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matt comments on What if the front page… - Less Wrong
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I do rather like those four "Lesswrong is…" links, but…
No no no, we need to stick to text and maps - images are not for people like us (but I can imagine the text and images being laid out a little better).
There are two important groups of users: 1) first-time visitors, and 2) everyday visitors. Your suggestion improves the site for the former, but you should think about the latter too.
As a everyday visitor, I want the things important for me to be at the top of the page, so that I do not have to scroll down every time. On the other hand, the things important for me can have a small font and no graphics, because I already know what to look for. What are things important for an everyday visitor? Simply: what has changed since yesterday -- new articles, new Overcoming Bias articles, new comments, new wiki edits (not everything is important to everyone, but these are the frequent changes), and perhaps featured articles. These things are not high enough now, neither are they high enough in your proposal.
After these things (which compressed enough should still leave 2/3 of the top screen empty), there can go your brain graphics, short description of the site, and the meetup map -- things that should catch the eye of the first-time visitor.
The essence is -- think about different types of users and their needs. You did it for the new users, now think about old users too. On the title page, having to scroll down is bad. Scrolling down is OK only when reading a longer text, which must begin on the first screen, but may continue below.
To be frank, I don't think they should care about everyday visitors. Getting new visitors sucked in is vastly more important than making things a tiny bit more convenient for people who ALREADY come here everyday. The top of the page is really important in terms of what people first coming to a website see, and a random collection of new posts is not how you want to introduce LW.
I'm not sure how often everyday visitors navigate to lesswrong.com, as if they're typing in a webaddress. I have all/recentposts saved as a bookmark, and that's all I ever start out at.
24% of traffic to the front page is new visitors; 76% is returning visitors.
Overall site traffic is 51% new visitors.
Excluding post pages, landing page traffic looks like:
So this counts traffic that visits a given page as its first only? Maybe you could explain what the technical definitions of "landing page", "visit", and "new visit" are in the context of this comment.
Or, provide two different pages - one for logged in users, one for anonymous visitors.
I'd prefer this didn't happen. An anonymous visitor may just be a regular accessing the site from a different machine, or one who's just purged his cookies. I don't want to suddenly find myself looking at a completely different layout just because I happen to be logged out, or to have no idea what a non-member is talking about when they describe a front page I will hardly ever see. At present the only difference in appearance between logged in and not is a few details such as my name at the top right and the voting buttons. That's how I'd prefer it remain.
Why would everyday visitors go to the front page? I have the New Main and New Discussion pages bookmarked, if I need to get to another page I can always follow internal links.
24% of front page traffic is new visitors to the site; 76% are returning visitors.
(This doesn't mean we don't maximise community growth by optimising the front page for the new visitors.)
When I recommend the site, I just say LessWrong.com.
The very few occasions you recommend the site to everyday visitors spawn interesting conversations but very little website traffic. Your site recommendations to new visitors are much more relevant to this discussion.
I'm not sure where the communication disconnect is-- I recommend Less Wrong to people who generally haven't heard of it before. They are potential new visitors.
They are potential new visitors, and they will likely go to the front page. The front page should cater for them.
billswift seems to me to be arguing that "everyday visitors" (which I interpret to mean frequent users of the site) should bookmark or remember other site locations or other ways of consuming site content (eg. the many RSS feeds available), so shouldn't be much concerned for the usability of the front page to them.
If billswift is right, the front page should be optimised for new visitors (the group you seem to be talking about), and not for returning visitors.
Standard accessibility concerns for the blind having to screen-read image maps. Not that the site is currently very good for screen readers, but... well, neither is the rest of the internet.