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  • #54975
    infocentre
    Member

    Sorry guys – i have not disappeared, a little busy over the weekend!

    To pick up on some of the point above…

    @aaronsilber. Great idea – i will make another website the looks and functions like every other website..? I realise that there are issues and that is what i am trying to address. But for you to say that my problem is trying to make an online magazine look like a magazine is very narrow-minded for a designer/web-developer.

    I am by no means any kind of pioneer who can stir things up on the web and make things a bit different – But thats not going to stop me trying.

    Your caps-lock point is a great one. Except its completely wrong. Yes, there are adverts – but they are carefully selected, very relevant and add to the content – we see them as a 50/50 split – advert and content. PEOPLE ARE MORE THAN HAPPY TO SCROLL THROUGH OUR ADVERTS, THEY ENJOY THEM. This is because our advertising is very targeted. I am sorry, but that point is just not true or even close.

    What is true is that the navigation needs attention (one of the reasons for starting this thread!). The fact is that the site is doing extremely well – Just our site time average alone is staggering – over 5.30 minutes! To me, this shows that even if people are not using the site to it’s full capability, they are still enjoying the site without major issues.

    It’s not perfect – but it could be one day and i think we are onto something.


    @TheDoc
    . WOW – what a great site?! That function is perfect and looks fantastic. Does anyone have any more information on that?

    Thanks guys!

    #54983
    TT_Mark
    Member

    @infocentre
    “The fact is that the site is doing extremely well – Just our site time average alone is staggering – over 5.30 minutes! “

    Erm…woo?

    Think about this realistically for a second. Site time is all well and good, however I spent longer than that on the site and didn’t even get the chance to read an article because navigation was quite slow. You cannot read a whole magazine in 5 1/2 mins so make sure you’re looking at Exit Pages too. Why are they leaving, where are they leaving, how can you improve?

    As a magazine you should be looking at pageviews, because if they are not looking at pages, they sure aren’t reading your magazine

    #54984
    infocentre
    Member

    Hi Mark,

    What were you doing for 5.30 minutes?! By simply clicking on what is directly in front of you, in the middle of the page, you can be reading the latest issue in 10 seconds – it’s not THAT difficult..

    Pageviews again are high – average of 17. Most of our readers don’t have the time to read the magazine in one sitting – as with a physical mag, they read a bit, put it down and read some more at a later date. Our stats show that too.

    Thanks

    #54985
    ccc630
    Member

    @infocentre,

    I need to ask this: do you want feedback or not?

    Seems to me that a group of experienced, savvy designers (and me — not as much of either yet, but trying) are all telling you the website navigation and overall experience have some major issues. Yet you have a defensive response for almost all of the ideas suggested. If you’re happy with the obscure navigation and ad overkill, then state that from the start, tell us those glaring issues are off-limits, and have done with it. Otherwise, if you’re truly interested in improving the site, then START LISTENING and accepting the honest, thoughtful, and valuable constructive criticism you are receiving (for free, no less!) here.

    #54987
    infocentre
    Member

    Hi ccc630,

    I am happy to receive feedback and thoughts on my website which is why i started this thread – however, if someone makes a comment that is not true or an assumption (that is wrong..), then i will be a little defensive.

    I don’t need information and/or suggestions on the content of the website. This includes adverts. Frankly, comments such as that made by aaronsilber about the adverts are not only untrue, but also uncalled for.

    I also find it hard to hear someone say the problem with the website is the website and what it is setting out to do, so sit down and be part of every other site on the web – be normal and dont try breaking the mould.

    You will note that i am responding to all the comments and suggestions made – i do value them, alot! But it seems this topic has gone off-task and most of what i am hearing now is not relevant and verging on malicious as well as being a repeat of what has already been said.

    The point of this is to identify problems – Page-loading, navigation – and work on fixing them. It’s very easy to point out problems, not so easy to put forward a valid solution for them. That’s what i want advice for.

    Thanks

    #54952
    ccc630
    Member

    Malicious????? Do you honestly thing anyone on here is trying to be anything other than honest and helpful?

    You asked a forum of web professionals for their thoughts on your new project, which they gave. Specifically: “love to hear your thoughts and perhaps ideas on improvements? Which is exactly what you’ve received. Nobody has commented on the content, per se — it’s getting to the content that people are addressing. Which is, in fact, a navigation issue. If you wanted the commentary limited to that you should have specified that, rather than listing them as issues and then throwing out a general call for ideas on improvements.

    And while trying to break the mold can be a good thing, it’s also good to provide a positive, intuitive user experience. So: take the advice that a number of professionals are offering, or don’t. I could care less either way. But don’t come on here, ask for advice, then whine when people don’t stroke your ego the way you’d like.

    #54953
    infocentre
    Member

    Ok, thanks ccc630.

    Does anyone have any ideas for solutions rather thank continuing to highlight the issues – which we are all well aware of now?

    rickylamerz mentioned early on about AJAXing.

    Is there a way of ‘buffering’ a certain amount of pages after the current page has been loaded?

    Thanks

    #54935
    TT_Mark
    Member

    Well I’ve already mentioned that you need to make your link in the top left more obvious about what it is

    #54936
    infocentre
    Member

    Thanks Mark.

    rickylamerz mentioned early on about AJAXing.

    Is there a way of ‘buffering’ a certain amount of pages after the current page has been loaded?

    #54937

    @infocentre – My opinions are not my own. They come from objective knowledge of real-life case studies… and how are they untrue, or uncalled for? Show me data, and I’ll show you mine. It may be hard to hear, but you need to be objective if this is to become any kind of business.

    I knew a group of people, not unlike your group, who once set out to start an online magazine (not unlike your own) named ‘Cornzine’. They paid for hosting, generated content, and nobody went to their site, and those who did never came back. Cornzine has been dead since ’02. Your concept is not new, it is not original, but it *is* objectively known to be a bad strategy for the web.

    If you want to learn about web content strategy, pick up a copy of Erin Kissane’s “The Elements of Content Strategy.” If you won’t listen to us, then perhaps you’ll listen to her, or pros like Trent Walton, Jeffrey Way, Jeffrey Zeldman, or even Chris Coyier.

    You asked for a ‘website review’, and you’ve gotten one. If you wanted to know how you could improve your navigation, you should ask that question instead. Everyone in this forum is here to help – I’m sure of that.

    “Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.” – Winston Churchill

    #54874
    infocentre
    Member

    I could quite easily go into our full stats and annual turnover, but i would rather not divulge that information.

    I think this thread is over as i am not receiving any kind of help at all now – instead a barrage of how i should listen to what is being said – well, i am listening, but as i said before i am only hearing issues (which we are all now aware of) and no leads on solutions other than that put forward right at the very beginning about the AJAXing.

    Thanks for all your help so far, those that have contributed. i think i shal break my issues down into bitesized pieces so that they can be concentrated on, rather than my entire website being broken up and not put back together.

    You are right – asked for a review and i doubt that i will again!

    Again, thank you – but lets just leave this as is to rest and i will pose more direct questions having exposed some weaknesses.

    Thanks

    #54272
    logon68
    Member

    i totally agreed with rickylamerz . I see your site your site is very nice but Try adding a more clear Index page. using page numbering and more info then just the article title.

    #54194
    infocentre
    Member

    Seems like this didn’t go to sleep like i wanted! Oh well – here are some things that i have added since these discussions to make things that little bit better for user experience.

    Navigation ‘Reminder’

    When you land on any one of the inner (actual article pages), you are now reminded/shown the navigation and ‘Quick Page Skip’ area in the top left corner as it unfolds itself.

    This was done using a simple bit of jQuery, adding some cookies and such:


    You will see that the cookie expires in 7 days, so you wont get hit EVERY time you come to the mag, but gently reminded for most issues.

    As i am testing the water with this function, it may be that we set it to a much higher value if people dont need reminding.

    Still to do…

    The above reminds/shows people of the quick skip navigation, but not the page-turning which we would like them to use. Using the same technique of cookie-ing (?), i will likely introduce some fade-in images that show how to turn the page.

    Focus Group

    Taking into consideration what was said about the ‘simple tasks’ of finding content, we will be getting together a focus group to see what they think sometime in the near future.

    Caching

    I have never had good experiences with Caching plugins on WP, so did want to steer-clear. But after a lot of reading i decided to go with Hyper Cache and so far so good! This should help things with speed slightly.

    Page Pre-loading

    This was the biggest challenge and as far as i know has not been done anywhere else yet to this effect.

    With the help of a very clever person on stackoverflow, he came up with this code that fetches any attached images for the Next page (technically the previous post..) and loads them into a hidden DIV.

    
    $next_post = get_adjacent_post(false, '', false );// set last param to true if you want post that is chronologically previous
    //for debug
    if(!empty($next_post)){
    echo 'Next post title is: '.$next_post->post_title;
    } else {
    echo 'global $post is not set or no corresponding post exists';
    }
    $args = array('post_type' => 'attachment', 'numberposts' => -1, 'post_parent' => $next_post->ID);
    $attachments = get_posts($args);
    // print attachments for debug
    echo '
    ';print_r($attachments);echo '

    ';
    ?>

    Obviously you can ignore the Debug stuff, but it’s really interesting to see in action!

    The purpose of this is that if someone is browsing from page to page, (after the first page..) they are actually loading the image/images on the next page. So, once they turn, the image is there almost instantly and they will be probably unaware that they are then loading the image to the next page and so on!

    Thanks to rickylamerz for the inspiration for the idea – but i really owe it to the chap at stackoverflow who put it into practice!

    So, dare i say it – let me know what you think!

    #55041
    TT_Mark
    Member

    Much quicker, very obvious what the Latest Issue is now as well

    Still not entirely convinced by the show-hide navigation ‘reminder’. Kind of a “blink and you’ll miss it” scenario…Personally I’d have the bar sticking out when they hit the first page of the magazine (maybe even everytime they visit). When they move to the second page it then stays small until clicked?

    #55028
    infocentre
    Member

    Hi Mark,

    The main thing is that we don’t want the navigation (or anything else) on the pages to be too intrusive unless called upon.

    I had thought of extending the reminder roll-out just a teeeeny bit though.

    Another thought that i had was not having the share buttons actually load until called (clicked) because i think they can take up time – especially the DIGG one for some reason always seems to linger…

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