A bugfix, an improvement, and an announcement in Site Updates (Josh)

Hey everyone,

Let’s go down the list!

(Edit: Have a feature request? Great. Check out my site update here where I talk about my plans for Prosebox for the next few years)

The bugfix:
I’m happy to report that “All Bookmarks” link is now fixed. Woo! MD worked really hard on optimizing that particular page, and while it’s still a bit slow at times, it now consistently works.

The improvement:
This change is a small one, but I’m pretty excited about it. You may have already noticed, but the icons up top have changed.

Previously, the four icons were Comments, Bookmarks, Settings and Sign Out. As of last night, Settings has gone away (though it still lives in the Misc menu) and I’ve added a shiny New Entry icon. I’ve also increased the font size a bit to make them easier to tap on mobile.

Why did you make this change?
A few weeks ago I put some tracking code on all of the links in the header and menu so I could start to understand how the site is used. Here’s a breakdown of that info over the last week:

Header refers to the icons up top
Navigation refers to the menu and all dropdowns
Notifications are the new bookmark and new comment notifications

To break things down: unsurprisingly, Bookmarks is the clear winner with 49% of clicks overall. Comments is in second with 23%, and New Entry comes up third with 6%. Settings accounted for 0.27% of all clicks.

So, bye bye Settings! And a big hello to New Entry.

The announcement:
I’m so excited about this.

Remember a few entries back when I mentioned that I’ve been calling in favors from all corners to get things accomplished for the site? Well, I had a close friend reach out to me. She’s an instructor at [Prestigious University] and has been teaching classes on User Experience and Strategy. I’ve guest lectured a few times for her class, and her students are incredible. Over the next two semesters she’ll be teaching a more hands-on curriculum, and she wants her students to get real world experience working with clients on complex projects. She asked if I had any suggestions for clientele, and I suggested Prosebox! She loved the idea, and we’ve been brainstorming what that could look like.

So what would that look like?
Well, this is all very TBD still, but I have a couple of things I’d like the students to start researching.

First, I want to rethink the navigation to be more intuitive. To do that, I need to get a better understanding of not just how all of you are using the site, but what your actual needs are and how that ties into the PB roadmap. As we build out new features, new links will be added, and the current structure won’t support that very well. In addition, if I’m making changes, I want to be positive they’re the right changes that don’t cause user panic. That’s a big reason I started tracking things.

Next, I’d love to put together a detailed breakdown of the types of users that use the site as well as the types of users that might use the site but end up leaving before creating an account.

Here’s a demographic breakdown showing user age and gender over the last year:

It’s fascinating to me, but those are just numbers. Numbers don’t tell me who all of you are and what you need, nor does a list of features that you’ve been wanting for years. With solid research, I’ll be able to really understand all of you, and that will help me advocate on your behalf when I’m planning out overall strategy.

If you can’t tell, I’m extremely excited about this opportunity. I’ll post more in the coming months as things start to come together.

More soon!

<3,
-J

Last updated September 24, 2018