First of all, thank you. This article is a short synthesis of your responses (17,000 of them), which we read one by one. opusdei.org went live in 1996, a year after the Vatican launched vatican.va and showed that the Church could have a home on the internet too. We started out as a small information portal. Thirty years later, we’re a website in 35 languages, with more than 12 million unique visitors and 84 million page views a year.
70% of our visitors find us through Google, 20% have our app, the PWA, on their phone, and a growing number (over 25,000 last year) come to us through AI search engines, which didn’t even exist three years ago.
But we gathered more important feedback than the numbers, because your responses let us know that we’re on the right track to keep opusdei.org feeling like a family space, a digital “centre,” and a great catechesis, just as St. Josemaría hoped. And your suggestions will help us keep growing.
The survey was so warmly received that it became a gift in itself, one that will help us keep improving the website together with you. We want to give something back by telling you what we’ve learned from your answers, what we’re already changing, and what lies ahead. We read every response and shared them with the teams running the website in each country, so our efforts respond to local needs in each culture.
Who responded to our call for input
We realise that behind every response is a person who prays, works, looks after their family, and took time out of their busy schedules to write to us. 60% of respondents were women and 40% men; around 10,000 and 7,000 respectively.
As for age, a quarter were between 16 and 40, and just over a third between 40 and 60. The rest (nearly 40%), are over 60: 24% between 60 and 70, and 15% over 70.
What you value most
Three things came up over and over again, across languages, as the best-loved parts of the website:
1. The meditations, the daily Gospel commentary and texts for prayer are, without a doubt, the most-read and best-rated content on the site.
2. How fast the site runs on mobile is the most appreciated technical feature, followed by the quality of our e-books and PDFs. Nearly 80% of visits come from smartphones.
3. The sheer range of content: knowing there are thirty years of writing on the institution and its spirit — work, family, friendship, everyday life — is, for many of you, what makes the site somewhere to keep coming back to.
What you asked for most
The same five requests came to us repeatedly from very different countries. Here’s what we’re planning to do about each of them.
1. Help finding things. This was the most common request of all (and the top one in Spanish, English, Portuguese, German, Polish, Catalan and Croatian) and it came through just as strongly in countries as different from one another as Costa Rica, Austria and Nigeria. You told us that it isn’t always easy to track down a particular article, so we’ll be:
- Making the archive easier to browse.
- Adding filters by format and category.
- Letting you save articles you've already read.
- Adding more thematic pages.
- Updating the subject index.
- Tidying up the menu.
2. A place set apart for prayer. Many of you asked, totally unprompted, for somewhere separate from the news section where you could find material for prayer and reading. That’s why one of the projects we’re most excited about is a library of spiritual life: a space where you can work through texts chapter by chapter, moving freely between themes and languages. It will be a proper library, not just a collection of loose articles.
3. More audio. It isn’t always possible to sit down and read, so we’ll keep adding books, meditations and articles you can listen to instead. The reasons vary a lot by region. In Peru, Chile, Puerto Rico and Canada, for instance, it’s mostly older readers asking for this, so they can listen while driving or when their eyes need a rest.
4. Seeing yourselves on the site. You’ve asked for photos and stories that feel like your own world: a variety of voices, faces and accents, testimonies that reflect the culture and context of each place. This is where we need your help: if you have a story, a photo, or a bit of time to lend a hand, please get in touch. You can help shape this website too.
5. A more modern look. We heard this from Argentina, Belgium, Ivory Coast and Australia, among others. You’ll notice a simple update already this year. It’s not a full redesign yet, but it will make a practical difference to our loading speed and image quality (something you’ll especially feel if your connection is on the slower side). A more significant redesign will come further down the line.
Topics you’d like to see more of
We also asked what new content you’d like to see. From India, we received a request for “more on mental health;” from Australia, “advice on parenting and raising children;” and from Peru, “help to get to know saints like Teresa of Ávila, John of the Cross, and Thérèse of Lisieux…”
People in almost every language asked for the same five key themes, because they keep coming up in your daily conversations with God and your friends. Those themes were marriage and family, faith and science, working life, Catholic social teaching, and a deeper look at Sacred Scripture.
Alongside them, quite a few of you asked for more companionship in hard times, and for stories that feel real and accessible: personal testimonies and shared experiences from real people, imperfect as we all are.
Thank you again
Major changes take time. Some are already underway; others will take a few years yet. But everything you told us is already changing this website, and will keep on changing it.
Many of you used the open space in the survey to encourage us: “God bless your work” (Taiwan), “Thank you for this beautiful and fruitful tool for catechesis and apostolate” (Colombia), “Thank you so much for the chance to participate” (Kenya). In fact, half of all the comments were simply words of thanks. We were very grateful to read them; you’re the reason we keep going.
Now it’s our turn to thank you for your time, your honesty, and for helping us make opusdei.org a true catechesis.