New website discussion

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fernando

fernando

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As many know, some of us in the team have been working on the new site. The project is delayed because we went back to the drawing board to reconsider everything instead of just doing a cosmetic redesign.

The biggest obstacle until now has been deciding on what we really want for the website. Something focused on new users? investors? developers? a bit of everything???

Yesterday we discussed a structure proposal I did that tries to cover all bases. The homepage would be very simple, with a call to action for new users above the fold and a big index/menu below the fold, with everything easily accessible from there. AndyDark is preparing now an alternative with a longer homepage that would cover all sections too.

I attach below the annotated images of my proposal so anyone can give feedback. Please consider that this are just mockups. We are not discussing the aesthetics now, we are just trying to get to an agreed structure. We need to decide what type of website we want and then on the specific sections and such. There are not right or wrong answers to some of the questions, so please don't hesitate to post your ideas (btw, I'm gonna be travelling until Saturday, so if I don't answer/participate more it is because I haven't read).


Homepage.png
Page in top menu.png
Page in section.png
 
fernando I see the amount of efforts put into this. While I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news our site is too important to just go gaga about the efforts and disregard elements that can and should be improved. A few points only because I, as a solution-focused pro, am kind of lost if I am not sure what's the purpose of comments. Nevertheless:

-- "MORE" as the Main Navigation drop-down menu. Drop-down menus are fading off the Web. "Drop-downs are relics of our point-and-click past, replaced by minimalist navigation schemes designed around mobile-friendly taps and swipes," and as such are bulky, clumsy, and, worse of all, require an user to WORK in order to explore what should be OBVIOUS;
-- below the fold tries well too hard. It looks like we're trying to cram in everything in that poor little space that no one is going to really explore in full;
-- the Search Box is best as 27 characters long, well, box. The current solution proposed takes too much of a valuable space

Than "details" (the devil is in the detail," is another big secret of a successful website):
-- Newsletter needs to be UP. It is a DIRECT call to an user to ENGAGE with us and it MUST NOT be hidden in the footer.
+++ Talking details. Let us please ponder: "Subscribe" (Enlist!!) vs. "Join Us" (be a part of something) Which one do we think people prefer? A hint: "Join us"
-- FORUMS must be accessible from the Main Nav or, better from the secondary, Upper Nav given that our might get busy. Same with the BLOG and, given our niche, GITHUB links.
-- "Stay Connected" is another feature of INTERACTIVITY that should NOT be hidden in "below the fold".

The cardinal sin of the proposed design is its navigation structure I am sorry to say. Page 6 of my dash.org SEO Audit (http://document.li/W9gZ) deals with the Nav Menu in more detail. While we can debate is one term ("P2P economy" I know fernando dislikes :smile: suitable or not) or another, we SHOULD NOT have our MAIN FEATURES linking from the root.

I firmly believe our MAIN advantages / "key selling points" are:
-- DarkSend soon to be Privacy Protect;
-- InstantX as the huge advantage for merchants and the money remittance business alike;
-- Masternodes as an investment;
-- Governance.
These must be emphasized.

With a caveat -- who is the INTENDED AUDIENCE for the dash.org? The proposed design does not seem as 100% sure about it. As such, it seems like it wants to "please everyone" and gives info for everyone so the information is still "disjointed, without a clearly defined central theme."

I really worry more work, time and money will enter into this development without producing the best possible outcome. My feeling is that you guys are getting closer but are not there yet...
 
Well, I don't know if my 2 cents are worth anything, but I have a comment as a user. My problem with all the websites I've seen is that they can never tell me any basic facts. Ethereum's website does a good job of explaining now, but it didn't used to. Bitshares sells their product on what it can do, but not how it does it. And frankly, there is no magic without the how. These services exist in the "normal" world, why use Bitshares (not only that, what I've dug up on their system, I don't like as it creates a good ol boy network, and isn't nearly decentralized enough to even think of calling it decentralized) But you can't discover any of the details, 'cause they don't give 'em.

So, what I as a user would want to see immediately (or easy to find from home page) is

1. the stats (how many coins/blocks/etc... ) like what you see on the OP of bitcointalk - as well, hopefully, as a chart that shows current number of MNs, price, coins outstanding, etc...
2. In easy language to understand, the structure of the network, with a graph of probabilities on privacy, etc..
3. For the ease of use wallet in Evo, I think a simple explanation of how it'll work, what you can do with it - but not to the degree of the white paper - would be great. Just keep it easy to read and engaging - no crypto-speak
4. Talk about the DAPI and give ideas of the types of services that can be built on top of it
5. How the Masternodes create a unique investment opportunity

All those points should be written in a clear - easy to understand way

Of course the Wiki and white papers should hold all the details, but we need as much of this condensed and simplified in order to pull people in - before they lose interest being bogged down in too many details.

Anyway, that's what I always want to see, when I go to one of these websites, and it's seldom that I get any of it. So just my 2 cents :)
 
I have one question only. If there are funds remaining in the website budget why are we not spending them to hire a professional? What I hear often is "we are busy, we all have our own lives, we all have families, etc etc." - There is much truth to those statements but they are not the real problem and the solution is use the funds we have to hire a pro. The opportunity cost alone should worry people.

One response to this is "we cant just say 'here's some money make us a website'" - This is true. A web developer will probably laugh at us if we handed her our project without any mockup's or anything. But who is to say the budget funds can not be used to hire a professional who can help us lay out the website? If there are people with the technical skills to build the website in the community, GREAT. What I see lacking is a professional who can layout the website. As much as I appreciate the people working on this and their effort, 5-6 months of failure might be the Que to let someone else step up.

*edit to clarify, I am not saying the people working on this CANT do it. I'm just wondering, do they have the time to do it? Paying a professional would ensure completion of the project in a timely manner.
 
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I completely agree with GreyGhost, currently the best designed websites are https://www.ethereum.org/, http://maidsafe.net/ and http://factom.org/. All three websites use a similar format to what you have drafted fernando, however they prodominantly rely on a single page scroll down with multiple call to actions on the way down. I think we should be basing our design off of the best aspects of these three websites. As Picaso said "Good artists copy, great artists steal.". There is no need to go reinvent anything, the layout is already there, just copy it and make small tweaks. Scroll down with multiple CTA's is crucial in my opinion though.
 
itscrazybro said:
I completely agree with GreyGhost, currently the best designed websites are https://www.ethereum.org/, http://maidsafe.net/ and http://factom.org/. All three websites use a similar format to what you have drafted fernando, however they prodominantly rely on a single page scroll down with multiple call to actions on the way down. I think we should be basing our design off of the best aspects of these three websites. As Picaso said "Good artists copy, great artists steal.". There is no need to go reinvent anything, the layout is already there, just copy it and make small tweaks. Scroll down with multiple CTA's is crucial in my opinion though.
Click to expand...

I was actually hoping the site would *not* look like ethereum.org, maidsafe.net, factom.org. Every goddamn cryptocurrency homepage looks the same and they all scream "I'm a cheap scam" regardless of whether or not this is actually the case. The best one is http://www.bitcoin.org. IMO, if your homepage scrolls down more than 2-3 pages, you're doing it wrong. Even though I am completely on board with the website redesign project, I think the current dash.org site already beats most crypto websites.
 
GreyGhost said:
fernando A few points only because I, as a solution-focused pro,
Click to expand...

Here you had me!

GreyGhost said:
fernando -- "MORE" as the Main Navigation drop-down menu. Drop-down menus are fading off the Web. "Drop-downs are relics of our point-and-click past, replaced by minimalist navigation schemes designed around mobile-friendly taps and swipes,"
Click to expand...

Here you lost me. Completely...

------------------------------
| Parental advisory
| Explicit Posting
------------------------------

Now I wanna kill you!

Slowly...

With a rusty chainsaw or something...

And feed baby-sharks with the remainders..

Hoping they'll become great white sharks, swim up Redmond and kill Microsofts UI-designer team...with a short stopover at Cupertino...

[ DISCLAIMER: this is not personally addressed at you, GreyGhost ]

4 years ago I was very annoyed to navigate through 20 menus with 100 sub-menus on my tablet...but nowadays I'm even more annoyed to have a dual-4k-monitor setup on my PC showing me 8 gigantic annoyingly colored fucking buttons on 2 5120x2880 screens.
Which I have to click on to see the next population of annoyingly colored buttons. Which will navigate me to the buttons which will allow me to, as I find out, do everything BUT what I wanted to do.

HELLO! We're in 2016!

If you want to show me a UI, do find out whether I'm using a PC, tablet or phone or something in between. And if you're too dump to figure that out hire someone who can. It's not rocket science. Or, if it were, hire a rocket scientist. Or let the end-user decide which UI-presentation she prefers.

We had (more or less) great UIs for PCs with Windows 7, with Windows 8 they were fucked up for both, PC and tablets/phones, and with Windows 10 I have to use Google search to find out how to remove those gigantic tiles. And, much to my disappointment, the web follows and praises this as the best thing since sliced bread.
I neither want to tap and swipe with my mouse, nor do I want to Ctrl+Shift+F1 with my mobile.

By now every software company worth mentioning should have a good architectural separation of UI-layer and application layer, so it's not TOO much work to keep the PC UI along with the tablet or phone UI.
Right?
RIGHT?

Thank you, I feel better now.

TL;DR
Make UI depending on where it's used, not on what's 'en vogue'.
 
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crowning said:
Here you had me!
If you want to show me a UI, do find out whether I'm using a PC, tablet or phone or something in between. And if you're too dump to figure that out hire someone who can. It's not rocket science. Or, if it were, hire a rocket scientist. Or let the end-user decide which UI-presentation she prefers.

We had (more or less) great UIs for PCs with Windows 7, with Windows 8 they were fucked up for both, PC and tablets/phones, and with Windows 10 I have to use Google search to find out how to remove those gigantic tiles. And, much to my disappointment, the web follows and praises this as the best thing since sliced bread.
I neither want to tap and swipe with my mouse, nor do I want to Ctrl+Shift+F1 with my mobile.
Click to expand...

Well, when I am "in charge" of any web development (yeah, I read your tiny disclaimer:smile: only that I am not sure that what I wrote about the "MENU" from the mock-up was a clear statement against drop-down as proposed...) I have the guys create different versions for different user agents. Nothing is as simple as that. Dash site is a conceptual challenge and that's why the guys struggle with it so much. Just check what itscrazybro and TroyDASH wrote above to gauge different opinions.

Design wise, while this example is NOT really how it should look like -- the future dash.org site -- I'd be thinking along the lines of http://www.madwell.com/.

I would love to see our future site having a bad-ass, unique design that is being shared all over the Net. Think of a 404 page, usually the useless blind alley, but if it's done like this one: http://www.bluedaniel.com/404 than it becomes an example of a brilliant 404 page design that is shared (linked to) all over the Net and as such helps to increase the site's ranking.
 
GreyGhost said:
I'd be thinking along the lines of http://www.madwell.com/.
Click to expand...

Looks beautiful, and needs only 187 seconds to load over here (yes, I REALLY stopped the loading time).

...http://www.bluedaniel.com/404 than it becomes an example of a brilliant 404 page design
Click to expand...

Having a "page not found" page which needs JavaScript AND a third-party plug-in isn't the solution, it's part of the problem.

Sorry to sound a bit negative, but I don't want to win a beauty-contest with a web-page, I want it to be usable and load in a reasonable time.

If it's fast and usable AND you can make it sexy, then you're golden. But usability is first!
 
crowning said:
If it's fast and usable AND you can make it sexy, then you're golden. But usability is first!
Click to expand...

Negativity not noticed for it is misplaced. We're talking and throwing ideas here, not building the site, at least it is not me who is doing it. I did the audit of the current site and clearly said:
-- UX (usability) is always the main concern. Current or proposed Nav is simply not good enough. But I am the one who does not want to go too negative and I do not know how to really discuss these issues unless I clearly state the proposed design will not work. Here, I said it (a thread message will not give you an answer what works);
-- page speed is one of the current site's key problems that need to be addressed. I guess that presuppose the new site also should be fast. I had a suggestion for the mobile version to be loaded instantly everywhere as well;
-- and when I give an example of DESIGN, like in the madwell site, I do not worry about its SPEED, rather its LOOK (and its only an example how thinking might go forward), so that "negativity," a valid critique of its slowness, is moot re: the point I was making.

So, I fully agree with your statement -- "If it's fast and usable AND you can make it sexy, then you're golden. But usability is first!" -- only that we're approaching the topic from different angles.
 
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Hi - i joined the meeting on this yesterday and proposed a long-scroll responsive version of Fernando's landing page with the addition of 5 or 6 CTAs linking to Fernando's main site layout with the nav on the top left. CTAs are for the main use cases like buying Dash, spending Dash, earning (mining / masternodes), voting (governance), community (forums/social) and each will contain large links to the relevant main site pages or the major ecosystem sites.

The main goal for the landing page is to drastically improve content discovery so it takes less time to arrive where you want to go after landing at dash.org whether that's to a dash.org page or wiki page or ecosystem site. Also improve the graphic design and speed.

Myself and some of the guys from the webteam like acidburn are going to do build a basic layout idea in bootstrap so we can see how it flows and have something to build on. next stage would be working with a graphic designer to produce the look & feel.

So if we can wait until Wednesday I can post the layouts for people to try out and comment on.
 
Can someone give me a reason why these long-scroll homepages are good? If someone is coming to my homepage, I want them to be able to *find* exactly what they are looking for on the first page if not the second page of scrolling down. Do they want to join the community? Learn about DASH's features that make it better than Bitcoin? Learn about what it means to become a masternode operator? Getting started as a DASH user (wallet, and where to buy or spend DASH)? Seriously, if I can't immediately see something to navigate to for all of those reasons I might be visiting the site, on the first one or two pages, I'm already tuned out.
 
TroyDASH said:
Can someone give me a reason why these long-scroll homepages are good? If someone is coming to my homepage, I want them to be able to *find* exactly what they are looking for on the first page if not the second page of scrolling down. Do they want to join the community? Learn about DASH's features that make it better than Bitcoin? Learn about what it means to become a masternode operator? Getting started as a DASH user (wallet, and where to buy or spend DASH)? Seriously, if I can't immediately see something to navigate to for all of those reasons I might be visiting the site, on the first one or two pages, I'm already tuned out.
Click to expand...

most users are on mobile now and when they land they will just swipe up the screen. long scroll lets you hit them with the key calls to action along that journey without them having to really do anything and they just click the one they want. with dash.org we are talking about the landing page really as a cover page to just get the different categories of users into the right area of main site or onto the ecosystem site their looking for, where they can get the detail. At the top will still be a big 'download' and 'learn more' button.
 
TroyDASH said:
Can we not have m.dash.org for mobile?
Click to expand...

theres more to it than I wrote, mobile or not doesn't really matter it's about how most users discover content and how to make that easy for Dash's case, that doesn't have to be long scroll. it's going to be hard trying to communicate on that here and also slack/skype so if you can let me work with those guys and come back when it's at the next stage.
 
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I guess it's hard for me to imagine that -most- users are coming in through mobile unless it's to download a mobile wallet app. Even if we do get a lot of mobile users, mobile web design and PC web design don't mix well. It would be better to have a separate mobile layout like most other sites do. The long scroll is not bad for mobile but it's horrendous for PC, in my opinion
 
AndyDark said:
Hi - i joined the meeting on this yesterday and proposed a long-scroll responsive version of Fernando's landing page with the addition of 5 or 6 CTAs linking to Fernando's main site layout with the nav on the top left. CTAs are for the main use cases like buying Dash, spending Dash, earning (mining / masternodes), voting (governance), community (forums/social) and each will contain large links to the relevant main site pages or the major ecosystem sites.

The main goal for the landing page is to drastically improve content discovery so it takes less time to arrive where you want to go after landing at dash.org whether that's to a dash.org page or wiki page or ecosystem site. Also improve the graphic design and speed.

Myself and some of the guys from the webteam like acidburn are going to do build a basic layout idea in bootstrap so we can see how it flows and have something to build on. next stage would be working with a graphic designer to produce the look & feel.

So if we can wait until Wednesday I can post the layouts for people to try out and comment on.
Click to expand...
Sounds perfect AndyDark, can't wait to see the mock up.

TroyDASH, mobile/tablets are where all young people are now. Hence the trend in scroll down websites with multiple CTA's to replace or work with the cluncky old top menu. This technology is going to be picked up by the younger generations, not the older generation, so I say we cater for them.
We need to have our key points and multiple CTA's on the home page, that is our "book cover" and sadly most people still judge a book by its cover and don't read any deeper unless interest is sparked. The homepage needs to highlight our key features and anything that might attract someone. So things like, InstantX, PrivacyProtect, Masternode as an Investment, Governance and Evolution should all be covered here. I doubt many can scroll past all these features without being interested in at least one.
 
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