New Homepage test starting Tuesday 20th September

New Homepage test starting Tuesday 20th September

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Discussion

James Drake

Original Poster:

2,668 posts

116 months

Tuesday 20th September 2016
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Hi all,

Just a quick heads-up that starting this afternoon we're going to be running a split test to trial out the effectiveness of a new style home page. This will displayed at random to 50% of our audience for the next 2 weeks.

The idea of this new layout is to both tidy things up and link the editorial, forums and classifieds together more closely.

Please do comment below to give us any feedback you have as and when you see it.

Best wishes

JD

Stupeo

1,343 posts

192 months

Tuesday 20th September 2016
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I've just got the new HomePage - I like it.

It also seems to load much faster than the previous homepage?

CocoUK

951 posts

181 months

Tuesday 20th September 2016
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It looks smart enough, nothing groundbreaking - which is not a bad thing!

I'd probably drop Regulars\Chris Harris section - he left two years ago!

Lordbenny

8,575 posts

218 months

Tuesday 20th September 2016
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Yep, I got it, took a while to know where to go but soon hot the hang of it!

Nick928

340 posts

154 months

Tuesday 20th September 2016
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Aaaaahhhhhhhhh! what's happened to PH?
Homepage is all "buy my st, buy my st" and no news!

hornetrider

63,161 posts

204 months

Tuesday 20th September 2016
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What's a homepage?

jimmy156

3,681 posts

186 months

Tuesday 20th September 2016
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My first though was i had somehow linked to the classifieds, not the main homepage.

It looks smart enough, although It makes the rest of the website (forums, news, features etc.) feel very secondary to the classifieds.

Trikster

818 posts

201 months

Tuesday 20th September 2016
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jimmy156 said:
My first though was i had somehow linked to the classifieds, not the main homepage.

It looks smart enough, although It makes the rest of the website (forums, news, features etc.) feel very secondary to the classifieds.
Agree with this, screen is all about the classified ads, makes the rest of the website seem very unimportant. Do agree it seems to load quicker though

Butter Face

30,192 posts

159 months

Tuesday 20th September 2016
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Woth?

Sebring440

1,926 posts

95 months

Tuesday 20th September 2016
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James Drake said:
The idea of this new layout is to both tidy things up and link the editorial, forums and classifieds together more closely.
Editorial? It has changed from a "motoring magazine" (albeit web-based), to a classified ads site: "The number one place for enthusiasts to buy, sell". Are there statistics to support that statement, considering the complaints in website feedback, ad nauseam, about the usability of said classified ads?

So, PH is now a "cars for sale site".

Login or register is fairly prominent, but sadly, in 2016, still not https.

The current response to this is:
Dom_PH said:
It will be implemented, but unfortunately not in the immediate future.
The pretty pictures look very pretty though.

And, as mentioned above: "craft" and "woth" in the same sentence?





Edited by Sebring440 on Tuesday 20th September 20:46

dmsims

6,452 posts

266 months

Tuesday 20th September 2016
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Just try selecting Buy and try then moving your mouse to used cars

That's a stupid game that's been going on for years!

stevesingo

4,848 posts

221 months

Tuesday 20th September 2016
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I change car less often than I want to read about cars.

If I want to buy a new car I will seek out the car, I don't need it to be the attention grabbing thing I am first drawn to.

So I hit page down. And still I don't want to buy a car, nor do I want to sell mine, but that is the grabbing headline.

Understand what users come here for. News and Chat primarily and ads probably secondary. Give the customers what they want.

wolfracesonic

6,941 posts

126 months

Wednesday 21st September 2016
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My Homepage has reverted to how it was after yesterdays 'experiment': Good! It was like walking through my front door to find someone has put the kitchen in the hallway and the bed in the bathroom. Leave things as they are. I'm fifty next year and becoming increasingly averse to change; and more cranky; and irritable. That is all.

Fish

3,975 posts

281 months

Wednesday 21st September 2016
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The new home page does look pretty but I'd further the comments that it moves PH form a motoring website to a classifieds.

I cannot see a single news story on the new homepage without scrolling down and there is no indication I need to do that!

Looks nice but doesn't work!

Fetchez la vache

5,568 posts

213 months

Wednesday 21st September 2016
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Uh-oh. We've been "monetized"...

Thom

1,716 posts

246 months

Wednesday 21st September 2016
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Absolute rubbish.

Every single change to the homepage since PetrolTed sold the website has brought PH further close to the bottom. It started with the classifieds and now we have this crap. What the hell is that horrendous formatting with no clear lines and focused areas that seems to spread like cancer on the whole www?

SturdyHSV

10,083 posts

166 months

Wednesday 21st September 2016
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Very shiny and everything, but 99% of the time, 99% of your readers will be coming here for news, not the classifieds.

People don't use the classified less because they're not prominent / shiny enough, but because they're reading news more frequently than they're buying/selling cars, so trying to force it down their throats is unlikely to change the sales figures. Best of luck though.

If only there was some way of hiding that big <div>. Oh wait, there is! And it makes the home page much more convenient hehe I for one welcome the new home page now, better use of screen width (which we all have lots of now) and less scrolling thumbup



Also, wouldn't "An automotive view unlike any other" have sounded nicer, and have the classic PH slight double meaning, like Speed Matters?

dmsims

6,452 posts

266 months

Wednesday 21st September 2016
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This rubbish really does show your true colours as well. Rather than fix stuff that is broken you waste your time on this ?

hornetrider

63,161 posts

204 months

Wednesday 21st September 2016
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dmsims said:
This rubbish really does show your true colours as well. Rather than fix stuff that is broken you waste your time on this ?
They don't give a st about the whole place looking like amateur night. The list of bugs is embarrassing.

Falsey

449 posts

138 months

Wednesday 21st September 2016
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:S

The news items are totally buried under an overstretched image and what is essentially a massive ad for the classifieds. The people reading the site know there is a classified section and want to see the news. Ill just stop using the homepage or adblock the div boxes with this ste in it.

If you are going to fill the screen with an image, at least make it a high resolution source image and not a 640*480 stretched thing. Looks incredibly amateur.