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New Road.cc homepage format is not helpful for the basic things…

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  • October 27, 2015 at 6:00 am #24984
    macrophotofly

    I’m all for progress and the old Road.cc comments section did need improvements from its very basic text editor, plus the the displaying of article photos is now a lot faster/more stable, and the reviews breakdown on the menu is very helpful, but I’m not sure why it was necessary to drop the basic layout of the homepage?

    • The patchwork quilt tile effect front page makes it impossible to work out what the latest articles are. They seem to be in a semi-random order mixing up old articles from yesterday with those from today  (no date on the article tile either to check).
    • The loss of the “latest comments” section of the home page means it is pretty pointless commenting on an article any later than a few hours after it is published – no one will see it as there’s nothing to prompt them to go back into that article now
    • The loss of the “latest forum posts” section also means you are not drawn to new posts
    • My favourite section “Blogs” is now demoted to a sub-catagory of “More”. It has taken me three weeks to realise there has been some new blog posts, because I assumed they would appear on the tiles of the homepage and without them I thought the entire concept had been removed until I stumbled over them today

    I suspect the biggest impact is far less people commenting on articles, far less people answering forum articles (will anyone see this post?? 🙂 and far less people reading the blogs. Which is a shame.

    Can we have a more detailed homepage back with “latest” highlights for the other sections, please…….

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Viewing 13 replies - 1 through 13 (of 13 total)
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  • November 1, 2015 at 12:03 am #862389
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    ashfanman

    Leviathan wrote:

    Leviathan wrote:
    The new format is clearly set up for mobile and does look better there. However I suspect the Road.cc team underestimated the number of people who prefer to engage with the site on a PC.

    This.

    Redesign obviously focused on mobile devices. I only ever view the site on my PC and find the homepage far less clear than the old version. Backwards (design) step, IMO.

    October 30, 2015 at 3:38 pm #862387
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    Kadinkski

    I quite like it. I was

    I quite like it. I was spending way too much time visiting this site – probably 10 times a day. Now I find I can just come back every two or three days and only need to spend 5 minutes scanning the reviews for anything interesting. I don’t bother with the news or reading the comments and participating in the conversations anymore (apart from this).

    So overall I’m quite thankful to have a large chunk of my time back.

    October 29, 2015 at 9:27 am #862385
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    Fish_n_Chips

    I found it odd at first and

    I found it odd at first and it would not let me post using my iPhone.

    Some of the bugs are nearly fixed.

    Embrace change if it works!

    The save button is down there somewhere lol

    October 28, 2015 at 1:47 pm #862383
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    tom_w

    To be fair, if one doesn’t

    To be fair, if one doesn’t communicate with the users what the point of the changes are then people are bound to feel a bit confused by the whole thing.  Long time commentators and site members (of whom I am not one I hasten to add) have contributed to the site’s growth by spreading the word and adding their comments.  The quality of the reviewing and the interaction between the commentators and the staff is what makes road.cc’s reviews the best out there (with maybe the exception of DC Rainmaker for the tech. stuff if you like a lot of detail); the commentators are part of that.  

    It seems like a lot of the confusion could be solved by a short official road.cc post on the goals for the site and reassuring people that the aim is still for the site to be a high quality interactive experience etc.  I think people are partially worried that this the beginning of the site turning into bikeradar…!

    October 28, 2015 at 11:58 am #862381
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    macrophotofly
    PhillBrown wrote:
    The definition of “a labour of love” is a task done for pleasure, not reward. This is how the site started from it’s humble beginnings in a camper-van at Eurobike and after having a conversation with the editor whilst cycling a week or so ago, that is exactly what this site still represents today.

    Thats precisely my point – it is no longer a website that represents one man’s efforts to help out people he cycles with. It’s a Limited company that employs people and is bigger than him. It promotes the fact that it has 4.5million page views a month and over a million unique users. It achieves that through us contributing to this website. Our visits and contributions make us customers that attracts advertising. It ignores us at its peril whether you view my comments as balanced or negative.  It was a Labour of Love.  And he may still love his job (and I really hope he does), but he’s now paid to deliver that labour

    October 28, 2015 at 11:32 am #862379
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    PhillBrown
    macrophotofly wrote:
    You are treating Road.cc as if it is our club website run by some mates – it is not – it’s the UK’s largest cycling website – a company that sells advertising (http://f-at.co.uk/media-road.html ) and competes with other commercial websites, cycling magazines bought in shops, and paid for content.

    Not once do I suggest this is a “club website run by some mates” and your presumption that that is how I am treating it, is very wrong. 

    macrophotofly wrote:
    Client reaction and connection to them are the number one priorities for any company selling anything.  A labour of love should be for a personal or club project. Feedback to your clients (yes we are clients because our visits to the site are allowing them to charge the amount they do for advertising – see the above link again) is valued and should be expected especially when something like this has been placed upon them.

    The definition of “a labour of love” is a task done for pleasure, not reward. This is how the site started from it’s humble beginnings in a camper-van at Eurobike and after having a conversation with the editor whilst cycling a week or so ago, that is exactly what this site still represents today. 

    Feedback is great, as I said in my previous post, and also expected… but the negative attitude is not required. The world revolves on positivity… Constructive critisism is a far more effective way of encouraging people to do things rather than just shutting them down with sarcasm.

    macrophotofly wrote:
    will anyone see this post??

    Yes, people will… all four of us that have commented so far have seen it and I presume many others who have already let their thoughts be known on the previous posts of this nature.

    macrophotofly wrote:
    The patchwork quilt tile effect front page makes it impossible to work out what the latest articles are. They seem to be in a semi-random order mixing up old articles from yesterday with those from today  (no date on the article tile either to check).

    Take another look… Left column is news articles, newest on top. Middle column in Reviews, again, newest on top. Right hand column is Buyers Guides, surprisingly, Newest on top.

    macrophotofly wrote:
    The loss of the “latest comments” section of the home page means it is pretty pointless commenting on an article any later than a few hours after it is published – no one will see it as there’s nothing to prompt them to go back into that article now

    The loss of the “latest forum posts” section also means you are not drawn to new posts

    Fully agree with you on both of the above, but once again, have a look at the forum or use the search feature, it’s not long before you come across the other posts already highlighting these thoughts.

    macrophotofly wrote:
    I applaud the improvements the change has brought with additional new features but want to see the return of the features that were removed on the homepage.

    Positivity… Perfect.

    October 28, 2015 at 11:26 am #862377
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    Super Domestique

    There is also the ‘membership
    There is also the ‘membership’ side of things that seems to have been neglected.

    There is little mention of even an option to be a member anymore, plus things like members competitions being forgotten about as per comments and threads in that section / forum.

    I can imagine, as was mentioned on one the many threads with comments, complaints and suggestions, some feedback as to what is missed etc is more helpful than ‘I’m leaving’ but it would be nice to hear from the management asking rather than a passed on comment.

    Many of those that comment have been here years and lived through the “roadkill.cc” phase and other times when things either at a high or low on the site.

    A bit of communication (the lifeblood of a forum and comment based site) wouldn’t go amiss. Surely that is understandable.

    October 28, 2015 at 10:50 am #862375
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    macrophotofly
    PhillBrown wrote:
    I would imagine this was a real labour of love and they have few more important things to be doing that absorbing your negativity.

    You are treating Road.cc as if it is our club website run by some mates – it is not – it’s the UK’s largest cycling website – a company that sells advertising (http://f-at.co.uk/media-road.html ) and competes with other commercial websites, cycling magazines bought in shops, and paid for content.

    Client reaction and connection to them are the number one priorities for any company selling anything.  A labour of love should be for a personal or club project. Feedback to your clients (yes we are clients because our visits to the site are allowing them to charge the amount they do for advertising – see the above link again) is valued and should be expected especially when something like this has been placed upon them.

    I applaud the improvements the change has brought with additonal new features but want to see the return of the features that were removed on the homepage

    October 28, 2015 at 10:09 am #862373
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    PhillBrown
    macrophotofly wrote:
    Last time I posted about content (about a year back) it prompted a mass of comments and the staff responding. This time a few comments and no staff…

    The lack of comments may be due the other dozen threads discussing exactly the same as what you have outlined here which have been going for at least two weeks…

    We all use the site and can all see that it has changed. Sometimes, change takes a while to adjust to. The Road. cc team is well aware of the issues/concerns people have and are working hard behind the scenes to adjust and correct things on many different levels

    I agree, it would be nice for a comment from someone at HQ just to clarify that they know about all of our concerns, but I would imagine this was a real labour of love and they have few more important things to be doing that absorbing your negativity.

    October 27, 2015 at 11:55 pm #862371
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    macrophotofly

    Just really annoys me as it

    Just really annoys me as it will be blaimed on the software upgrade, where really it is a human’s design choice – the software improvements are good, the front page design is bad. As a result, good articles on the Blog and completely missed. I suspect even the staff are missing the latest forum posts now. Last time I posted about content (about a year back) it prompted a mass of comments and the staff responding. This time a few comments and no staff…

    October 27, 2015 at 10:15 pm #862369
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    Leviathan

    Quote:

    I suspect the biggest impact is far less people commenting on articles, far less people answering forum articles (will anyone see this post?? and far less people reading the blogs. Which is a shame.

    Far less people visiting the site, far less advertisment revenue. The new format is clearly set up for mobile and does look better there. However I suspect the Road.cc team underestimated the number of people who prefer to engage with the site on a PC. People don’t leave long comments or link and link and click on ads from a mobile. Site traffic cannot help but be down. Perhaps they have figured this out and are willing to go through a paradigm shift on the site, only they know. The most frustrating thing is getting no response from the staff regarding these changes or if they are going to do anything to bring lost features back. HELLO… MCFLY!

    October 27, 2015 at 7:34 pm #862367
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    harman_mogul

    Presumably the change is to a

    Presumably the change is to a ‘responsive design’ format that will display better on smartphones? It does suffer by comparison with the previous desktop web format  which was well shaken down. No doubt it will come good, but you are certain to lose a good number of previous commenters. Sometimes that is no bad thing!

    October 27, 2015 at 5:37 pm #862365
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    700c

    Agreed. Bring back ‘latest
    Agreed. Bring back ‘latest comments’. It seems to be killing the forum and news article comments.

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