Layout improvements at AfterDawn.com
Petteri Pyyny
30 Aug 2006 4:35
After we launched our "innovation contest" couple of weeks ago, we have received quite massive amount of suggestions on how to improve our site. And unlike some companies, we actually do read all the feedback we receive and try to learn from the feedback.
Several changes to the site have been made during the last couple of weeks, all of them based on the feedback we've received from our users. Here's a quick summary of the improvements we've launched so far:
- New layout for our top menu
- We have had this "wtf" face on ever since we started reading the feedback from our users. Several suggestions included ideas to "have a software section on your site where users could download tools that relate to your site's subject" or "news section would be nice". We have double-checked our code during the last two weeks way too many times to see whether there's some kind of a catch that prevents regular users from seeing our top navigation. As we couldn't find such bug, we came to a conclusion that the top navigation was simply not visible enough. Well, I assume that is sorted now..
- Google search
- Large proportion of the suggestions received complained about our site's search and how bad it is. Many of you suggested to replace the internal search with Google. Well, we did exactly that.
- Better BBML/UBB code support
- We have added several improvements to the UBB-support of our forums. These changes are still in "beta", but they'll soon be visible to all forum users, alongside with an improved forum message editor.
- Ability to view number of unread private messages easily
- This has been suggested many, many times. And now its there -- if you're logged in, the site's main page shows you how many unread private messages you have.
- "Quick jump to last page" added to discussion forums
- Many people hoped to see an ability to quickly jump to the discussion thread's last page from thread list pages. Done.
- Mobile/PDA version more visible
- This is not a new feature, but instead a new placement for a link. We were one of the first sites in the world to have PDA and WAP versions of our site available back in 1999, but those versions aren't promoted very much. Now there's a link at the top of the site that will direct visitors to a page explaining how to access our site using mobile phone or PDA.
- ...tons of minor changes to the system back-end..
This is just the tip of the iceberg and we have tons of new stuff coming up during this autumn. Also, as the competition is still in its infancy, we truly hope that people send us their ideas on how to improve our site and how to make it more accessible for people using the site for the very first time. You can send your ideas to us using this form -- and have a chance to win 1,500 euros..