During the last two editions of the Dev Digest we asked for feedback how to improve the newsletter and make it more relevant. Here are the results of the survey and the actions we will take to make the newsletter even better for you.

Release day and cadence

Currently we release the newsletter on a Thursday “When it is finished”. However, it seems people do have a stronger opinion about it. Most people wanted to have it on Friday, weekly and almost all read it in the morning.

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What we do with this feedback:  From now on, we’ll have the Dev Digest ready for you every Friday early morning Central European time. 

Current content

When we asked people about what they like about the current newsletter, unsurprisingly, News and Articles were the big winners. The video section and the CODE100 puzzles had a mixed review and the video archive / talk videos again had a stronger positive response. Everything else was a mixed bag, but there was a strong signal that community events were a crowd pleaser we don’t do enough with yet. 

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What we do with this feedback:  This is a tricky one as there are no clear things to remove, and in general we wanted to shorten the newsletter to allow for new sections. But, here are some things we will do to accommodate to the idea of adding new features. We will collate a few sections: 

• Featured video and video links will now be a mix of third party and WeAreDevelopers content
• Articles and news will get shorter but with more information about each link
• A dedicated WeAreDevelopers section with LIVE news, calls for papers and WeAreDevelopers World Congress at the end of each newsletter.

Resources style

We asked people if we should keep Dev Digest very brief (links and with an intro text) or if they prefer to have it more like a story with extra information about each content item. The results are polarising a bit, but there seems to be an interest in more details.

What we do with this feedback: Instead of simply providing the link, we will add more text and detail. We also consider releasing a link archive to allow you to find resources you missed.

New sections

We asked about new ideas for sections. These were: 

• Useful tools for developers
• Courses to take
• Keyboard shortcuts / Productivity tips
• Developer Relations Tips (public speaking, code examples, how to write a CFP)
• Cool tech demos
• Did you know? (tech history)
• Three Questions for Developers (short videos)
• Resources to use (cool APIs, Design libraries…)
• Job World News
• Recruiting Tips (how to write a CV…)

Feedback was great and a few winners emerged:

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What we do with this feedback: We will add dedicated tools, resources and courses sections and sprinkle the rest of the winners in an obvious fashion in the news/articles section. This is also good feedback for what we can do on social media. We’re thinking of a dedicated Toolsday on Tuesdays or Work news Wednesday there. We also consider converting the jobs/company section to include job world news and articles on how to improve in the job world. 

New functionality

We asked people about new functionality, specifically a searchable link archive, feeds and a content submission form. The results were, again, interesting:

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What we do with this feedback:  We are already working on a link archive, and will see what we can do about feeds. 

Criticism

When we asked people what we could improve, we got some interesting feedback. We collated these and will answer them now:

Feedback on current resource style

• I would like to see a summary for each item that invite me to read or watch the video or new.
• The article links. I prefer reading some in the newsletter even if a snappy of it.
• Sometimes there’s more links than content, I would love to be able to get the main points from the links directly in the email. Be able to apply the things I learnt in the newsletter in my daily job will be amazing!
• Too many links, I don’t have time to read so many articles
• Less videos, talks etc, more text resources
• Often the handpicked talks don't have enough in the title to know what they're really about. 
• Would be helpful to include the length of the talk because I don't often have time for that.

Our answer: Here we got a classic case of not being able to please everyone, but what we hear is that a plain list of links isn’t enough and people want to have more explanations and “try before you read” information. That’s excellent and we’ll be doing that more. Originally the Dev Digest was supposed to be a list of links to try out, but it makes total sense for us to give you a summary of what you can find behind the links. As to the amount of links, let’s play it by ear, and with summaries it is easier for you to choose. We also plan to have digest content as more in-depth blog posts on the magazine. We love the length of the talk bit, such a simple thing to fix and we will add that in the future. 

Feedback on events

• Too much advertising of the events

Our answer: we hear you and we will collate the WeAreDevelopers events information into one section at the end of the newsletter.

Newsletter design feedback

• To many images in Email
• It comes in too often and is bloated with large pictures, making it hard to read and needs a lot of scrolling
• I prefer newsletters with a less heavy design. Get rid of the centred text column. Reduce the formatting to basic typographical styling.
• Too many sections inside the newsletter. Keep it simple.

Our answer: good feedback and we will keep the newsletter simpler and add fewer images. 

Personalisation requests

• Add more information for self-learning
• The content doesn't feel personalised to the specific interests of the audience, maybe you should explore ways to tailor content based on user preferences or feedback. Implement a system for users to customise their digest experience by selecting preferred topics or categories.

Our answer: we hear you and this means a lot of changes to the platform for the newsletter. The main issue is that we don’t want to have yet another place for you to sign up and set your likes and interests, so we need to check if we can link the Dev Digest closer to the WeAreDevelopers profile.

Miscellaneous 

• Let's add some gamification, either quiz or code challenge and give some prize to the winner. If winner every week is too much, imagine to have challenge every week accumulated to monthly or quarterly.
• I want to follow you on Mastodon / the fediverse / the social web. (Not Bluesky, Threads, or Twitter)

Our answer: This is a tad confusing as we do have bi-weekly CODE100 challenges, but the problem seems to be that there are no prizes yet. We can take a look at that. As to a presence on Mastodon for WeAreDevelopers, we can also take a peek at that. 

Summary

We want to thank all who gave us their feedback and we pick five lucky winners who get a free ticket for the WeAreDevelopers World Congress. We will change the newsletter accordingly in the next few editions and hope to be an inbox item you look forward to every Friday! 

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