Feedback Required Forum Demographics?

[Aviador]

Forum Demographics?

I'm trying to establish the age groups of our members to see what age groups are interested in the forum and to help us look at ways of attracting new members.

 

[Brum X]

Forum Dermographics?

I'm trying to establish the age groups of our members to see what age groups are interested in the forum and to help us look at ways of attracting new members.

It also appears to be the south that we need to attract to this forum, the governement might be London Centric, but FFA is definitely about the North and Midlands with a bit of Wales and Scotland thrown in for good measure.

But very little contribution about London airports which is surprising.

Do you have any London connections Aviador ?

 

[Aviador]

No sadly

 

[Brum X]

Let me put something on my twitter/X account.

Calling all London AV Geeks, WE NEED YOU

 

[Aviador]

Any more votes on this. It only takes a second to do.

 

[Aviador]

I've just been looking at the forum stats and it shows how people are changing the way they view the forum.

Pre pandemic, the forum had a good split around 50/50 between high end mobile devices including tablets and desktop devices.

What our current stats show is the number of people using the forum by tablets is diminishing with only 5.2% of visits now by these devices.

Similarly, the use of desktop devices and laptops is reducing steadily and now stands at only 36.4% of all visits.

High end mobile devices are becoming more popular and they have become the preferred choice to access the forum at 58.3%

Over the coming years it is likely these changes will continue and we will see a move further towards mobile devices. For this reason we any future changes to the forum layout will prioritise mobile devices.

 

[Seasider]

I hope that I don't find myself accusing the forum of being discriminatory because I am not using the most popular method of accessing the forum.

Or have interpreted your post incorrectly.

 

[Aviador]

I hope that I don't find myself accusing the forum of being discriminatory because I am not using the most popular method of accessing the forum.

Or have interpreted your post incorrectly.

The user experience isn't likely to change that much to be honest.

 

[Kevin Farnell]

I've just got my first ever smart phone (never really wanted one, but seems you can't get by without one these days). I'm still learning to use it, but find it a pain compared to a PC. It's over sensitive and the keyboard keys seem tiny to my large hands, resulting in many errors, which I have to correct. I'm much happier with a PC and a full size keyboard.

 

[Aviador]

I've just got my first ever smart phone (never really wanted one, but seems you can't get by without one these days). I'm still learning to use it, but find it a pain compared to a PC. It's over sensitive and the keyboard keys seem tiny to my large hands, resulting in many errors, which I have to correct. I'm much happier with a PC and a full size keyboard.

Most of my typos are due to mobile phone keys being too small.

 

[Ashley.S.]

I hope that I don't find myself accusing the forum of being discriminatory because I am not using the most popular method of accessing the forum.

Or have interpreted your post incorrectly.

Absolutely not! The forum layout for some time now has supported a multitude of devices, whatever screen size through our responsive styles as a built-in feature of XenForo, it just means the layouts might change slightly depending on what device you use.

I've just got my first ever smart phone (never really wanted one, but seems you can't get by without one these days). I'm still learning to use it, but find it a pain compared to a PC. It's over sensitive and the keyboard keys seem tiny to my large hands, resulting in many errors, which I have to correct. I'm much happier with a PC and a full size keyboard.

With the threats of switching off 3G and below in favour of 4G and 5G, it very much feels like everybody is being pushed to use a smart phone as they don't seem to sell basic mobiles with 4G and 5G connectivity. To be fair, a lot of my typos may come from using a mobile device, though I'd like to hope that the "spelling and grammar police" aren't here as it's not fair to correct members who either might not know English as their first language or are dyslexic, like myself as the auto-correct on mobile devices are nowhere near as good as the ones on computers.

 

[David_itl]

Mostly during the daytime I'm only browsing using my mobile but without logging in.

Weekends (if I'm not out and my brother isn't visiting me) and evenings are when the laptop is out and I'm logged in. Much easier for me know exactly what I'm typing if there's something I want to share rather than have my phone interpret what it thinks or have loads of typos without autocorrect being turned on.

 

[Aviador]

I think most people will share your thoughts on mobile autocorrections and although phones allow easy access from anywhere, they also present challenges for web developers.

If we could turn back the clock, we would have a one size fits all layout. What we actually have now is what's called a responsive layout which keeps changing as the page size changes. This itself can be problematic for us as it can move content that we want displaying first into second place. Other content can sometime disappear altogether.

It's great how our Xenforo software works really but it would be nice to have a few options to maybe dictate where things go in the mobile layout.

 

[Scottie Dog]

I must admit that I tend to use my mobile unless I'm posting and need to upload data.

 

[paully]

I've just got my first ever smart phone (never really wanted one, but seems you can't get by without one these days). I'm still learning to use it, but find it a pain compared to a PC. It's over sensitive and the keyboard keys seem tiny to my large hands, resulting in many errors, which I have to correct. I'm much happier with a PC and a full size keyboard.

Your not alone Kevin....my views exactly...I can't imagine how a smartphone can trump a lap or desk top.....must be at a funny age

 

[Aviador]

It's a convenience thing, nothing more.

 

[Kevin Farnell]

It's a convenience thing, nothing more.

Not quite. My bank used to send a single use password by email if I used my card online. However, they have changed to sending it by text.I had no way of receiving text, so had to get a mobile. Except, I've messed that up. I didn't know that the sim card could be broken down into smaller parts, so I now have the whole sim card jammed in the slot (the instruction, a 2cm square picture was no help). Samsung do a home repair service, but it's not cheap. Somewhat off topic, but that's my experience.

 

[Seasider]

I never access the forum on my phone. Use my desktop unless I am away from home and then I use my Tablet.

 

[Ashley.S.]

Sooo, the development of websites has roughly been as follows:

1. Simple website available online
2. Website with light/dark styles
3. Website with separate mobile interface selectable alongside light/dark toggles
4. Website with separate mobile app interface available to download from your app store
5. Website with responsive layout with separate light/dark styles or toggle
6. Website with what is known as a Progressive Web App and now with a light/dark mode based on settings

Moving forward it is now a lot easier to maintain one style that automatically adjusts based on your screen size and device settings through specific identifiers in the user agent, rather than maintain four different versions (PC, Mobile, Light & Dark) for users to manually select. At Present the user agents from the past 24 hours are saying users are using the following across the forum:

Browsers​

Chrome (includes Android, Edge and Safari) = 229
Firefox = 14
Other = 0

Operating systems​

Android mobile = 63
Android tablet = 9
iPad = 7
iPhone = 58
Linux = 2
macOS = 37
Windows = 64

Totals​

Desktop = 101
Mobile = 121
Tablet = 16

Percentages​

Desktop = 42%
Mobile = 51%
Tablet = 7%

As we can see, mobile and tablet use is just ahead of desktop use and while these are increasing, it is not cost worthy to develop a separate site as we've been through that development cycle and now settled on responsive layouts with progressive web apps through your built-in browser. Who knows if this'll change in the future, but I'd highly doubt it will.

 

[andrew.clarkson]

I always use my phone.

O yes, I'm from Warwickshire.