Redesigned Second Life Homepage for new visitors going Live

Katt, While I'm not a huge fan of Flash, at least you've avoided using it for principle navigation or important information ... you've kept it to adding "polish" to content. Please, no matter what anybody tells you or Linden Lab, don't rely on it any further; just leave it to displaying pictures and animations in a fancy way.

As for the rest of the page, most of my comments will have already been heard. Where I repeat the points of previous comments, you'd probably want to make special note as they're important.

Design:
The page is divided into three sections -- a header containing the logo and major navigation links, a flash section containing your SWF, and a footer. Each of those sections is visibly different in width, giving the entire page a sloppy, disjointed feel. The header and footer are similar enough to go unnoticed at first, but on any wide aspect monitor, that middle container for the Flash stands out and looks especially weird. Pick a width (the 908px header looks like a decent target) and stick to it for all three divs.

The home page is black. Black is the new ... well, black and that's cool. But there's an abrupt change when you go over to any other page. You really should have Big Spaceship generate alternate Flash content and logos with a white background, and adjust frontpage_nonlogged_bss.css for a white background until the rest of your site is ready to go. It's one thing to say, "We'll get to that" with the intention of making your other pages match, but the web is littered with abandoned good intentions. With carefully scripted CSS, you can set every one of your pages to look white right now, and when you're ready to "go black", make a couple of changes to your CSS, and bang! Your site is the new black. The advantage here is that when you later learn that neon pink is the new black, you make a similar easy change to your CSS and you're as current as the latest boy band.

I'd suggest reducing the size of that Flash div, and putting other content below it, like important blog posts, latest stats, or anything else you deem important. This serves a bunch of purposes:
1. As some have noted, the Flash content takes a while to load. This not only slows them down, it also means your server's connections to each visitor are staying open and uploading content longer ... you're significantly increasing the load on your web servers for the same number of visitors. This will affect performance for EVERYONE. A smaller Flash div means your users don't need to download as much AND your servers don't need to work as hard.
2. Right now you have no way to communicate information that you think is important to your customers from the front page. They have to search it out themselves under "Blog" or "Support" or "Community". Notices about new client releases, amazing record-breaking profits or new users, important new hires, and other stuff that affects the SL community as a whole needs to be seen and noticed and THAT is what a home page is for. If you plan to put news on your front page in its current configuration, most people will miss it outright below 575 pixel-tall fancy graphics ... you'll suffocate your news that way. Make the Flash smaller, and space will open up for additional use at the bottom. Make sure it looks good on at least a 1024 x 768 monitor, and you should be gold.
3. Not all of your prospective customers are going to come in on computers with big screens. Netbooks are the new craze, and you're lucky if you're getting 800x600 displays on those. Then there are people coming in with smartphones like iPhones and Androids. They might not intend to download and play Second Life immediately -- perhaps they're just checking a reference from another article while browsing on the train or bus or other location away from their main computer -- but a clean presentation here will make a good impression that draws them back later when they sit down at a computer that can run your software.

Fix that scroll bar. Make it function exactly like every other scroll bar your average user has encountered. A big problem with Flash content is the designer's tendency to turn a web page into a puzzle. That's fun and flashy for your designer and his or her colleagues, but for your average user it's a source of frustration. It's a barrier between you and your visitors.

I see what you're trying to accomplish with your new home page and it isn't bad, but it needs polishing. This is what I'd consider a prototype to be shown to a client for their feedback, not a finished design that's seen by the public.

Content:
Lose the "Flirt" pod. Seriously, if you're going to put this up, you have no excuse not to put up BDSM or furry sex pods. You have a huge community getting its jollies off gonzo sex already, and anyone with a head filled with monkey neurons will recognize the opportunities for kink after just a few minutes. THAT SHOULDN'T BE your principle sales pitch. When I talk to anyone about Second Life these days, if they've heard of it, they probably think of it in connection with degenerate behavior. I try to tell them about the opportunities for education, social accessibility for the disabled, easy international conferencing, and they just don't get it right away because they're swimming against a perceived current of sex.

When someone sees your home page, they should see new possibilites revealed. Make businesses see savings to be had with international meetings in virtual space. Open the eyes of educators to the promise of distance learning through Second Life. Give the disabled hope to feel part of a crowd without worrying they'll be shunned because of a wheelchair, braces, disfigurement, or speech impediment. And let's not forget the entrepreneurial aspects of Second Life. Some people are making a lot of money "in game" and THAT more than anything else legitimizes virtual worlds. You folks are sitting on a potential gold rush, and your home page is mum about that. Unbelievable!

And where are words like "Explore" or "Imagine"? Curiosity and creativity will be powerful draws for new customers, perhaps that should be reflected more on your home page.

Re-think the presentation of the images shown in the Flash. For example, look at the "Build" slide. If you'd never seen Second Life before, would you have a clue what was going on in that pod? Heck, I've been part of the community for two years, and I didn't know what I was looking at until after I clicked on it and watched the video. Maybe an image of a cube being edited, with simple shapes in the background might get the point across better. Similarly, the "Shop" pod is muddy looking. Ugly. "Learn" looks like the guy has no pupils. That SWF is full of poor image choices and needs a second revision. After it's resized. After the interface is fixed.

And ... if you're going to use Flash, at least put some sound effects in to make it more interesting. Use sound effects from Second Life.

Conclusion:
I wish you luck with this project. A site rebuild is never trivial and will always rub some old customers the wrong way. I've tried to stay away from my personal prejudices and predilections in this post, in favor of good practices and standards. I've taken the time to respond because I want to see Second Life succeed, but every poor choice, whether it's in your website, your client software, or your forums (hint: restore UBB), operates counter to that objective. Take what you can from your customers' suggestions, and don't fall for every silver-tongued promise from Big Spaceship. Ride them HARD and make them WORK for their money. They've given you a draft ... now break out the red markers and send them back comment sheets bleeding with changes. If they talk you into holding off on improvements until the rest of the site is done, they will never get done. Trust me on that, I've played both sides of that game and know how works out.

One other important item I forgot to mention is that cellphone browsers have limited retention of cookies and so anyone approaching secondlife.com will likely land in the massive flash enabled front door. I've already mentioned the bandwidth problems, but dropping into the new front door is rough on a cellphone browser, and it is extremely difficult to navigate away to the friendlier static pages. Yes, I could save off the URLs for specific pages, but adding a redirection link near the top of the front entry page would help a lot for biz folks who are new to SL.

Come to think of it, having mobile detection logic and redirecting to mobile layouts would be a great service to the biz crowd.

I've pretty much given up on feedback, unfortunately, Katt. Linden Lab has proved to me it's selective deafness is impenetrable. The Lab is always saying how it is going to improve communication with Residents, it has been saying this for the previous two years and I have not seen any results. I'm fairly certain you'll keep the website because of the 'money issues' and, similarly, am fairly certain it wont do the job.

Good luck anyway.

Seem to have left out the gambling and banking pods.

You're being cynical again.

You might as well ask for "griefing" and "botfarming" pods.

Oh, did I say that out loud?

Well I did start it by saying there was no link to CopyBot, afterall that is now part of what SL is... been around for years and not a bug, so wont be fixed.

Due to unusually high traffic Second Life is currently closed. So much for that first hour experience. Try again next hour. Perhaps you should do some upgrades that allow you to keep people online before you try getting the people.

As you may have read on the blog last week, we’ve been testing a redesigned home page for new visitors, those who have never logged in to Second Life.


My question is: when are we going to be able to see when SL is -messed up- again when you log-in? In the past, the log-in screen showed a blog post that explained when the grid isn't stable. Now this information has been buried, hidden from view. Some is placed at :twitter: (whatever that is), some is in one of several blogs, sometimes it is some other place and NONE can be found without looking at a half dozen different locations. Today I still can't find anything showing problems but there was an inworld notice some people got?

When something like money transactions is broken, doesn't it make sense to warn people before they log in something is wrong? I know you don't like to display your system is having issues and pretend this never happens but it does, everyone knows it does, we all accept this fact and -all- we ask is a simple to find notice that things are acting weird.

So PLEASE put this info in a SINGLE place, stop using all these various "twitter" etc places to put/hide this info and just add it back to the login screen? I don't know who's idea it was to put the grid staus info in multiple random places but it doesn't help us at all!!

Chirps in, Frankly, it is nicely done. In concept it is exceptional. However, I kinda like the geeky "old" Sl page.

I am just an average Jane sitting at home with to much time on her hands... It makes sense I can sit and wait for what like a couple seconds, ilke maybe 5 min to figure it out... Piece of cake..Nice work guys and gals.

But, You know.. Why not put a link to old file - web page- and include a hyper link for to click.. Give me options. "skip the fancy shit"

Ok. you know other wise it sure is pretty.I noticed a huge increase in the amount of logins today and this past weekend. My sim crashed on account of a bug and... well what ever keep working on the "new" and improved webpage.

I hope the next viewer eliminates the need for a palletized textures bug.

One could make good parodies of this page showing SL's bad aspects. I guess if I were to do such a thing I'd start with a gray textures pod.