Tags: Today we’d like to share some of the key findings from the recent OpenX Community Survey. Our thanks go out to everyone who took the time to participate in the survey - you gave us lots to think about and we’ve already started to change our priorities.
More than 500 OpenX publishers and consultants took the time to tell us about themselves, how they use OpenX, where it works well and where we can improve.
For us, the most exciting result was discovering how satisfied and loyal the OpenX publishers are: 97% of publishers surveyed would recommend OpenX. This means a great deal to us and we intend to work doubly hard to ensure we’re worthy of your loyalty.
These results highlighted the key areas where we need to focus on improving, specifically:
- Usability
- Documentation
- Support
There were also some popular ideas and suggestions for specific deliverables:
- Make OpenX simpler to use
- Offer the hosted ad server to more publishers
- Increase the number of languages OpenX is available in
- Improve reporting
- Provide more plugins
- Make OpenX less resource intensive
Over the coming weeks we will share more survey results with you - both because we think you might be interested in them, and also because we’d like to explore some of the more surprising findings with you. We’ll also go into detail on how we’re going to give the OpenX community what it has asked for.
Once again, thank you to everyone who took time to participate in the OpenX Community Survey.
I didn’t take the survey but I would definitely recommend improving the usability. Locations of some functionality aren’t exactly intuitive. But OpenX is still a great product. Thanks.
Comment by Justin — May 30, 2008 @ 3:04 pm
“Offer the hosted ad server to more publishers”
Please, please, please.
Do that as soon as you can. I’m getting ready to pay somebody to install this on a server, who I believe will do a great job, but I’m totally web services oriented and this is moving so slowly.
Believe me, it’s going to open up a whole new level of the game for you.
I believe that but I mention it in the most self-serving way!
Comment by Clyde Smith — May 30, 2008 @ 3:44 pm
I am a bit frustrated with you [OpenX] because I see significant value and potential in your services but you seem to be slow to implement. IMHO, if the above suggestions are not implemented quickly then OpenX could lose significant market share to others in the space who will offer what is needed to get to the next level. Too much time might have been spent on re-rebranding and announcing who was hired instead of solving the problems and offering customers want. I am glad you sent a survey, I am glad you are going to work on implementing it. At the end of the day though, it comes down to providing solutions needed. It’s not hard to hedge a bet and sign up for your solution and a few others and then wait it out until one of them will accept me in their hosting plan, provide better docs, and/or increase usability. The first one to figure out how to solve the feedback items wins many customers. I am sure you know all this, but maybe the approach was a bit unfocused.
Maybe what I am saying is unfair and not very loyal and that’s ok. From your view maybe I look selfish and/or just plain wrong. After all, it’s just my humble opinion right? But, in my simplistic view Solving Problems, Convenience, Price, and Timing.sum up most of the considerations made when shopping for many items. I really hope this post is more motivating than negative though; but also realistic…because once my problems are solved, I don’t have any reason to keep being patient and wait or continue shopping. That’s the crux, huh…it’s as simple as it is hard I guess and its easy for me to judge, but that’s exactly what I will do until you or another solution provider solves the issues that are important to me.
Let’s take a sensitivity time out here…please realize this post is not meant to be personal…its not about you, its about me…and what I need to solve. I am not even rooting for you directly; that’s the wrong mindset. I am rooting to find solutions to my problems and the good news for you (and this community) is you have the information from the survey…so if we reframe that, I am rooting for my problems to be solved by either you or them. And one of you will help solve it; when that day comes I will know which solution provider cares enough about my problems to earn my loyalty. Unfair…maybe…real…very. I thank you for listening; I will pay for results.
Comment by Jason — June 2, 2008 @ 3:27 am
Hi Jason
Thanks for taking the time to write in and for your honesty. It’s great to hear that you see potential in OpenX. I agree with your view too: we want to be judged on the value we deliver to the OpenX community.
In the more detailed blog posts we have planned we’ll talk about how we are really going to deliver in response to the community feedback. I’d love to hear your thoughts when we do.
As you will see this is going to be a very big year for us. Some of the rebranding / hiring / scaling up work which has been visible is unavoidable given our aspirations. Please look on these as the means to an end and know that we are only doing so to deliver value to OpenX publishers.
kind regards,
Oliver George
Comment by Oliver George — June 2, 2008 @ 9:32 am
what is openx?
Comment by a — June 3, 2008 @ 10:59 am
Hello A!
OpenX is a ad server designed for website owners. Our website has lots of info about what it is and what it can do. Feel free to browse around to find out more.
cheers, Oliver
Comment by Oliver George — June 3, 2008 @ 11:24 am
We’re trying to switch from OpenX 2.4.3, which has many problems, to the online version. We tried upgrading to 2.4.6 but the errors are overwhelming. We can’t continue to have massive maintenance and debug logs, without any ability to control them, and without any ability to get OpenX to actually behave as its own config screens specify (truly stop automatic maintenance, for instance). It’s horrible.
So we desperately want the online version to work, or we’ll have to go elsewhere. But the online version has many frustrations and limitations that make it impractical for an average business to use.
For instance — your online PUBLISHER Feedback form is a joke. Only after writing a carefully composed message and clicking SEND did your form tell me it only accepts 1000 characters! What? Then when I tried to break my message into multiples to fit your arbitrary length, you told me I can only send 3 messages in an hour. I guess it makes you feel good to only get short, infrequent messages from Publishers, but that’s just hiding from reality.
OpenX online version has many required fields, but they are NOT MARKED, so we don’t discover them until after submitting a form. THEN OpenX tells us what is required, and kicks us back to the form with all our carefully-entered data LOST. This is NOT ACCEPTABLE DESIGN. We don’t have time to enter stuff over and over just to discover what OpenX thinks is required via brain-dead error routine that discards ALL data rather than lets us correct just what is wrong.
Then, OpenX rejects valid data because of bugs in the code, or maybe lack of experience with Internet standards. OpenX onine will not accept a Google-type email address where the username is two words connected by “+”, perhaps because a coder thought this and other characters are not allowed in an email address. That would be a wrong belief — check the international email specs and there is no such prohibition. In fact, the specs allow almost every character or symbol in the username part. How can we use OpenX when it blocks entry of email addresses that are used by our advertisers?
In fact, Google promotes using “+” as a way to have “sub” mail addresses to identify different uses. For instance, username+extraword@domain.com allows filtering on the extraword to route mail as desired — a cool feature. But OpenX wrongly declares this is an invalid address. If OpenX doesn’t support the world’s second-largest mail service, YOU have a problem, not Google.
Comment by John — June 7, 2008 @ 5:14 pm
Hi John
There’s a lot of good feedback in that but it sounds like it’s been hard earned. It’s clear you’re frustrated by some key issues. Thanks for taking the time to write to us.
I’m going to pass on the UI and email feedback to our product team. It really helps to hear the experiences of users and specific suggestions like the ones you’ve made are greatly appreciated.
The forum is the best place for support so let’s move discussion about upgrade issues and log file sizes there. If you have forum threads relating to these issues I’ll make sure they are followed up.
Thanks for pointing out the bug in the feedback form. Apologies for the inconvenience, this is fixed now. In future you might find it more convenient to contact us directly on tellme@openx.org
Finally, I’m going to ask the team working on the hosted ad server to contact you for your thoughts on that. This is an important part of the private beta testing and the team is hungry for feedback.
I hope I’ve covered everything there. Feel free to contact me at oliver@openx.org if you’d like to talk more.
kind regards,
Oliver George
OpenX Limited
Comment by Oliver George — June 9, 2008 @ 9:38 am