I’ve been receiving quite a bit of comments and reports about the site’s new layout currently available in the beta area of the site. Some favourable, some not.
The most common negative common so far is that there is nothing wrong with the current layout, so no need to change, and don’t fix what isn’t broken.
Maybe from a reader’s point of view, who’s been using the site for a while and used to the current layout, nothing is broken. However, from my side, it is broken, and broken badly enough for me to put a big effort into fixing it.
Each day, at least once, somebody contacts me and ask how they go about posting their stories on the site. And as often, somebody requests a feature that is already available on the site.
The first issue is the most frustrating. The links to post stories are on the front page of the site, however, currently, they are low enough to require people to scroll down and look to the left of the site’s home page.
It seems that no one scrolls down to see what’s there. Most simply come to the site, look at the links on top (in the navigation bar) and use those; as though scrolling takes such an effort.
What makes this worse, is that I would like to add new stuff to the site and if I do like I’ve done before, and add new links below the other links, then nobody would see them.
So, the site’s new design makes maximum use of the prime real estate on the home page (the top 400 pixels). It makes it look a bit busy, but at least most people won’t have to scroll down anymore.
Another change is the existence of two distinct areas on the site. One for the readers and one for the authors/editors. The reason for this is that many authors don’t read much on the site; they spend their time in pages dedicated to them. So, to minimize the effort for them to reach those places, I moved them to their own area and brought them forward to minimize the clicks that the authors need to reach them.
Having two distinct areas requires two main pages. So the new home pages (I hate that term), make that ‘Main Pages’ are titled ‘Read’ for readers and ‘Write/Contribute’ for authors and editors. Both pages are bookmarkable (as are all the pages on the site by the way), so authors can bookmark the ‘Write/Contribute’ page and readers can bookmark the other.
The other issue that needs fixing is the fact that a large number of features on the site seem to go unnoticed/unused and I get requests for them. It seems that most people don’t go exploring on the site, they don’t try various links to see what they do and what the pages offer. Many people don’t even know that they can change their own passwords, or update their email address, or change the font size in the listings or stories.
The way that I can try to fix this is by posting using tips on the front page. Those tips will go in the ‘News’ section on the main page. And since people don’t like to scroll down, the news section needed to be brought up closer to the navigation bar. For the free area users, that has been the case all along, but for premier members who actually need most of those tips, the news section was always hidden below, pushed down by the random story suggestion mechanism. The new three-column design brings the news section up right below the navigation bar.
PS: for those asking that I post more often on this blog: I’m a man of few words, so if I don’t have anything significant to say, I don’t say anything, so there would be nothing for me to post.