A quick survey of Google sites users turned up some interesting results. (survey done with Google Docs>Forms tool)
Collaborative Team sites was the category chosen most often. We are speculating that conferences and workshops will be a use case that will increase in the future.
We think it is interesting that over a third of the responses indicated they would not have used another tool if Google Sites was not available. Collaboration via email and attached office docs would probably have been the alternative. All these alternative methods for web site creation either require effort to configure a server or cost something for the tool itself (Dreamweaver). Google Sites came with our move to Gmail and calendar at no extra cost. (Examples of tools mentioned in the "Other" Category: PBworks, other open source wikis running on Linux, shared network drive, raw HTML)
A large percentage took the Intro to Google sites class - but we assume the 72% response for "Learned it on my own" also indicates that other features were explored after class, for those that attended. (We have seen a drop off in registrations for the Introductory class - so we are speculating that only advanced topics are now of interest and that introductory material will be self taught or learned via a coworker).
We asked for ideas on what the product was missing in functionality. Here are some of the responses.
- The ability to handle larger size document is most needed.
- Better table formatting support.
- I don't like the size and placement constraints on images that I upload to the site
- The same type of "plug-in" document upload process that eRoom had
- Need more template options
- Allow for some way to format attached files display (default order is alphabetical).
- Database (PostgreSQL/MySQL) support
