Home page update

[JustineMumsnet]

Hello all,
The eagle-eyed amongst you may notice a change to the home page. We've updated it to be more in line with the look already introduced on our events pages and on Talk. It's not the finished article - we are planning more tweaks over the coming days and weeks to make it clearer/ neater/ generally more useful. Please do let us know what you think and in particular any thoughts/issues/improvements you'd like to see.
Many thanks

[BIWI]

If arandomname fails her dissertation you have a lot to answer for, Justine

[JessicaMumsnet]

@arandomname

Do you do usability testing for Mumsnet changes?

Hey there arandomname - thanks loads for taking the time to give such detailed thoughts it's really insightful.
We do a fair bit of user testing at Mumsnet in a variety of ways including:
Face to face interviews and observation
Prototyping and remote feedback
Focus groups
Click tests
Card sorts
Surveying
Accessibility checking - mostly using automatic tools but we continue to try to recruit more people with different challenges.
Guerilla user testing (we were out on the street bribing folk with cake in exchange for playing with a new navigation last week!)

In fact we've used usabilityhub.com in the past too. As it happens that particular service whilst great for some things isn't our first choice because in our experience the audience tends to be quite different to our users. What we do like about it is the ability to use the platform to share tests with Mumsnetters directly.

Most of the user testing we do relies on folk generously giving their time to volunteer to look at new developments, play with them and let us know their thoughts. This neatly brings us to if you'd like to sign up as a volunteer tester please keep an eye out as we'll be putting out another general plea request for volunteers soon.


We also identify key user journeys and dig deep into the data to look at what people are doing currently and what changes when we introduce something new. We're very keen to respond and iterate when something isn't working. The carousel is a good example of testing and iteration. We're monitoring the performance of Discussions of the Day and will be A/B testing against a static image approach.

[JustineMumsnet]

We're working on a fix to auto-compress homepage images so they load quicker - will keep you posted. Thanks to those who mentioned it.

[JustineMumsnet]

@NetballHoop

It does take a very long time to load now. I also think looks too much like one of those generic domain parking pages rather than a trusted site.

Thanks for the intel - we will have a look at improving load times.

[NetballHoop]

It does take a very long time to load now. I also think looks too much like one of those generic domain parking pages rather than a trusted site.

[Viviennemary]

Taking so long too load on my old computer MN is nearly impossible for me to access. Took three days to get this far. Tried before but ran out of patience. Gigantic ad on home page. Please can we go back to what we were.

[paxillin]

Will there be a re-jig of Talk to make topics easier to find?

[arandomname]

(One last note, in case you're interested MNHQ, one of the tests gave me back 21 results for some strange reason so I disregarded the 21st answer in the write up above, to make it fair).

[arandomname]

There was also another question
"Who do you think uses this site and what are they interested in?”

Which you can see on the links above. I haven’t written it up as I am meant to be studying and really should get back to it now! (Can you tell? Procrastination in action!)

If anyone geeky is interested in the tool I used, it's a cool (IMO) thing called usabilityhub.com/ I learnt about at uni, can be quite addictive though once you start using it, you may even find yourself user testing random discussion forums you happen to frequent

[arandomname]

When asked what the company name was:

18 remembered the name correctly or approximately, with 11 remembering exactly on the old page and two did not know.

on the other hand only 11/20 remembered the name correctly or approximately on the new site – although one of them said “I am not sure if the name was "Clairol" or "Mumsnet".
7 of those remembered it exactly.

9 did not know.

[arandomname]

When asking if it was trustworthy.

18/20 thought mumsnet was a brand that looked trustworthy on the old page

But for the new page, only 10 thought it was a brand that looked trustworthy

7/20 Thought the new page was NOT a brand that looked trustworthy, with comments like:
“No, I would recommend to make the brand logo bigger, so the user can link a well known brand to the page, for example: Clairol."

3/20 weren’t sure, with comments like
“The page was quite cluttered so I'm not sure how credible the articles would be”

[arandomname]

The most important question is arguable the first: “What is this site about”

On the new site:
12 thought the whole site was about shaving / beauty / cosmetics

Of which:

• 6 thought the site was about the main slider image (i.e. shaving.)
  

• 3 thought the website was mainly to do with the topic of advert (e.g. beauty products)
  
• 3 thought it was about a mix of the ad / slider image (e.g. “coloring hair shaving hair”)
  

Answers included “I am not sure, it was a bit chaotic but I remember the shaving article/ad.”
“I think this page was about beauty cosmetics."
“Some sort of shaving product for women”

8 got it right on the new site and thought it was about mothers / parents / women

Comments included

“It was a website for mothers”
“I think this website helps young moms organize their day/plans”
“Everyday things and discussions for mothers”


On the old site on the other hand:

17 got that is was about parenting / mums / kids
Of those: 14 were general responses about parenting / mums / kids
2 mentioned the main pic (bookfest / educating your kids)

And 1 of them said “About parent education” could be related to home page menu / content, Bookfest image or a combination

How many thought it the old site was about the ad?

Only 2 said the ad: Skin care products
Also, one random “It is interesting”

The old site works much better in terms of getting across what the site is about.

[arandomname]

You can see the results for the old home page here usabilityhub.com/tests/b5ccd140224/results/f340c118b709

You can see the results for the new home page here
usabilityhub.com/tests/1ea87b05c719/results/60b542951add

On each there are five questions - change the question in the drop-down below the image to see the results for the different questions.

[arandomname]

OK, MNHQ you may love me or hate me for this - it could go either way! I hope it's useful.

But I got some impartial feedback on the new homepage using a 5 second click test. The way it works is random people from around the world (no idea who they are!) are presented with a website design for just 5 seconds, and then after asked questions about the site.

I set two up, one using a screenshot of the new home page (with the shaving image on it) and one using a screenshot I found online of the old page (it had the Clairol ad also, just smaller, and the main thing on it was book fest).

Each was looked at by 20 people and they were asked:

1. What do you think this website is about?
   
2. Did the brand appear trustworthy?
   
3. Who do you think uses this site and what are they interested in?
   
4. What was the company name?
   
5. Have you heard of this website before?
   

The results show that

• in the new version, fewer people understand what the site is really about
  
• people trust your brand more with the old home page
  
• people are confused about who the site is for with the new home page as more think it's aimed at people interested in narrow focus of the ad / headline image, not parenting as a whole
  
• people remember the brand name more with the old page
  

I will post more details below.

Why have I gone to this trouble? Well ...

1. I wanted to see if my suspicions were right
   
2. I care about mumsnet (honestly!)
   
3. I have a dissertation to write and this seems a zillion times more interesting! (Procrastination! Possibly the major reason )
   

I hope it's helpful anyway.

[Baconyum]

Also agree with arandomname that it was very slow to load, people won't tolerate that these days and image size is easy to fix.

[Baconyum]

Too many images for a word based site

Not obvious how to use for new users

Too many ads (I get that's how you make your money but it would put me off by making me think you were more concerned with selling me stuff than attracting users)

Too baby centric, yes it's a parenting site but babies aren't babies for long, but you're a parent for many years. As mother of a teen this would put me off joining, yet MN is excellent for supporting and advising parents of children of all ages.

Seems amateurish/dated, I first was involved in web design 16 years ago and this looks much like what I was dealing with then.

[arandomname]

Ooh, we have an ?!

What did I miss?

[arandomname]

Damn, can't spell

[arandomname]

Or the option of [chococlate] and for the webteam also!

[arandomname]

Although, better than shrinking all those images would be to have some words do the same job!

[arandomname]

I think the page is slower to load too. It certainly seems it.

Putting it through a web speed tool (GTMetrix) it says it loads in 2.1 seconds from London, if it was on a super-fast connection. (See pic).

But when I get the tool to simulate being on a Cable connection at 5/1 Mbps, 30ms, then it comes out at 15.7 seconds! That's ages! (See other pic).

One of the main problems seems to be that the page is large. It's 5.36mb.

This is largely because all those images in boxes are much bigger than the size they're being displayed at. Se we see them as little, but in actual fact - check it out, this is how big your little box images really are

It would also help if the webpage specified image dimensions in the code, and you could try leveraging browser caching, server-side.

You could also speed it up in the UK by moving your servers to the UK (my web tool tells me they're in the US, is that right?)

MN won't only lose users if your pages are slow, you'll also probably slip down the rankings in Google for that page, google doesn't like slow web pages - assuming it is actually slower now than before - I can't test it myself but I strongly suspect it was much faster before.

Again apologies to the webteam, I hope you have gin.

[SilverBirchWithout]

arandomname makes a really good point about the use of images sometimes being much less effective than words.

As someone who is not part of your standard demographic (older, grown-up DS, post menopause) you site is still amusing, interesting, intellectually challenging and fun. Loads of images of youthful, pretty young mums, tell me that there is probably nothing that will interest me here.

With fewer images, my imagination would provide me with the mental pictures that I can relate to personally.

[Sparklingbrook]

Oh right. Will make sure I read the whole NN, looks like it proves I just read the start.

[EatsShitAndLeaves]

Nope - and not trying to emulate either...long time poster who NC

Name was taken from the punction book Eats, Shoots and Leaves

I like cooking and host a lot but get fed up by the lack of reciprocation - so the point was I eat shit food somewhere and leave :-)

[Sparklingbrook]

I keep mistaking you for EatShitDerek EatShit . I take it you aren't?