DC2NET Links

Does anyone else here try and pay attention to things users find they like (or don’t like) on your site and use (or don’t use)? Obviously if you make stuff for your sites which fall outside just sticking templates and so on in, this’ll be more easy for you to do, but I’m interested in anything at all, even joomla templates you know you have seen users triple their addiction to your site because of.

The way I see it, if we do have experiences like this and we share, then we’ll all benefit. If no one wants to share those little tips out here, fine. I’ll risk throwing a few small ones onto the table. I have many big ones. So let’s see what you’ve got…

I’ll give you three.

1. Here’s a good one. On facebook you know textareas get larger as you add more lines by pressing return, or crossing over a line? well that’s a very cool and addictive feature of textareas. i have used one on one site already to see how it fares. i think that’s a good one. i’ll report back on that.

2. For most of my development life I have found that if I have scripts which execute their action so fast that it’s as fast as flipping to a new html page or faster, which includes going easy on unnecessary graphics or layers of off-site embedded things, be it ads or tracking or whatever… they love it and seem to actually enjoy the speed.

3. Okay, recently I found that a handy table, a quick reference of useful information on a particular topic, which is just a little side-page on my site, is often bookmarked and people come back to that a lot. So little reference tables are good.

These things are all things which make users either use your site a LOT when they do use it (ie for many minutes) and/or return to the site again and again. That’s what I’m hoping others will share too. Please try to stick to that otherwise this little plan doesn’t work. So go on, anyone else got any good tips? How many people here look closely at their users’ satisfaction?

BTW if more intelligent people here are worried this is not pragmatic. I think we need to realize that people who get success and grow big in collaboration can share the rewards with each other in all directions as they grow, so it’s perfectly sound financial reasoning. As the "pig of synchronicity" would say… (a great and famous pig, you’ll soon find), "When fortune is shared it can never be lost."

(NB the main thing about this thread is that to help out or really know this about your site you need to be capable of knowing your real statistics and mostly that means you need to have access to access_logs. In my experience microsoft access logs have proved faulty and problematic. I believe linux may well be the best way to go, but I don’t know. I do know that using perl and shell a lot, rather than php, will make you better trained to read access logs. My latest software tools measure repeat usage over time and how much a person likes a site. It’s all written in shell and perl and operates on commandlines. It helps me see when users are repeat visiting and what it is they come back for.)