my shoulders when I’m on the sofa:
“I had trouble accessing your website due to redirects on mobile. I should’ve said something, but instead stopped visiting, good to see the site running well” – I’m so sorry about this! A few months ago I changed ad provider, as I was having a few problems before. Hopefully those issues have been ironed out now. If you ever get a redirect or a huge pop-up, that is not meant to happen – please let me know so I can sort it out! Currently the only ads you should see are in the sidebar / header on desktops, and on mobiles you should get a few small ads throughout the post and one small ad at the bottom of the screen (which can easily be closed). I know ads can be annoying but they do allow me to continue blogging full-time and putting out recipes for you guys every few days, so they are a necessary evil – though I do try to keep them as small and unobtrusive as possible!
One person asked where the search box had gone, and said the ‘looking for something’ box does nothing. I’m not sure what’s gone wrong, as it works perfectly for me! It’s right at the top of the sidebar, above my beautiful face (joke!) – is anyone else having problems with the search box?
Can you think of any new features you’d like to see on AYB?
“I realize it would be a lot more work, but if you included amounts in your recipes in both grams and teaspoons/cups, that would be very helpful for us North American readers!” – I already do this! All recipes from, I think, 2015 onwards are written in both the UK and US formats. I obviously don’t cook with the US format myself though, so if you ever see anything measured in a way that looks completely wrong, please feel free to correct me! I do sometimes get confused about how you’d measure a particular ingredient, so I just kind of wing it…
“I’d like to be able to sort recipes by how long they take to prepare, please!” – I’m adding this to my to do list, keep your eyes peeled and hopefully this feature will be available in the next month or so.
Sorry, that got long! Hopefully a few of you found it interesting – I always enjoy delving through your comments.