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

@arandomname

It's making Talk further away. Now I have to click three times to get onto Threads I'm On.

Click Menu
Click Talk
Click TIO

A few home page designs ago, I just had to click once

Hover over Talk, menu appears, click TIO
This could be done in one smooth action.

Then the most recent design, it was twice:

Click Talk
Click TIO

This feels we're going backwards in terms of usability for regular users.

Just one click away still - look at the active box on rhs of desktop, second block on mobile.

@Gruach

Hmm ... Presumably most people come to MN via a Google search for a specific topic - so dive straight into the talk part of the site?

Have to say if I arrived first at the new Home page I wouldn't see anything to invite me in.

No welcome?

Then Discussions of the day. Firstly I'd assume that only a very select group of insiders were allowed to discuss anything. Then I'd assume that only those discussions were available on that day.

I know we're all completely tech savvy - but it's so easy to decide - at a glance - that something isn't meant for you. Without clicking anything else at all I would need to be told, on the first page, that a world of fun awaits me.

Thanks for the feedback - yes about 70% come via google search but the home page is still important. We haven't had a "welcome" on the hp for a few years now - just doesn't seem to be the way of the world. We have a welcome on talk home but will only show to non-logged in users and points to guidelines etc.

@specialsubject

unusable on a laptop, like most upgrades; way too much scrolling, giant silly images, too little text. Awful. Weeny website developer thinks everyone has a brickphone or a tablet. More fool him/her; although even on a mobile screen it needs too much scrolling.

no worries, just set a bookmark for talk which is the only interesting part of the site anyway. Adblocker solves the ad problem.

the talk page has a lot of faults due to the last 'upgrade' but is still just about usable.

BTW that list of plastic-wrapped expensive convenience food is really rubbish, isn't it?

Sorry you feel that it's unusable on desktop - it's not what testing revealed so hopefully others find it easier? We are trying to maintain a balance between text and pictures but I do think most people would be hard pressed to say MN wasn't a bit text heavy on the home page previously?

And if you use adblockers then it just means we have to show more ads to those who don't to maintain a free site - not really in the spirit and all that!

@FruStefanOla

I often 'check in' via the Home Page.

I'm not anti change at all.

But, seriously, this is what I've seen on the desktop just now!

That definitely isn't what we were aiming for, Fru (although quite artistic!) Please let us know if problem persists...

@orrangeparrot

"I'm intrigued as to how a picture of Mr Maker entitled 'Mr Maker drives me up the wall' can possibly be perceived as overly commercial or trying to sell you anything."

It's about the overall feel of the page, if you had never seen it before.

Before, there words that pointed to the topics in the site. It was obvious the site was about stuff - pregnancy, children, talk, work, style and beauty etc.

Now the overall feel is of a massive ad, and - if the Mr Maker slide is showing - of a well known TV character.

It feels like I'm being sold something, not that it's a site about motherhood.

Why does Mr Maker make me feel that it might be selling something? Because he's a celebrity and that's what celebrities are used for, often.

I know the text accompanying the image shows that's not what it is, but that's not what people will see at first glance.

It's true the home page is less wordy - but it's basically highlighting exactly the same suite of content as the previous home page - just more succinctly. So, yes, I guess those blocks are like mini-ads for other content around the site but then they always were - they just took a lot more words/space to point you in the same direction.

@ScrambledSmegs

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!

Dear god it looks like something knocked up in a 'My First Webpage' taster session.

You really think? I think that's a bit harsh myself, but as said, it's a work in progress

@Vardyparty

No one looks at at the home page surely?

I would have thought that most posters just have the talk pages bookmarked.

It's actually pretty well used - last month (april) it got 870,721 page views of which 547,967 were entrances. Bounce rate - ie people bouncing straight off and not clicking on to further pages - was 9.19% which is pretty good (and something we'll keep an eye on to see if affected by the update).

The home page is our 7th most visited page after
Active
Aibu home
Chat home
Talk home
Relationships home
Threads I'm on

Thanks, Cozie. Couldn't find it at first, even with your directions, but got there in the end by switching from a mobile site to a desktop site.

Phew - off to bed now! Hope that answers some queries. Many thanks for the feedback - always useful.

@Gruach

Would now be a good moment to mention how much I hate lilac and lavender and mauve and any other attempts at purple? I have longed for a different colour scheme for years.

Trouble is Gruach you know how much MNetters hate change

Sorry, Paper. I forgot that different sites would have different views. My fault.

Wahoo . You've finally listened to my excellent advice and got rid of that dreadful logo. About time.

I know you can't officially acknowledge its ghastliness but we all know it had to go.

The new logo free home page looks ok to me but I never purposely click on it so I'm not fussed what it looks like as long as the logo isn't there

"It's true the home page is less wordy - but it's basically highlighting exactly the same suite of content as the previous home page - just more succinctly. So, yes, I guess those blocks are like mini-ads for other content around the site but then they always were - they just took a lot more words/space to point you in the same direction."

It's not highlighting the same suite of content though, that's my point.

It may be still there but you have effectively hidden a lot of it, and dramatically changed what the website seems to be about at first glance.

Firstly, the "discussions of the day" were available at first glance. Now they are not, they are hidden in a slider. People will only notice the top one (or the end one if the page had been open for a while). Before people got an overview of a range of discussions hand picked by MN staff. Now they don't.

You don't need to believe me on this, it's been written in thousands of articles all over the web. Like these two articles:

6 Reasons Why Image Sliders Are Bad for Conversions

Don’t Use Automatic Image Sliders or Carousels, Ignore the Fad

The first one points out they Take Up Space… And Hardly Get Clicked - see the bar chart image attached. The first one will get clicked, a bit, the rest ignored.

But even though the first one will get clicked relatively more than the other ones, it will still hardly get clicked as people get banner blindness with big images like that/.
In other words many people subconsciously see it as an ad and don't even look at it.

See the second image - a table from this page which shows the click through rate on slider on websites in a study to be between 0.16% and 0.65%. That's pretty low, don't you think? What was the click through rate on "Discussions of the day" before? What was the difference between the click-through at the top of the list and the one at the bottom of the list?

I imagine there was a difference. But not nearly so marked as it will be now.

Many you're not bothered about staff-picked "discussions of the day" any more? I found it a useful feature, but maybe that was just me - maybe it was under used? If you don't think people use it, then I guess you won't be so disapointed when it stops being used.

But if it was a popular feature, then this isn't "highlighting the same content more succinctly" - in terms of usability it's a significant backwards step.

Also, by removing the menu from the home page and not replacing it with anything signposting the same content on the site, again it's not "highlighting exactly the same suite of content as the previous home page - just more succinctly"

This is not about the blocks of content.

This is about the first view you get as a new user to the site. With the slider at the top, many people will never see the blocks.

Have a look at this picture - that's what I see when I look at the home page.

Before, you could see what the site was about, now people will have much less of an idea. We all know what mumsnet is. But the new homepage likely fails the "what is this website about" test IMO.

People will be able to guess it's about being a mum, of course. But will they get a feel for what the site is for? Will they know that it's a discussion forum?

It looks very Daily Mail to me.

Before, the words I saw included "talk, work, pregnancy, baby, child, work, style and beauty, education, money, food"
I knew what the site was about, and it seemed to be abotut important (to me) and relevant topics

Now I see:

"Clairol"
"Are you calling my baby fat"
"What gives you irrational rage"
"The woman in the Top Cat Halifax mortgage advert"
"To ask what bonny means when describing a baby"
"Have I made the right choice between two girls"
"Nice & Easy Clairol"
"Colour so natural looking"
"Try it now"

Can you see how the effect of this is dumbing down the site? People new to the site won't know those titles are discussions, necessarily. They could be gossipy articles. In fact the whole site looks a lot more gossipy and less trustworthy than it used to.

I would recommend doing a simple 5 second test with both the old home page and the new page and asking people who are not familiar with mumsnet, but who are your target audience - "what do you think this site is about", "what do you think people do on this site" and "do you think this is a website that you would like?"

If my suspicions are correct you might be surprised at how different the results are and how much better people were able to guess what the website was about with the old page.

In fact the whole thing looks like an ad for Clairol, with some gossipy user content added to try to lure me in.

If I was a new user I'd be off pronto! I wouldn't bother to click "menu" to see what was there.

A very simple thing you could do to de-dumb the new home page would be to put the menu back. Then people could at least get an idea that the site has some content, and substance.

Attached is a picture of my screen with the menu open. It's a massive improvement for a new user as instantly I can see what the site is about.

I get that the new site is responsive (brilliant!) but even so you could have the menu open for laptops and closed for mobile if you wanted. Instead of what you've got now which is a mobile-style hidden menu on the desktop view.

I get that maybe you might want to redesign the menu a bit if it was permanently open as maybe it takes up a bit too much space, but that's an easy design problem to solve. Without it, there is no clue that the site has substance, a significant amount of content, or what the vast majority of that content is about.

ps before anyone accuses me of sockpuppetry ...

I forgot I'd changed to orangeparrot, but that's me also! A mistake, sorry!

I'm not just trying to have a go, I hope the above is helpful.

And apologies to the web team, it must be a hard job designing with us mumsnetters commenting!

"Can you see how the effect of this is dumbing down the site? People new to the site won't know those titles are discussions, necessarily. They could be gossipy articles. In fact the whole site looks a lot more gossipy and less trustworthy than it used to."

I think Arandomname has summed it up perfectly.

I have just installed an adblocker this morning. There has been an increase in ads (or a least it seems like it) and they take over the whole page - it's what you see when you land on the homepage.

You don't really see the sections, if you were new and didn't know they were in the menu you wouldn't look.

I also agree about the sliders, you don't see the text, just the huge pictures that are of no interest, sorry.

ScrambledSmegs
WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!

Dear god it looks like something knocked up in a 'My First Webpage' taster session.
You really think? I think that's a bit harsh myself, but as said, it's a work in progress

Sorry Justine. It looks better today, if that's any consolation. I'm using Safari on a laptop and yesterday's homepage was really blocky and difficult to navigate effectively.

The problem now on my screen is that the Mumsnet logo and contents is completely over-shadowed by the ads. I think that they interfere so much with my use of the homepage that I'm finally going to install an adblocker. Presumably that's not what your advertisers want?

thanks for reply, HQ!

Not my problem if you don't like adblockers. If you kept the ads down the right hand side, maybe I wouldn't as it is easy to learn to ignore them there. You are a commercial organisation and with respect your business model is your affair; there's no 'spirit'.

Relying on users seeing ads is very last year, most people use blockers now. I can't get the blocker working on my cheap tablet, and it makes you realise how unusable most internet sites are if you let the ads show. Being surprised at this is like being surprised that people record commercial TV programmes and then whizz through the ads, or that the junk mail that comes with the post doesn't get looked at before it hits the recycling bin.

it is indeed 'my first webpage'. The homepage pics are huge so loads of scrolling, your testers must have a special laptop with a 10 foot tall screen.

but the homepage has nothing of interest anyway. 'text heavy' - actually most of us WANT text, not endless irritating information-free images. A picture of a tap???

Hang on a minute - you were guilt-tripped over using an ad-blocker, specialsubject!

I've been holding out against ad-blockers for years (they were a bit buggy when I used them last) but I honestly feel that this last change has forced me into installing one. It took me a moment to realise that I was on Mumsnet just now. I thought I'd been redirected to the Clairol homepage

I have an adblocker. Now I feel awful about having an adblocker. But not awful enough to remove it because it really is lovely not to see any adverts.

It's appropriate to use words on the mumsnet homepage because this is a website about words. It's not a shopping channel, or an advert for Clairol. It's a discussion forum.

If a visitor doesn't like words they're probably on the wrong site!

The problem with removing most of the static words (e.g. the menu items) is that then you only have a fraction of a second to get all the messages about what mumsnet is across in a couple of images.

If I see the words "education, pregnancy, babies" etc with no images, I make up mental images that are relevant to me.

But when I'm presented with this - see image attached - it's a massive turn off!

I don't identify one little bit with Clairol woman. She's very off-putting. Nor with the woman in the sweary image. It looks like something aimed at teens.

If those images were still there, but given less importance and there were words which gave me an idea of what the content was about then I wouldn't be so put off by them.

But they're given centre stage, and the message they're giving me right now is that this is not a site for me.
I know really it is, because I know what lies beneath. But how would a newbie?

I'd like to be able to access PM's on the mobile app please...