Well, here it is – The Craftster Survey Summary!
First I want to thank everyone who took the survey. I read through every one of the 1154 responses multiple times, and learned a lot about the Craftster Community. There was a ton of information to boil down, so I'll start with a summary of the multiple choice questions:
A full 26% of you have been coming to this site for so long you don't remember how you first found it. Wow!
The majority of you consider yourselves “pretty crafty”, and a third of you would rather craft than eat!
Craft forums are by far the favorite feature on the site, followed by swaps and challenges, and most people visit the site multiple times per day.
Sewing in general is the most popular craft, followed by clothing (I know they may overlap), and closely tied for third are cooking, jewelry, handbags, and paper crafts. What’s most important to me here is that so many of you do multiple crafts. A truly multi-talented bunch, with sewing as a fairly common thread! (Please excuse the bad pun.)
Most people shop for craft supplies at brick and mortar retail stores, with craft stores at the top of the list. Online shopping is less popular, but again, the craft stores top the list. What this tells me is that shopping in places specifically related to crafts is important, and confirms how serious people are about their crafts!
A wide variety of tools are purchased frequently, and fewer than 20% of you are not planning any tool purchases in the next six months. As can be expected, even more of you will purchase materials in that timeframe, and fewer than 2% of you are not planning any material purchases in the next six months.
There is great demographic diversity among you in several areas: How much you spend per year on craft supplies, your age ranges, where you live, how many children you have, and your annual income levels. No wonder there is such great diversity in the posted projects! But all this diversity stops with gender. I’m sure it’s no surprise that 99% of you are female.
Now here comes the fun part. The open-ended questions. These are the questions I use to learn about the motivations behind why people do what they do. As such, I read the answers to each question much like you would read a novel. I then boil it all down to a few broad concepts that capture the essence of all the comments. This is a lot like giving someone a one sentence summary of your favorite book or movie. As we develop new ideas, it helps us to guide the team in a direction that will be meaningful to you!
Here’s what I gathered from your responses:
Two questions were very closely related: How does the Craftster community help you? and What keeps you coming back to Craftster?
In a nutshell, it all seems to come down to inspiration and support. You all have great admiration and respect for each other. There is always something new to see or people to ask for feedback. The sense of pride and support from being connected to something greater than yourselves really came through, which is in itself an inspiration!
How does doing your crafts make you feel?
There are equal doses of accomplishment, pride, productivity, and zen (it’s that special place). I really got the sense that doing crafts is the act of doing what you are. You are building confidence in yourselves and in each other. You are impressing yourselves with your ability, and making others happy when you share through feedback or crafty gifts. You are recycling the old into something new, or creating something out of nothing. With all that going on, it’s no wonder you feel productive!
What would make Craftster better for you?
There are lots of great ideas here. What I’m doing with them is looking for broader themes that will drive the development of new services that we think you’ll love, but may not think to ask for. And of course, we’re also using Jean’s list from the thread on the site to include in the groupings. Some things are pretty straightforward, like the speed of the site. Most of you know that we are already working on that, and we’ll keep continually improving it because it is so important! Other suggestions will be great stepping stones to ideas we haven’t even thought up yet. And still others will be things that we will do, but now we have a better idea of how to do them!
What other craft related websites, TV shows, magazines, etc do you go to and why?
Again, you get inspiration from all types of sources, and are resourceful in getting ideas from everywhere! You also appreciate the quality of the sources themselves, and have a very discerning eye for how you’ll use different information and ideas.
If you have children, how do they participate in crafts either with you or on their own?
Well, here the apples don’t seem to be falling far from the trees. We have a whole new generation of craftsters on the way, and they are being given guidance and encouragement from the best! There is also a very high level of sensitivity to what is appropriate for kids of different ages, interests, and for when you need your crafts to be just for you.
That pretty much sums up the survey summary. I’d love to continue the discussion. If I was sitting in your home having this conversation with you, my next questions would be about where else you get inspiration that is not craft related? What are other sources of support for you? What else gives you a sense of accomplishment and pride? And on the flip side, what gives you the opposite feelings?
It’s not necessary to answer every question, but your comments to these questions will help to inspire us even more broadly as we think about potential opportunities for Craftster to better serve you. And of course, I always appreciate the PM’s if that suits you better!
What do you think?
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