We asked SpokenWord.org listeners to rate the various features of our service, and here’s what we learned:

Most Important

• Browsing by category (2.8 out of 3.0)
• Finding individual episodes (2.6)
• Finding new RSS feeds (2.5)
• Personal Collections (2.4)

Helpful

• Ratings (2.4)
• Tags (2.4)
• “Most popular” lists (2.3)
• Improve the website design (2.2)
• Automated recommendations (2.1)

“Don’t Need It”

• iPod/iPhone integration (2.2)*
• non-Apple device integration (2.2)*
• A mobile-device version of the web site (2.0)
• “Send to a friend” (1.7)
• More screencast tutorials (1.7)
• Following others’ collections (1.7)
• Widgets for blogs (1.5)
• Post to Twitter and/or Facebook (1.4)

* It might have been better to combine these into a choice for “mobile device integration.” Since our listeners are 50/50 Apple and non-Apple, the combined interest in mobile-device integration might have been quite high.

It seems that sharing and other social-networking features are among the least important to our listeners, whereas features for personal use rank quite highly.

We should also note that this is a survey of those who are registered for SpokenWord.org, and most likely those that find some value in the service as-is. Therefore these criteria are not necessarily the same as what might attract new users with difference preferences.