New Homepage test starting Tuesday 20th September

New Homepage test starting Tuesday 20th September

Author
Discussion

DegsyE39

576 posts

126 months

Monday 26th September 2016
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Im sorry to say it but the old ph front page we all know and loved seems to have been replaced by as others have said a giant banner.

I know haymarket are a business and they exist to make money but IMHO that front page is going to end up being counter productive i wont be bothering to scroll past that every time i want to read SOTW and i suspect others may do the same.

Your shooting yourselves in the foot frankly.


Regards chaps.

Edited by DegsyE39 on Monday 26th September 19:43

sebhaque

6,402 posts

180 months

Tuesday 27th September 2016
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After seeing the new homepage (in fairness, mistakenly) displayed on my phone, I held judgement back. Now I'm home and on my desktop, I'm surprised to see the ridiculous emphasis on the classifieds. I actually logged on just to have a pint before I turn in for the night, but got confused when I saw the massive emphasis on the classifieds, couldn't be bothered to search around and navigated to www.jalopnik.com and www.motorsport.com/f1 to catch up on automotive articles. Only when I looked back at the PH tab, after getting my fill of news, did I notice the little sliver of articles towards the bottom of the page. I'm using a 27" monitor on 1080p, which I would assume isn't too far off the average desktop size (1920x1080).

PH, I know you're looking for feedback and I'm happy to say that while the new homepage may have good intentions, it completely detracts from the actual retention of visitors that PH once had. I spoke about the site to some casual car enthusiasts (e.g. they could tell you the difference between a V6 and a 16V, but couldn't tell the difference between the "numbers" E46 and C63) - their thoughts were that PH was a car advert site that was full of badly-maintained, hard-driven cars. When I emphasised the articles about popular sports cars - at the time I remember the new Supra and NSX were on the front page (maybe the Geneva motor show?) - they seemed to be interested to go and have a look at the articles. More clicks = more revenue, and given that I've been on this site for over 7 years and missed the articles on the new home page, casual viewers who give a lot less attention to the front page than a regular would probably miss what you pay your authors for entirely.

Interestingly, I've been looking at a couple of new cars and have found quite a lot more variety and better cars on AutoTrader, Gumtree and eBay than on PH. While there are plenty of specialist cars for sale on PH, everything now seems to be traders copying specs off AT rather than enthusiasts talking about the history of their cars. Unfortunately I now spend more time on the AutoTrader classifieds than PH, purely because I'd rather look at hundreds of trade ads rather than a few dozen.

Edited by sebhaque on Tuesday 27th September 00:03

Fish

3,974 posts

281 months

Tuesday 27th September 2016
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Can someone tell me where the news and articles have gone!!!!!


Wizardskills

243 posts

166 months

Tuesday 27th September 2016
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Fish said:
Can someone tell me where the news and articles have gone!!!!!

They are underneath the banner (you need to scroll down).

Dr_Rick

1,592 posts

247 months

Friday 30th September 2016
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Come on PH, enough is enough. The feedback here, independent of your click counting monkeys is that the majority of users don't want to see a giant car selling banner. It wouldn't be as bad if either the banner was smaller, or at least contained more than a one row selection window, but neither is the case.

I like others have practically discarded the homepage in lieu of the main Gassing page. To be honest, if I wanted to search for a car, my first choice would be Autotrader, then I'd look at PH-Classifieds.

I come to PH for news / stories / banter, not to buy a car.

Sort it out!!

Edited by Dr_Rick on Friday 30th September 11:50

TroubledSoul

4,589 posts

193 months

Friday 30th September 2016
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What's now really annoying me is how I open the page, get the big banner with the word "enthusiast" on it, it then refreshes the image itself to the one where it says "enthusiasts".

Feels like another bodge on top of a bodge frown

Craikeybaby

10,369 posts

224 months

Friday 30th September 2016
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A small banner at the top would be acceptable - what happened to ensuring all important data is kept above the fold?

On a technical note, my username on the image overlay gets clipped:

renmure

4,212 posts

223 months

Friday 30th September 2016
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I know nothing about how to design or code a webpage or site but visit enough of them to know that if my whole screen is taken up with an advert (even if it is an advert for another part of the site) and I can't see any of the site content without having to scroll way down the whole page, that can't be right or good surely?

To be fair, I tend not to bother with the Magazine aspect of PH and either just go to the Forums or (less frequently these days because it can be more hassle than it is worth) to the classifieds, so the new layout doesn't really bother me and I am quite happy not to know what I am missing. However I can't believe that this is the underlying cunning plan.

Snubs

1,166 posts

138 months

Friday 30th September 2016
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Much as i was tempted to give feedback the first time i saw the revised home page i thought i'd give it a while to see if my first impression, or indeed my clicking habits, changed.

As it would transpire they did; i stopped clicking on any of the articles as they were off the main screen and it was much less clear which were the latest and greatest. So i found myself going straight to the forums. The worry there is that the website would split between the users interested in the classifieds and the users interested in the forums, whereas the previous version did an admirable job of bridging the two. So in my opinion, a step backwards. Of course, ask me in a year and my answer will be 'what old homepage?' hehe

_Rich_

966 posts

171 months

Friday 30th September 2016
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Held off commenting for a while, give it a chance and all that.

On the old design i would always look at the headlines to see if anything of interest and give it a read/ watch.

Now i just click straight to the forum, the classified ad is far to big and frankly annoying. (actually thinking about it when i use my phone during my lunch break i read a few articles on the paris motor show, now because i don't see them on my laptop i haven't read anymore)

Also the two slogans are well rubbish imo and far to long, why not keep it simple and just say "for the enthusiast" ( we all now what the classifieds are, does it really need to tell us buy, sell, love cars)


thats not to say go back to the old design, it does need a refresh just don't forget the people who use this place all the time.

hornetrider

63,161 posts

204 months

Saturday 1st October 2016
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_Rich_ said:
thats not to say go back to the old design, it does need a refresh just don't forget the people who use this place all the time.
This is a good point. By all means refresh the site if you like, but please, not the full page classifieds garbage.

waterwonder

995 posts

175 months

Saturday 1st October 2016
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For Christ's sake will you stop changing things before checking that they work.

I had a functioning pistonheads for about 24hrs yesterday now something else has changed and only about half the site works on mobile.

Ironically I was trying to use the classifieds. But the formatting I'd all screwed up and the drop menu's only work once every 15 times.

As an aside is it really nessecary to have every manufacturer known to man listed separately? Scrolling on a mobile it takes forever to get to anything.

Audi as an example is 24th on the list, 3 scrolls down, the vast majority of the brands 1-23 have less than ten cars listed, a significant amount have zero.

What the hell is an Asaido? I googled it and three pages in all I had found is empty classified listings. I can only conclude they're not very prolific so is it really worth having a separate section for them ? There are numerous ways to make this better for users so I don't really understand why it persits

Edited by waterwonder on Saturday 1st October 11:09

TroubledSoul

4,589 posts

193 months

Saturday 1st October 2016
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waterwonder said:
For Christ's sake will you stop changing things before checking that they work.

I had a functioning pistonheads for about 24hrs yesterday now something else has changed and only about half the site works on mobile.

Ironically I was trying to use the classifieds. But the formatting I'd all screwed up and the drop menu's only work once every 15 times.

As an aside is it really nessecary to have every manufacturer known to man listed separately? Scrolling on a mobile it takes forever to get to anything.

Audi as an example is 24th on the list, 3 scrolls down, the vast majority of the brands 1-23 have less than ten cars listed, a significant amount have zero.

What the hell is an Asaido? I googled it and three pages in all I had found is empty classified listings. I can only conclude they're not very prolific so is it really worth having a separate section for them ? There are numerous ways to make this better for users so I don't really understand why it persits

Edited by waterwonder on Saturday 1st October 11:09
I've suggested in the past that it would be much better if only those manufacturers that there are ads for are displayed in the drop down list. Can't be that hard to have anything with a null value hidden surely?

swanny71

2,849 posts

208 months

Sunday 2nd October 2016
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So is Pistonheads now only about buying and selling cars? Anyone new arriving at that crappy new homepage will think so and probably leave.
Given up on the homepage/editorial content, if anything noteworthy is written I'll find it via the forums so please, please don't fk those up as well.

waterwonder

995 posts

175 months

Sunday 2nd October 2016
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TroubledSoul said:
I've suggested in the past that it would be much better if only those manufacturers that there are ads for are displayed in the drop down list. Can't be that hard to have anything with a null value hidden surely?
Yep I think that's entirely sensible and must surely be technically feasible.

dmsims

6,450 posts

266 months

Monday 3rd October 2016
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waterwonder said:
TroubledSoul said:
I've suggested in the past that it would be much better if only those manufacturers that there are ads for are displayed in the drop down list. Can't be that hard to have anything with a null value hidden surely?
Yep I think that's entirely sensible and must surely be technically feasible.
So Amy why hasn't this been fixed ?

ukaskew

10,642 posts

220 months

Monday 3rd October 2016
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How much longer is this being tested for? Two weeks with that homepage now, surely you have all the data you need?

Dom_PH

358 posts

103 months

PH TEAM

Monday 3rd October 2016
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ukaskew said:
How much longer is this being tested for? Two weeks with that homepage now, surely you have all the data you need?
One more day.

hornetrider

63,161 posts

204 months

Monday 3rd October 2016
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Do let us know if the increase in clicks onto the classifieds is worth the price of pissing off all your users.

Dr_Rick

1,592 posts

247 months

Tuesday 4th October 2016
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STOP IT!!!

MAKE THE WEBPAGE BACK TO HOW IT WAS