Great ideas from all. I think Alex has definitely gotten a good start, but we should definitely consider Owen's points about analytics.
On May 26, 2009, at 9:26 AM, Owen Winkler wrote: > > I'm glad that people are interested and passionate about the hp.o > site. > > My current major concern: If we do not state what we are trying to > accomplish with the site, then we have no means to evaluate the > success > of any changes. That's definitely true. > > > Alex gets off to a decent start here: > >> I think the hompage needs to do two main things: >> >> * Show that our software is amazing >> * Show that we have an active and welcoming community of users and >> developers > > But I think that this only really applies to one type of user who > would > visit the site. There are actually FOUR types of users who visit our > site. (I documented this long ago at > http://wiki.habariproject.org/en/Designs/Habari_Home) Right, I think we should make all our decisions being informed by those personas. > I certainly don't need to know that our software and community is > amazing. I'd nevertheless appreciate direct links to the API docs, > the > wiki, or support channels. We might say, "yes, of course," to these > issues, but we do need to remember that our biggest contributor to the > goal of bringing in new users right now is word of mouth. Satisfying > the needs of users who are willing to try and stick with Habari is > just > as important as bringing in new people. Agreed, but I'm not sure the front page is where that needs to happen. I of course value those direct links, but I think we should break down the users into 3 categories: 1) First-time visitors/evaluators: for these visitors, we should focus on what Habari offers. Features and screenshots should be displayed prominently, as well as links to comparison features. 2) Current users: if you are logged in, then the homepage should feature information on the latest release, recent activity (across all of the Habariverse), support information, and a link to file a bug in trac. 3) Developers: if you are logged in and have marked your account as "developer" then the homepage includes recent Habari activity, links to the wiki & trac, and a "quicksearch" field to look up information in the API. > The above are also hard goals to measure. Is there a click-through > that > serves as verification that a user agrees our software is amazing, or > that the community is welcoming? Hard to say. "We're awesome! Click > here if you agree!" Some more down-to-earth goals could be > quantifiable, like, "Turn X% of visitors into registered users." Or, > "Have X% of visitors continue from the home page to at least one more > page." In analytics terms, these are called, "conversions." We > should > assemble a nice list of these and discover a way to measure them. Agreed. I think 3 of the best metrics are: 1) Downloads/home page visits 2) Clickthrough to anywhere else on site 3) Registration > We need also to keep in mind that our home page (as distasteful as it > may seem) must include some SEO. If a goal of the site is to attract > new users, and they never find our site when searching, we've already > failed. One of the primary reasons to have the blog on the home > page is > to keep fresh content available for search engines. We're currently > doing a poor job of keeping that content fresh and engaging -- oh, > well. I like Alex's idea of featuring a "stream" of content, including: 1) Trac updates 2) The blog 3) Forum posts 4) Mailing list threads If we use good, semantic markup (which I'm sure we will) this should definitely help to drive traffic. Also, I think *all* homepage versions should be accessible to search engines. Perhaps at /user and /dev respectively, with logged-in users being automatically redirected. > There are some claims being made by folks about what users want to > see. > I made this Crazyegg heatmap a while back, showing where people > actually click on our site: > > http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3178/2817018229_663dc042c1_o.png Thanks for putting that together! It's definitely useful in our evaluation. Based on those links, these are some things I think would do well on a new page: 1) High quality documentation, including the ability to search it. 2) Enhance the demo with a variety of themes, making it easy to switch between different themes. I'd also like to (once again) offer that we use the "tour" I developed. 3) Screenshots *must* be on the homepage. The UI is one of the best things Habari has going for it, and people are clearly interested in finding out more. 4) We should compile a 2 different "why Habari" pages, and link them from around the site. — Users — Developers > I'd suggest looking at actual analytics to see how people are using > the > site, but someone insists on loading Woopra onto the site instead of > something useful, and I'm not sure how to access the Woopra stats. To > be clear, I don't want to access the Woopra stats -- I want real, > public > analytics. We should choose a single, web-based analytics provider, > and > open up access to review the statistics there. Sadly, none of our > historical stats are going to be in there. Agreed. Does GA seem acceptable? We could have a shared profile accessible to anyone who wants it. In fact, we could even have periodic reports sent to the list automatically (if desired). > In any case, I'm sure that we can do the site better, but it would be > folly to take the knowledge that is available and research that has > been > done and discard it in the name of a cool idea. Whether it's true, it > seems to me like people are coming at the "hp.o sucks" problem with no > review of the past work, perhaps simply because they don't like the > site's current design. Agreed, but I do think Alex at least is doing a good job of looking at past information. The wiki pages and linked threads are definitely helpful. I think the most important part is nailing down the what and the why, then focusing on the how (design). > Nonetheless, I like the idea of portals for the separate user types, > because it caters to the idea that there is more than one type of > visitor to the site. I'm not sure that those should be automatically > presented based on user preference, but a "developer center" that > appears after you log in would be useful. As I briefly referenced earlier, I think we should have 3 homepage versions. Anyone can access any of them, but based on your login it will direct you to one. They should *all* be linked to from each of the homepages. 1) /welcome — basic information, "why habari," etc. default for non- users 2) /user – support and community information, default for registered users 3) /dev — community and reference, default for registered developers > On the other hand, I oppose the idea of draggable, personalized, > configurable interface elements. Habari is not Netvibes, and I don't > see that we have that much information to drag around anyway. Please > also keep in mind that this site will require maintenance. Agreed. Seems like bloat and web 2.0 just for the sake of web 2.0. The only setting you should have as a registered user is default page: user or developer. In fact, that wouldn't even be a setting. It would simply use the last version you clicked. Thanks for all the thoughts, Morgante --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/habari-users -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
