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In Reply to: RE: Audiogon censorship and new fees posted by mingles on October 5, 2008 at 13:10:50
I find it much more pleasing than Audiogon, in terms of the forums. If they want to actually compete in the sales area, that could use some sprucing up.
Follow Ups:
I don't want to upset the designers of the site, but there are so many ways it could be improved. I'll try to keep this brief, but there's a lot to talk about.
I'll start with the forums.
There needs to be more space between each thread. It's too dense with lines stacked on top of each other making it hard to read. People want to browse quickly and jump in when something grabs their attention. They don't want to read every line. Even Craigslist does a better job with breathing room and space. This is my biggest gripe with the site. It's way too dense. Our eyes need space to understand what we're looking at. Scrolling is much more ergonomic than squinting.
The navigation is a mess. Make it simple to understand.
If you start on the home page and click into the "General" forum, you'll see a load of navigation at the top. If you click into the first thread, the navigation completely disappears. That's disorienting. How do I get back to the home page from there? Navigation needs to be consistent. I also question whether FAQ, News, and Events are important enough to put at the top of every page. How often are people using those links?
Make the navigation abbreviations understandable. Do we really need to break out all the categories so they appear at the top of every page? A newbee will have no idea what these mean (hell, I don't know what some of the them mean):
[ SET ] [ OTL ] [ Hi-Rez ] [ DVD-A ] [ Iso ] [ Prop Head ] [ T 2 ] [ Shady ]
When you click into a forum, there should be a brief description. What is Propeller Head Plaza? Describe it.
Do we really need direct links to [ Music ] [ Hip Pop ] [ Rock ] on every page? Why not simplify with [ Music ] and then link to [ Hip Pop ] and [ Rock ] on the Music page? Categories need to be condensed to reduce the clutter.
The classifieds need help.
Get rid of the seller's name on the listing page. You don't need that info until you get inside the ad. Make it look clean... something like this:
Equitech Q1000 Power Conditioner $1,200.00 10/05
Synergistic Research Tesla Precision Reference 8 ft. pr $1,800.00 10/05
Allow pictures with the ads and include basic things like:
- price when new
- number of times viewed
- shipping calculator
Encourage people to use the Feedback system. Right now, it's utterly useless. People would be more willing to buy and sell if they could see something about previous transactions. You'd have a community that trusted each other. This is a glaring hole.
I could go on, but I'll stop here.
Did you get my email?
-Rod
I appreciate the feedback and we need more of it. For that reason, I'll comment here and leave the thread for more comments, but then move it to the Support and Feedback forum where these discussions are easier for us to track for doing enhancements.
As to your comments....
> > There needs to be more space between each thread. It's too dense with lines stacked on top of each other making it hard to read. People want to browse quickly and jump in when something grabs their attention.
This a something that's fairly simple, perhaps as easy as a css tweak, but it probably needs a new layout tag...still a simple task. I'll like to see a mock up and see what other folks think about it.
> > If you start on the home page and click into the "General" forum, you'll see a load of navigation at the top. If you click into the first thread, the navigation completely disappears. That's disorienting
Header changes are also a simple matter though the way pages are cached to html means that updating old message headers takes some work. Generally, most people just use the back button when reading messages or the link back to the forum for that message. But if additional navigation would be an improvement, I'm open to suggestions. Again a mock up is the best for consideration.
> > When you click into a forum, there should be a brief description
There are, in the upper right corner. Perhaps some could be improved, another simple task.
> > Make the navigation abbreviations understandable. Do we really need to break out all the categories so they appear at the top of every page?
This is yet another tricky one. I agree, the header is getting dense. Many people do know where they want to go and having single click access is desired. For Newbies, we tried to make the most common destinations the most obvious. If they stick around, I suspect they'll get it. I'm not sure simplifying the menu for newbies is the answer if it causes angst amongst the long term user base. According to Google, about 1/3 of our visitors stick around for 10 minutes or more on each visit. Two thirds are returning visitors and only one third are new. However, given that the one third is determined by a browser cookie, that's not 100% accurate and I suspect the number of new visitors could be as low as one half of that number given how many people either dump cookies each session or don't allow them altogether.
Again, there's definitely room for improvement, especially where key real estate is concerned in the upper right corner. A mock up would help and then we'd have to pass it by the Inmates as I wouldn't want to upset 80% of our visitors by trying too hard to appeal to newbies that may not stick anyway. In fact, the most common search terms for new visitors are 'audioasylum' and 'vinyl asylum', so even those folks seem to know what they're after.
On the Classifieds, we have three options:
1) Build
2) Buy
3) Partner
On the build side, we need to weigh what the exact improvements are and determine what it will take to get there. The current app is written in Java which is not my forte. Our developer, Frank, can do the updates, but he's moving and doesn't want to continue maintaining the code over the long term. So if the only specifics to make the app more useful are:
- picture uploading
- price when new
- number of times viewed
- shipping calculator
I think that's doable quickly. Personally, I like having the seller's name in the listing, but that's a nit. I'm not sure what we can do on Feedback, that's up to the seller really. It's something that I think will be used more if the app get used more.
The problem with building the changes as I mentioned is that I'd need a Java programmer to keep it maintained long term and I know that feature creep will mean that the above list is only a start and people will want more and more and more.
So the other option is to buy a solution. this has the obvious advantage of getting all of these features, plus a whole bunch more. However, a quick search or two have not been encouraging. I found a lot of offerings, but none of them stood out as perfect solutions. I think that quite a few would work, but there's always a risk too that they'll end up being either buggy or lack saleability. We'd also want something that includes source code so that we can modify it, so the language matters.
Any suggestions anyone?
Finally, the last option is to partner with another site. AudiogoN? Just kidding. Seriously, I'm not sure this is a real option as we'd want tight integration and we'd have to host the app, so that we can ensure performance and common logins and whatnot. But, it's a possibility.
-Rod
Moving to one of the newer versions of vBulletin would do wonders for this place.
What does vBulletin have that you can't live without?
-Rod
Rod, an easy thing that can be done to the classifieds is to rename "Optional Image URL." It's not obvious what this means. It should be renamed to something like:
"Embed image in ad"
I'll speak to the classifieds thing: Frankly, I'd scrap it and rebuild it in PHP or ColdFusion. I program a lot in both of those and also some in java and Java is way more of a headache long-term for something like that. There's decent open-source PHP and CF classifieds packages I think that could be improved/modified. The trick will be interfacing them somewhat with your existing user (and images) database(s) which is where open-source is crucial.
You may want to consider if you want to host photos - probably so, if you want it to be easy for newbies. Doing so means a lot of db BLOBs or else a big file tree mess, neither of which is ideal but as long as they are truncated/purged regularly it won't get out of hand.
I'd keep ads free to build the user base initially, then maybe go to $2/ad like Audiogon did way back when.
Feedback - this could be incorporated via extending the existing user DB and the classifieds DB. (e.g. a lookup database table with users from the current DB, mapped to the Classifieds users DB (if they are not the same) with a foreign-key to a Feedback table with buyer/seller IDs and feedback itself. )
I am guessing you are on the LAMP stack or something like it. Lately I've been doing most of my work in MS SQL 2005 but MySQL 5 could easily handle the above stuff also, since it has stored procedures and whatnot. Or other DBs could work too.
The Design/interface is actually the easy part. The back-end DB/hosting/etc. is the tricky part. Especially integrating into the existing databases in the system.
Frankly I don't mind the existing interfaces much at all. It's fast to load, easy to read, and thankfully uncluttered with USELESS garbage like avatars, smileys, sigs and the other egregious bandwidth-hogging rubbish that most forum/classifieds software is bloated with. I hate all that crap. it's useless to a fault. ;-)
-Ed
Well, you hit all the points nicely. The big issue is build versus buy and modify. My problem is that I've looked at a ton of stuff and everything that I've found isn't quite there. Image uploading and field customizing is easy to find, but not user feedback for some reason. A couple that I did find that looked a bit promising weren't open source or they used file databases instead of MySQL.
Then there's the language issue. We use mod_perl and I can muck around with Java, but I'm not much of a fan of PHP. I could learn it easily enough and we've got a system with PHP installed, so that's not a problem. However, it would slow down any customizing, the key thing being common logins with our current user database.
Any suggestions on specific packages?
-Rod
Hi Rod, thanks for your thoughtful reply. I really appreciate that. I'm happy to help in any way that's appropriate. I don't expect all my suggestions to be embraced without feedback from others. I just want to see the site become a bit more user friendly and pleasing to the eye.
Your post is an impressive list of observations. I too have noticed these things before, but in an almost subconscious sort of way. Your post brings them into focus with shocking clarity. Funny, I have always thought of the Asylum as something beyond improvement--like cheese fries from the Outback or a first UK vinyl pressing of Pink Floyd's Meddle. Why mess around with perfection, right?
Still, your thoughts on the classifieds are spot on. There is no reason why the Asylum shouldn't be the destination for used high-end gear. Or is there? Maybe the absence of commerce between inmates here is part of the magic.
-Kelly
Without music, life would be a mistake.
- Friedrich Nietzsche
> There is no reason why the Asylum shouldn't
> be the destination for used high-end gear.
I want to see Audio Asylum grow and get better. I'm optimistic it can happen, but I'm not sure this is the right forum to catch the attention of the designers and moderators.
I agree that some small changes to the classified system could go along way. Competition for Audiogon would be a nice thing. This is the only site that I know of that could legitimately compete if it was taken seriously.
Some interesting suggestions. Have you guys considered sprucing up you classified section and competing with Audiogon?
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