New Homepage Feedback Round 3

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Sorry... not a fan of the new website. Migrating to Anandtech.

Things I do not like:
Looks more like a news home page (yahoo/dailyUK) than my all time favorite tech news go to source.
Do not see what so special about the latest articles section
everything seems very cramped up....

 
What is absolutely awesome is that I can select how many news per page I want to see. Congratulations Tom's. New layout is a definite improvement over the old!
 
I kind of wish there was more space dedicated to the articles section. Forum feeds take up half the page. I like the news section, but I struggle to find the latest rounds of articles if I have missed reading for a few days.
 
I believe content has an equally important role as the layout.
When I try to add a comment to an article I do not like scrolling through half page of spam.
Nothing effective has been done to block spammers, even though it has been a common gripe among the legitimate users.
I would suggest adding a filter that checks posts for weblinks and automatically removing those that are known to be spammer's, since always there are the same 10-15 websites that reappear inside comments from different spammers. Also, marking that spammer as such would automatically prevent it from being re-posted on other 20 news in the same day or in the future.
In addition, any message that contains the $ sign, or any other currency, should be marked as spam, as well.
I am pretty sure this would make the spammer's job a lot more difficult, and it should be straightforward to implement.
As the say goes, if there's a will, there's a way... So far, the will has been missing.
 
Hey there friends,

Some follow-up on the great feedback so far to give you a bit of insight on how the process of redesign unfolded.

Firstly, the usability team looked at what was most frequently clicked on the older page. We learned that the forum section, while being relatively small, had a great many clicks. The bottom articles in contrast were hardly ever clicked at all. This informed the early portion of the redesign goals, with the target of boosting ease of access and page usage.

Much of our initial feedback from you was focused towards displaying more content at the top of the page, without the need to scroll as much. Additionally, the request to display fresher, more dynamic content near the top was also a major request, and this is why we moved the chart icons down.

Faster page loading was a big, big request and we've pushed to optimize as much of the page as possible.

Persistence of style (to avoid abrupt, revolutionary alterations) was kept in mind, and we didn't really attempt to rethink elements which were already working and that our users enjoyed. As I mentioned in an earlier post, this is just one part of a series of projects that we're undertaking to improve user experience on the site - and we'll ask you for the same level of feedback to inform those undertakings as well.

We set up three different betas, each released every 2 weeks and incorporating as many elements of user feedback as we could, while keeping the site functioning. One of the only issues we couldn't push forward on was completely eliminating the ads - though we did reduce the size of the rectangle ad to 300x250 as opposed to the earlier 336x280. The position they are in is similar to the previous site design and are required to help keep the site staffed and pay for bandwidth costs.

Deriving consensus during the three beta stages was tough, and what you see is the result of that endeavor. I strongly encourage you to continue providing your constructive feedback on the page and on other areas of Tom's you'd like to see improved. It helps guide our efforts.

Thanks!


 


the reason for this is the rate of change of the forum section, since it changed so rapidly there was always something new to look at. Also no-one needed to click to check if there was a new article, if you had been tracking eyeballs you'd have seen (probably) people scanning the whole plage looking for new articles, scanning for news, and then clicking and then scanning the forums. Eventually following this model of reduction you'd end up with just a forum.

I agree with many of the others, if i'm unable get online for a few days it will be very easy for a few articles to slip right by, and its really difficult to find these in general, especially as you don't know that they are there to be found, the old you don't know what you don't know issue.

Keep trying to improve the site, please, but I think we need a very broad but shallow view, which we can then go deep from. There was a theory about on-line shopping in that it would extend the tail of infrequently brought items, the opposite has tended to happen, and popular things get very popular and unheard of things remain unheard of. Don't do this to the site, else you'll niche yourself out of existence.
 



^This.

While i appreciate what you guys were trying to do and the feedback we're getting from jpishgar, the idea that because the forums were clicked on the most they should take up more than half the page is just blatantly ridiculous. Forums are always checked the most because that's where conversations happen. I mean come on, really? Are you guys really being serious with you reasoning here, or am i missing something obvious?
 


If everything on a site was refreshed at the same speed, then it would be fair to target the way they have targetted, but when there such massive discrepancies i'm convinced its not a good ay to determine what to focus on.
 


I agree with you 100% and what 13thmonkey wrote was an exact description of how I used this site as well.

Unfortunately all the moderator is doing here is adamantly defending why they came up with this terrible design all the while making it very clear that what they have done is final and while they "hear" our complaints nothing is going to change. Instead we are reminded that tons of research went into the new design and are led to believe that we are the minority and the site has actually become much more frequently visited since the change.

I say whatever. I came here for the tech articles and not the freaking forums. In fact I rarely if ever actually came to the forums (well until this thread opened up, lol) and mainly stuck to commenting at the bottom of articles I just read.

Since the focus of this site has turned from Information and Technology into ads and forum gossip I will just start going elsewhere.

I said I would give it a week so hopefully there will be something positive by next Monday. :??:
 



I'd agree, except when would this ever happen? It seems self-evident that they shouldn't have been using the same measuring stick for determining front-page content when comparing article-clicks vs forum-clicks, so I didn't bother making the distinction.
 


I can imagine a website where this could happen, but it doesn't look like this one.
 
Yea, but of it though is still based on yet though man, in all sense of most of this forum half the time, against going to the site for information.

If you was going to go to a site and look for something of interest, what part of Toms main site didnt have little information? Did it have it all, no, most times probably wouldnt need it, and if you did you'd have to go to another part of the site. And when you do that, how can you say you are on the homepage anymore?

Let alone the forum?? And of the forum, you still barely is still is barely little access to and from the forum for the forum. Its all about ways around things that would normal be in use.

So, on the idea of access to something that would get more access to is almost saying it wasnt even used before, even on the part of regular use of the site or partial use of the site.

The reason of change seems to be lacking for most of the arguments. I could understand if the site geared itself towards more direction of one on some interests but i dont think it does, its cover very many in many depths. So the reduction seems short placed alot of times.

Even if not in use is there. Now its more taken from part of none use from none use and not having it there, and also saying it shouldnt be used.
 
Small suggestion: When I click on the "Log In" link it pops up the log-in window, of course. But it does not put the focus on the User Name entry box - I have to click in it to get there. Would be nice if that were automatic so the cursor already is at the start of that box, ready to type.
 


This is complete hogwash, the large majority of the posters hate the new layout. Please stop lying to us and yourselves. The fact is that most don't like the redesign, myself included.
 

This is an excellent site, and I find it very useful; however I can do without being told I don't know what I am talking about by one of your moderators ! I can find my answers or make my comments on another site, and not have to put up with being demeaned.
 
Dislike: The removal from the home page of the lastest ~5 article links that fall under the categories of processors, storage, graphics, etc.

Likes:

1) The larger, more legible default news text.

2) The more prominently placed feature tech articles right below the masthead.
 
It's terrible!! It sort of hides Tom's Hardware's greatest articles! the roundtable/slideshow thingy should be bigger! Kind of like !@#ndtech's website.
 
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