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Hmm. I guess I'll wait for some real mockups as opposed to a wireframe of 3 pages before I really start to dig into and give some opinions.

One thing I will say is the download button in the nav should be the furthest thing to the right and it should look different than the rest of the nav items as to call attention to it.

We need to cover the top 5 reasons as to why someone who just google something like "what is dash" or "why is dash useful" should give Dash anymore time.

Your landing page is your business card, you have under 5 seconds to capture the appeal of Dash for the users, pelase don't skip out on this:
http://www.usefulusability.com/5-second-test/

Also: http://blog.usabilla.com/the-squint-test-how-quick-exposure-to-design-can-reveal-its-flaws/

Also, the current wireframe looks like it's lacking ALOT of meat. If the website ends up being a big link directory as the home page, I'm sure you will see a huge drop in traffic.

Make it fun, make it useful, add some fun what is dash intro and tip out .0005 Dash or something in return for emails and then email blast everyone when there is an update.

I can go on and on and on but I'll wait, just lets not squander this chance to hit the new website out of the park.

Glad to see we're having this conversation. Thanks for being awesome fernando and the other core team members!
 
itscrazybro said:
Sounds perfect AndyDark, can't wait to see the mock up.

TroyDASH, mobile/tablets are where all young people are now. Hence the trend in scroll down websites with multiple CTA's to replace or work with the cluncky old top menu. This technology is going to be picked up by the younger generations, not the older generation, so I say we cater for them.
We need to have our key points and multiple CTA's on the home page, that is our "book cover" and sadly most people still judge a book by its cover and don't read any deeper unless interest is sparked. The homepage needs to highlight our key features and anything that might attract someone. So things like, InstantX, PrivacyProtect, Masternode as an Investment, Governance and Evolution should all be covered here. I doubt many can scroll past all these features without being interested in at least one.
Click to expand...

I feel that these scrolling websites can work well for visitors who are brand new to the site. You can scroll through and see a bunch of interesting things, displayed creatively as a kind of narrative. But for anyone returning to the site, it's just a nuisance. If I go to ethereum.org and I already know what I want to do or find out on the site, such as look up technical documentation, or connecting with the ethereum community, navigating that homepage is a huge pain in the ass, I would rather just search google than go through ethereum.org. Maybe it is a trend among younger people? I'm admittedly not an expert in this field but I'd be interested in seeing some research into the effectiveness of that style.
 
TroyDASH said:
I feel that these scrolling websites can work well for visitors who are brand new to the site. You can scroll through and see a bunch of interesting things, displayed creatively as a kind of narrative. But for anyone returning to the site, it's just a nuisance. If I go to ethereum.org and I already know what I want to do or find out on the site, such as look up technical documentation, or connecting with the ethereum community, navigating that homepage is a huge pain in the ass. Maybe it is a trend among younger people? I'm admittedly not an expert in this field but I'd be interested in seeing some research into the effectiveness of that style.
Click to expand...


This type of menu system might solve your problem:
https://codyhouse.co/gem/mega-dropdown/

I for one, think we should most definitely go for a nice long-scrolling beautiful website, thats obviously useful and purposeful as well.
 
AnarchicCluster said:
Well, on the other hand there is Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway. A company controlling half a trillion (yes trillion with a T) dollars in assets. i don't know how much they've spent on their website but it was worth every cent.
http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/
Click to expand...

Oh man what a beautiful website. It's even responsive to my mobile device! hahahahah. Oh man, I wonder who got paid to make that. I hope they didn't pay a web developer.


TheDashGuy said:
This type of menu system might solve your problem:
https://codyhouse.co/gem/mega-dropdown/

I for one, think we should most definitely go for a nice long-scrolling beautiful website, thats obviously useful and purposeful as well.
Click to expand...

That is a great menu, I'll be stealing that! Thank you sir.
 
Thanks everyone for taking the time to give feedback. And don't worry about tearing things down, we all should have thick skin by now and I think we can all agree that we all want the best for the project. If my proposal works as a conversation starter that brings us somewhere, I'll be more than happy.

One of the greatest things about this thread is that it shows why we have been struggling for all this time (btw, the people in the project changed, not everyone involved in the beginning is still involved and some got involved later on). There are as many opinions as people :smile:

A few thoughts/responses:

buster I don't think we can hire someone to help us decide what we want our website or Dash to be. Being Dash a open source project we are always gonna have a problem with this. At least in the coding side things are less subjective (or fewer of us understand what is happening!) and github rules, but in this area of the project there is no decision hierarchy and we will always struggle. We can't change that, so I think we can only embrace who we are and try to get to something most of us love.

Regarding long scrolling pages, I'm with TroyDASH. I understand that they are great for certain things, but I hate them in most cases. If you remove the top menu and force people to move through a specific path like ethereum.org does, then I hate with all my soul... that reminds me too much to going to Ikea and having to follow the path set for me. Maidsafe.net I like more. Factom.org not that much, most info is at the bottom and that is far away. Just my opinion as a user though!

GreyGhost I guess I didn't explain myself correctly about the More item in the top menu. What I was suggesting is that when the user clicks there the page auto scrolled down to the big menu/index, although I agree that a lot of thought would need to be put into how to display that. In any case, I agree with you about the need to have structure, and to me the long scrolling pages don't provide them. We may argue about the specific items in the menu, adding an upper nav menu or a search box, but I think we both want information in small pieces and with structure.

In your SEO audit you say we should have links in the form dash.org/section/page instead of dash.org/page. That is compatible with anything we do, even in my proposal there are sections in that huge index and setting up links like that would be easy. I don't like it because they are more difficult to communicate (maybe we should have a link shortener?) and prevent us from changing the structure without changing the links, but you are the SEO expert, so if you say that is important I'm with you unless someone else brings a better argument :)

As for mobile, I'm assuming that whatever we do, we'll use responsive design. Even the most simple wordpress themes do this quite well nowadays. In my proposal rearranging the bottom menu would be trivial and the call to action can be designed in that way too. However, even if it is true that many people access the web via mobile, I don't think that is so prevalent in our space. In the last 30 days we had 67% sessions from Windows, 11% from Mac, 9% Android, 7% Linux, 6% iOS. I expect this will change with Evolution, but nerds will always be nerds and we will prefer a real computer.

Anyway, we'll have@AndyDark proposal soon and I'm sure that will be another step forward, so I'm confident we'll move in the right direction.
 
crowning said:
Looks beautiful, and needs only 187 seconds to load over here (yes, I REALLY stopped the loading time).



Having a "page not found" page which needs JavaScript AND a third-party plug-in isn't the solution, it's part of the problem.

Sorry to sound a bit negative, but I don't want to win a beauty-contest with a web-page, I want it to be usable and load in a reasonable time.

If it's fast and usable AND you can make it sexy, then you're golden. But usability is first!
Click to expand...

I just want to put in my 2 cents. I agree with Crowning that I find such websites (http://www.madwell.com/) really annoying, especially since it took over 3 minutes to load, and there was virtually no information. I was so caught up in the moving pictures that I didn't realize those bars actually had bytes of information written on them.

An easy to navigate, clear, concise information that I'm looking for (posted page 1) is what I want first. After that, if you can get it to look pretty - great! And if these rolling pages work better on mobile phones, why can't we have a mobile site and a desktop site, like Crowning said? Ah well, then again, I'm seriously an old fart and don't even have a mobile phone :confused::cool:
 
buster said:
Oh man what a beautiful website. It's even responsive to my mobile device! hahahahah. Oh man, I wonder who got paid to make that. I hope they didn't pay a web developer.




That is a great menu, I'll be stealing that! Thank you sir.
Click to expand...
See? I actually LIKE that! LOL. Ok, I'm slipping out now too :p
 
TroyDASH said:
I guess it's hard for me to imagine that -most- users are coming in through mobile unless it's to download a mobile wallet app. Even if we do get a lot of mobile users, mobile web design and PC web design don't mix well. It would be better to have a separate mobile layout like most other sites do. The long scroll is not bad for mobile but it's horrendous for PC, in my opinion
Click to expand...

I just noticed this. From my business experience selling to all customers, a mobile site is a HUGE requirement for search engines. Dash is going to mainly be used with mobile devices. It is very important to have a mobile site as fast and friendly as possible.

As for splitting layouts from mobile to desktop, the browser detects the device viewing the layout and adjusts for the best viewing experience. GreyGhost will no doubt understand how to best utilize mobile and desktop versions to maximize search potential.
 
Well, since the advent of responsive web design that "makes your web page look good on all devices..." everyone has gotten lazy and does not create a separate mobile version of a site anymore. What Google is pushing, "Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages" is something I suspect they'll push even harder and the sites adhering to the big G. tyranny will fare better.

Page speed is an algorithmic, ranking factor for years now and it will only get more important.
 
Hi, quick update from me. I will post these layouts tomorrow or if I get delayed then over the weekend.

Just to clarify - these aren't mockups, it's more of a site plan with a boring html implementation of how that could be interpreted based on Fernando's last proposal, purely to illustrate the main point - the UX and navigation structure, i.e. the user flow from when they land to each major area of Dash they might be interested in, and how to make sure they get all the right info along that journey. So don't expect to see a finished site, this is more of a plan we can use to actually build the finished site :smile:

Andy
 
AndyDark said:
Hi, quick update from me. I will post these layouts tomorrow or if I get delayed then over the weekend.

Just to clarify - these aren't mockups, it's more of a site plan with a boring html implementation of how that could be interpreted based on Fernando's last proposal, purely to illustrate the main point - the UX and navigation structure, i.e. the user flow from when they land to each major area of Dash they might be interested in, and how to make sure they get all the right info along that journey. So don't expect to see a finished site, this is more of a plan we can use to actually build the finished site :smile:

Andy
Click to expand...

It's Mondayyyyyy ;]

<3

Just excited to see what you've got honestly, i'll be gentle!
 
I am a regular guy. It has taken a couple of thousand hours, since last july, for me to get my head wrapped around the crypto space. Starting with bitcoin. Then moving through Andreas Antonopoulos' "mastering bitcoin" (Twice, third read is on the way) then becoming comfortable with wallets, paper wallets, transactions, trezor, blockchains in general, reading everything on the space available..etc etc.. +2000 hours. My wife hates all of you and has never heard or met you! :) It is all so foreign to the regular person and too much work. Most can barely remember their PIN!

Nobody understands this space at all! 1 in 100 maybe.

The UI's are made for engineers. No problem after immersing yourself for months. But regular people need to be able to use the system.

K.I.S.S.

or if there is the option then have the Engineer page and a Proletariat page

the masses have to be able to adopt for this to work


My 2 cents
 
OK here is the proposal...I thought it would be quicker to just build it in HTML using a responsive layout to see what the structure and user experience feels like. That way you also have something to build on.

I decided to spend a bit more time on it than planned because this really ties in with Evolution and how we are moving from a tech-user focused hobby technology to a mainstream product aimed at 'noob' users, so a lot of this can be reused so we don't have to renovate again when Evo is launched.

target audience:
1. marketing and converting new users (with low to zero awareness of Dash)
2. investor info / news / resources (mn owners / miners / investors etc)
3. developers / contributors

notes:
  • Ignore the look & feel or structure of the page content because it's just bootstrap css based used in a lot of sites for some time now - it needs some creative TLC from a graphic designer to start to look ok
  • The core of the idea is the nav structure and the flow of guiding new users / onboarding them then the other key areas, that's the key thing to get right, and it can be represented in lots of different ways graphically.
  • You can test the responsive by narrowing your browser to simulate portrait screen

Layouts: http://demo.dash.org/v2/
Source: https://github.com/andyfreer/dash-org-layout
 
AndyDark said:
OK here is the proposal...I thought it would be quicker to just build it in HTML using a responsive layout to see what the structure and user experience feels like. That way you also have something to build on.

I decided to spend a bit more time on it than planned because this really ties in with Evolution and how we are moving from a tech-user focused hobby technology to a mainstream product aimed at 'noob' users, so a lot of this can be reused so we don't have to renovate again when Evo is launched.

target audience:
1. marketing and converting new users (with low to zero awareness of Dash)
2. investor info / news / resources (mn owners / miners / investors etc)
3. developers / contributors

notes:
  • Ignore the look & feel or structure of the page content because it's just bootstrap css based used in a lot of sites for some time now - it needs some creative TLC from a graphic designer to start to look ok
  • The core of the idea is the nav structure and the flow of guiding new users / onboarding them then the other key areas, that's the key thing to get right, and it can be represented in lots of different ways graphically.
  • You can test the responsive by narrowing your browser to simulate portrait screen

Layouts: http://demo.dash.org/v2/
Source: https://github.com/andyfreer/dash-org-layout
Click to expand...

9/10

I am in love with your direction, so I won't nit-pick at anything.

Lets just make sure we can find any and all information we want/need in under 3 clicks.

1-2 clicks would be ideal.

Can you add in a massive dropdown menu? It would help with usability and ease of finding stuff in general.
Maybe this?
http://geedmo.github.io/yamm3/

Also, being as this websites main user might be someone whos never ehard of dash, might we also add in secondary & tertiary links under the calls to action with simple supporting links to stuff like "what is dash?" or whatever the necessary content may be.


Other than that, this is a MUCH better direction for the dash.org website IMO and I would love to help out if I can find the time to get this turned into a fully fleshed out website, it's definitely a step forward.

Also, maybe less links in the footer, and more in the dropdown area? Just because it looks really busy and cluttered.


Good job AndyDark !
 
AndyDark said:
OK here is the proposal...I thought it would be quicker to just build it in HTML using a responsive layout to see what the structure and user experience feels like. That way you also have something to build on.

I decided to spend a bit more time on it than planned because this really ties in with Evolution and how we are moving from a tech-user focused hobby technology to a mainstream product aimed at 'noob' users, so a lot of this can be reused so we don't have to renovate again when Evo is launched.

target audience:
1. marketing and converting new users (with low to zero awareness of Dash)
2. investor info / news / resources (mn owners / miners / investors etc)
3. developers / contributors

notes:
  • Ignore the look & feel or structure of the page content because it's just bootstrap css based used in a lot of sites for some time now - it needs some creative TLC from a graphic designer to start to look ok
  • The core of the idea is the nav structure and the flow of guiding new users / onboarding them then the other key areas, that's the key thing to get right, and it can be represented in lots of different ways graphically.
  • You can test the responsive by narrowing your browser to simulate portrait screen

Layouts: http://demo.dash.org/v2/
Source: https://github.com/andyfreer/dash-org-layout
Click to expand...

tx andy
this is very cool !!
(great work)

i send you some ideas/pointers
 
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