About a month after the launch we talk about how the v10 launch has gone.
We look through the document we set up at the very beginning of this process where we wrote down all the goals for the redesign.
Addressing the content better – Yep! Areas like the gallery and the individual video pages are big improvements. No longer are they jammed into a generic blog-like template, they now have a design suited to the content and the experience of browsing/using that content.
Consistency – Yep! Things like pagination and sub-section navigation are handled much more consistently than they were. Areas like the forums have consistency with comment threads in the blog which makes the site feel more comfortable and looked after. Typographic simplification also helped consistency.
Better Cross-Device Treatment – Mostly. The site was responsive before and it is now. We made some choices that end up with a nicer design on smaller screens than v9 was, but we didn’t accomplish much more than that. We had some dreams to possibly AjaxInclude some non-essential content, but that opportunity never came up in a clear way.
Faster – No better, No worse. If there was one thing that we failed at, it’s probably this. We ended up with one less request on the homepage, which is good, but the page weight and page size are slightly larger. Not the metrics we wanted for increasing speed. However, the numbers are so close to the old design I think we can call it a wash. We’re already doing OK on speed, so as long as it’s not much worse we’ll be fine. And the new design is retina-ready, which we pulled off without decreasing speed so that’s something.
Increase traffic – Some numbers are up and others down. Very very minimal changes though, which suggest the design doesn’t have much to do with traffic. Fine by me, really. I’m optimistic these numbers will grow as with this redesign done I’ll have more time for content which is the real driver of traffic.
Better monetization – We didn’t make as many changes to this as I would have though we would in the beginning, but the small ones we did make have been a huge win. Some changes to the advertising setup are earning me $2,000 more a month than I was, and The Lodge area is looking like it should stabilize at about $3,000 a month. Those are good numbers that make me feel like leaving a job for all this is going to work out OK.
Other – Little things like using GitHub issues to manage site problems after launch turned out to be a great idea. The fact that I’ve closed 163 issues with only 14 left open is a testament that the code base is strong. I can jump around and work on anything quickly and easily. I also like that the site has some whimsy and just for fun stuff. It’s not as over the top as last designs, but still a good sign that we don’t take anything too seriously around here.
In the end we cover a bit of what I hope the future will hold. Mostly, getting back to creating content for this lovely new container for it.
Great work Chris. Thanks for this wrap up video!
Chris… Not having yet finished watching every single one of your videos I was desperately hoping that you would have been a bit more delayed in this video so I might be able to convince you to answer a few areas that maybe weren’t fully complete. That being said – I still reserve the right to “pester” you about some questions.
I do have an observation about your comment that your “time on site” hasn’t increased. Personally, I’ve absolutely never been able to understand Google’s stats – mostly because of exactly what you observed! Think about it. You said you got, what, $90k on your kickstarter – which means you got thousands of commitments to watch videos once you started publish them.
Doesn’t A viewer who now sits on your page watching a 50 minute view count as time on site??? I know I certainly didn’t close the page or wander about while I was watching? It just doesn’t make sense – does it?
You’ve got an entire NEW section of your site. Having viewed “tricks” for years, I have at one time seen pretty much everything so for months only rarely ever dodged to any other page except the home and the single post. Now, for more than a month, I’ve hit the home, login, V10 index, V10 single – back to the index, back to the single video. AND, instead of visiting once a day – I’m there 2 – 3 – 4 times a day!
So, to me, the figures Google gave you completely don’t make sense – do they to you?
Your page views should be way up, your time on site should be way up, your unique visitors may not be up as much depending on who signed up for your quickstart. I’d wonder about the Google Analytics before I got too worried.
I’m sure that it does, but the scale comes into play heavily. 4.7ish million pageviews a month for the main site and maybe a few thousand in The Lodge. A few hundred of those actually watching videos for long periods of time. That just isn’t enough to sway the time on site significantly.
Chris,
Hats off to you for this amazing series.
You had my whole attention each and every screencast and I have to admit the journey was a delightful one.
Thank you for sharing this redesign approach, your coding experience, and for keeping in your mistakes and troubleshooting. Very enlightening.
I reckon anybody (of any level) watching this will get something out of it. I personally learned a lot about pre-processing.
Working in public is defo the way to go. Keep it up mate.
Chris, thank you for the fantastic job you did with this series. It was very detailed and inspiring. I’ve learned a lot of new things, but best of all, I had the chance to watch someone with much more experience design and code an entire website. That on itself made me more aware of how I do things and what areas I need to work on to get better.
I agree with @shoogledesigns that working in public is the way to go, so keep it up. I’ll be looking forward to watching the v11 redesign!
I am so glad I signed up for your Kickstarter. I haven’t had a lot of time to watch all the videos yet. I was particularly interested in the subscription portion because I am looking to make a membership portion to my gardening website. I was not disappointed. You do such a great job Chris! I look forward to what you’ll do in the future! Thank you so much. You inspire me to keep working at my website.
Susan =)
Hey Chris, at 6:20 something where you show the typography code, I can see you commented out the word break stuff because of Firefox. I had problems with it in Firefox a few days ago where it would randomly break words right in the middle and basically not work how it was supposed to. Do you have any fix or workaround?
Thanks so much for all the videos and the fantastic redesign.
Thank you so much for these videos. You have helped me learn and grow for a long time now and this is just great! I’ve already referred many friends and developers to you and this site because of how much I love the content. Glad to see that you are doing it full time now and making some good money in the process.
Can’t wait to see what’s next! Count me in.
Chris, have you considered adding on here the 3 usability testing videos you had some company make for you?
I thinks it would make for a good closure.
Incredible timing! Five minutes after you posted this, I posted this: https://css-tricks.com/eye-tracking-css-tricks-com/
Thanks Chris =)
Took me a while but I finally got through ’em all. Thanks so much, I learned a TON, especially about how WordPress works. Looking forward to getting my hands dirty with SASS now too.
I got a kick out of all the people that commented that they hated the design. I liked it, but there was always something odd to me that I couldn’t quite figure out. Then at launch you added the color bar across the top of every module. That really pulled it all together. Love it. Very cool to watch, I learned a ton. Thanks!
Chris, I really like learning from your digital ghost. I have learned a ton of stuff and it’s made my life better! So that’s cool.
I would like to humbly suggest a feature for the lodge.
Here it is. A grid of small squares for each course in the lodge. Each square represents a video and has a color representing whether you’ve marked it as watched. Hovering over a square would show show the title of the video.
Khan Academy does this to wonderful effect but it’s not just that. I have found myself many times looking to keep track of my progress from the perspective of the whole course and I yearn for a dynamic graphic of my over-all progress.
With that said, things are pretty awesome as they are, your stuff is great.
That’s a neat idea! I can’t promise anything, but I’ll write it down as an idea.
I made a super simple demo of a summarizing table that resembles the periodic table.
http://codepen.io/gnarlycharlie/pen/myOxBG