Redesigned Second Life Homepage for new visitors going Live

....so more black to come, eh, given you're now "rolling out" the homepage? How funerial.



So, will you be paying consultancy fees for these ideas? After all, you guys paid BS to come up with the most ham-fisted and boring text to start with....


I'd like to genuinely question the design and challenge LL on a number of aspects - but that fact remains that such questions / challenges will go unanswered. Jamie again demonstrates that LL's communications are entirely one-sided and selective: only respond to the positive. Hence, sarcasm rules.

Jaime,

Thanks for the response. FYI, the page does have automatic Flash checking. It relies on Javascript however to do the detection. Normally, it would be pretty rare to see a client that does not have either Flash or Javascript. There are several common cases where this can occur though - first if the user has installed a browser add-on such as NoScript that blocks both Javascript and Flash for security reasons. The other is with some screen reader software (although some screen readers do support Javascript.) It is also possible that a user could disable Javascript directly through their browser settings, although in my experience this is a lot less common than users with NoScript or similar browser extensions.

Even at that the percentage is pretty small, although even then it may be useful to add some default content to the page. First, the time needed to make the change would be very short, and would not impact customers with or without Flash unless they fall into that category. Also, this change would help with your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) because web crawlers also do not use Javascript or Flash when crawling websites, so neither your flash content or redirection is likely to be picked up, leaving you without much content for search engines to index. They did include "description" and "keywords" meta tags for search engines, but you would be better off to also include content as well, and text is cheap bandwidth-wise (and if your worried about that, you should probably be using mod_deflate or something to compress content.)

Anyway, just my .2 L$

Thanks,

--Cog

Why do you say that? People do look at the secondlife.com site.

--- How many people look at secondlife.com in a day? I'm looking at Alexa and I see percentages but not a simple number of how many people look at secondlife.com in some time unit.

It does appear at the Alexa site that traffic to secondlife.com is going down.

Isn't that what one of th' current ones says? "Build your dream home..."



Good luck! I know the chances of a kid avvie being there are somewhere below, well, anything else.

That still wouldn't provide accurate results as to how effective the new website is, because the results wouldn't make sense:

User A is given version A of the website, and joins.

User B is given version A of the website, and doesn't join.

Who says User A liked the website, and User B didn't? Maybe User B liked the website, but didn't want to play SL? And User A hated the website, but joined because the sign up screen was in the traditional format? That isn't effective testing, that's completely insane, random information.

Though I do realize this may or may not be the way they are testing, I am just commenting on the idea of that type of "test".

(This is all based upon the assumption that the user who signed up did NOT state one way or the other if they liked the website, and obviously the user who didn't sign up couldn't state one way or the other anyways.)

All I can say is pretty much anyone of us here could have created a better looking more informative website than this even with minimal html knowlege. You seriously got taken to the cleaners by BigSpaceship. I would consider asking for a refund.

Perhaps you should consider hiring a resident and paying them with an estate would cost you less and be far better looking and more usefull.

Seriously.

That's not how you do it.

It's more like:

1523 users saw version A, 171 joined.
1712 users saw version B, 302 joined.
1445 users saw version C, 97 joined.
...

"OK, boss, plan B looks good."

You know there's actually a tag you can use to handle this case. Typically you use it with frames...

<noscript>...framed copy of the no-javascript page referenced here...</noscript>

I know I'm late into this, but there are two points to the portal page I wanted to bring up:

Flirt - flirt? Given the bad PR from lunatic relationships in the news, did we need that and showing a single female image? How about some other type of word with a couple or group of friends. You mean socializing and making friends are not as important or appealing as flirting? Flirting usually sucks for newbies. Not everyone is 18 coming through the door.

Why wasn't Create a choice? Showing an amazing build or a shot of Abbott's Aerodrome or something that makes anyone in SL go "ahhh" would certainly have been a selling point to those into graphics or art.

Only problem with this is.. what if users of version A would have joinned if they were presented with version C, or those that saw version B would have joinned if they had seen version A, or..... or..... Its a matter of taste.

What? You think 500 internet hobos and wanderers are going to stumble upon the SL homepage over the course of a few hours? I think not.


I would submit a challenge to LL - use their design for a few weeks. Look at the numbers.
Build and use might design for a few weeks, look at the numbers again.

Whichever gets the most registrations, wins. ^^

I think the point has been hammered home that "Flirt" is not the right terminology; I'm not sure it's clear enough yet that the content underneath does not belong practically front-and-center on the first view of Second Life that a new customer may see. It's not that "Romantic Connections" is a bad use of Second Life or anything, but it will turn off some people you really want to sign up, and those people who identify with that content are not going to need to see it in order to know its available. So yes, rename it, but also bury it as deep as possible in the off-screen scroll region.

Speaking of scrolling: just click-to-scroll-a-page/hold-to-scroll-continuously forward and back buttons would be quite enough. As it is, the scroll rate slider is almost invariably mistaken for a position control, when it is in fact a rate control. It's not worth redesigning its appearance to be more intuitive: the model space just isn't large enough to warrant a rate control in the first place.

Now a question: Is this front page the totality of the Flash content, then? No more of it will occur in the actual sign-up content pages? If so, then fine. Front page eye candy that actually shows some animation isn't necessarily a bad thing for a virtual world site. But if there's to be any more Flash content on subsequent pages, to reiterate my post in the previous thread, please be sure of two things: First, you must have advance plans and processes for insuring that the HTML and Flash content will always and without fail be perfectly synchronized (this could easily become a legal matter as well as a maintenance burden). And second, please also make sure that (somehow) semantic web technologies are not blinded to the site; unless Flash embeds and exposes RDFa markup, it's just an anachronism now.

These are excellent words I think, especially "Imagine", I agree, Winter. Perhaps Katt can put them on the list for the next content update.

The goal of the home page is to get people to join. Unless there's some secret hidden variable making version B only seen by people who were 3 times as likely to join as those who saw version C, you have to assume that version B was more effective than version A or C.

This is heartless and soulless stuff, pure statistics... but the nasty thing is, if it's done right (eg, you don't accidentally only show version C to people who had previously visited B-Chan and Something Awful) it actually works.

Watch the Worlds.

does not fit on a 13'' macbook even with the browser full screen.

Hello? Lindens? Are you there?

Picture of tiny on front page. Pass onto Bigspaceship aliens. Response will be "what the hell is a tiny?" At this point, you tear up contract.

For some reason, I can't get the new site on IE, but I can get it on Firefox (after clicking the Flashblock play button - since I prefer to avoid the overhead of flash when I can).

But all I see is a grid of pictures, some with words. Are they supposed to scroll, because they're not on mine (not that I necessarily want that). I agree that none of the words chosen really inspire me. I tried clicking on a picture, but all it did was get bigger and give me another "get started" link. I'm not sure I could have found the "What is Second Life" link if I weren't already used to the wording and location. I don't really understand the point of all these pictures.

I suppose that most people are willing to sign up first and then learn about things, or maybe they're heard about it from elsewhere and already want to join. My preference is to find out about the site first before I start filling out forms. I can understand how LL might prefer "get started" to "learn more", as do many other sites. It bothers me, though, because that approach encourages unsafe surfing.

One question about the statistics gathered. Were they directing users randomly to one or the other home pages? Or are they comparing the new page against historical registration percentages, and if so, are they seasonally corrected?

PS: As long as I had easy access to the old homepage via IE, I figured I'd compare. And I can see how almost anything could be an improvement. The old page doesn't engage the user at all. It does make it easier to see that SL is for businesses, too, and the top menu feels bigger and easier to read, but that's about it. I don't think either page would have encouraged me to sign up. (I signed up because of publicity in technology media.)

Most every Flash site I've been to has sound added also. Since the Audio experience has always been a plus first with all the media/audio land settings, gestures and now voice, shouldn't the new site use more audio "bells and whistles" ? With the big "No I Do Not Want to be overheard surfing the net at my workplace" panic button option. Just a thought Maybe Billy Mays would like a Second Life. But Wait there's more!! Audio sales pitches are much more compelling yanno.

True but this presents what you can see, not what you can do. The outside won't realize that most of SL's content are by people like them.

I cleared browser cache and cookies to see the new home page and these are my suggestions:

- Put the logo "Your world. Your Imagination." in the new home page, at the left of the "Second Life" logo, adding "Alt" and "Description" attributes: search engines can index these informations. And give it a meaningful name: in the actual home page, "Second Life" logo and "Your world. Your Imagination." logo are joined in a unique imagine named "spacer.gif"... I suggest to separate them and name something like "SecondLifeLogo.gif" and "YourWorldYourImagination.gif";

- Add these words to the "meta keywords tag": metaverse, interverse, art, photography, machinima, building, virtual music, virtual business, GPL 3D browser, ecc.;

- The slider at the bottom of the flash is confusing because it determines the "velocity" and not the "position" of the scrolling. If the slider indicates the "position" can be used to see all the contents without confusion. So if a user wants to scroll, can put the mouse over the left or right edge of the flash area; if a user wants to go in a specific place, can use the slider to position the flash in the right place (can be useful to make sure to "have seen everything";

- Statistics of the Second Life web site accesses can be seen at http://www.quantcast.com/p-1a-0BmZwk53g2: reading the HTML code, it can be found that both the actual and the new home page points to this site to measure accesses;

- As said by MaCelia Morane, add a caption with a description on every box: it's not clear that if you clic on a box with a verb, you'll see a video and if you'll clic on another box, you'll be redirected on the registration page. Adding "Watch the video" or "Join us" can be enough;

- Add links to specific sections of Showcase on imagines without videos (adding captions like "Arts and Culture Showcase", so these imagines can be useful too;

- Both in the new and in the actual home page there is a section "<noscript>" (that can be seen by browser without Javascript enabled), but is used only to track usage statistics by Quantas. Put a link to the actual home page: can be seen without Javascript and is better than nothing.... In the future, the actual home page can be simplified and used for browser without Javascript and Flash;

- As said by Winter Ventura and AWM Mars, add more verbs: Create, Explore, Engage, Invent, Share, Trade, Learn, Grow, Discover, Reach Out, Entertain, Teach, Interact, Imagine, Innovate, Gratify, Amaze, Give...;

- Add something like "For business" near the "Second Lide Grid" Logo: not everyone knows that this is the right place to go for business related informations.

Hope this helps

Best wishes to all of you!

This was sort-of my point, the information is random at best. You can't say that these people joined because of the website, they might have joined just to join (or a million other reasons), and the website may have had nothing to do with it at all.

From what it sounds like to me: if X amount of people joined using website A, then that same X amount of people liked website A. That doesn't make sense =/

Beyond just getting people to sign up for Second Life, one might want to get people who will like Second Life enough to stick around and give Linden Lab some money to sign up.

A page might be good at getting people to sign up but not so good at getting the right people, the ones who will stay and pay Linden Lab some money, and hopefully produce some content in-world, or do something else that increases the chances of others staying and paying, such as spending an inordinate amount of time helping people with problems and questions in the forums.

Wow I think the new front page is very nice!
I am impressed!
If I was new and seen this I would want to join!

The new page i have now seen live.
When i opened it, it was fast and very nervously scrolling.
I wanted to get passed it as quickly as possible.
Some will like it, some not. To my opinion it is very nervous.