Coastsider survey results are in

This week, we conducted a test survey of Coastsider readers.  The questions were pretty basic, and there weren’t too many surprises, but I thought you’d be interested in seeing the results.

We received 72 response, with 50 coming in within 24 hours. This is pretty good considering we didn’t push too hard for responses.  The Survey Monkey service worked great. We will be conducting more reader surveys in near future.

There are disclaimers that go with all surveys of this nature. Those who responded are clearly not a random sample of Coastsider readers, let alone of Coastsiders in general. No biases were obvious from the results, however.  There is a wide margin of error in these results, so the numbers I’m reported have been rounded for readability and to avoid suggesting more precision than they really have. Despite these disclaimers, the results are interesting.

Where you live (no surprises here):

• 40% live in Half Moon Bay
• 40% live in the unincorporated Midcoast (El Granada, Moss Beach, Montara)
• 10% live south of Half Moon Bay
• 5%  live in Pacifica

Half heard about Coastsider from a friend and a quarter from a Google search.

The most popular features, not surprisingly, are the news and comments, with 75% saying news was just fine or that you loved it and 65% saying the same about the comments.  Classifieds, the calendar, Mercury News headlines, and weather were not used by about half the readers, but about a third of readers liked them just fine.

Three-quarters of respondents buy from merchants at Strawflower Village at least weekly (11% never do), and half say they buy downtown at least once a week (18% never do).  The next most-popular destinations were San Mateo (82% do that monthly) and Albertson’s shopping center (half buy there at least monthly).

In the open-ended comments, several readers thought Coastsider was a little biased.  Everyone recognizes it’s a personal site, so I wind up writing about what I’m interested in from my personal point of view.  If there are stories or opinions you’d like to see more of on Coastsider, you’re invited to send them in.