WTM Start Page
Hi,
I'd like to start a discussion on the first thing a new user should see if they type "www.whatthemovie.com" in their browser. I think the current beta start page is far from optimal, in fact it could be a really bad choice. What makes whatthemovie special is the ability to guess movies based on one shot. I don't know another website that offers this. There's http://www.paderkino.de/quiz/downloadquiz.html for the German movie nerds but it's Excel spreadsheet based and clearly not as nice as WTM.
So movie snapshot guessing is the service that WTM offers that no one else does.
Now look at the current lounge front page (I know it's not the final design, that's why I'm posting here :). The movie guessing part at the top has as much screen space as "Rating movies" and "Collecting memorabilia". In fact I have to read the tiny text below the image to see what I can do ("Guess movie snapshots"). I think part of the success of WTM in its current form was the minimalistic page design. It was basically just an image and a text box, there was no need for long explanations. Everyone I showed this to was typing in movie titles after five seconds. And that's how it should be. I do think it's a good idea to expand WTM's functions to achievements, more community functions and such stuff but they should be placed around the central function which is movie guessing and they should not get in the way of people who just want to solve shots.
If I would have to guess how people come to WTM I would say mainly from blog or forum posts or tips from friends who know already know it. And if I had to estimate the attention span of the average internet user who clicks a link from the RSS feeds he reads I would probably say about 10 seconds. And even if accessing the movie guessing stuff is just one click away from the lounge it could be one click too much.
So in my opinion the best would be to keep the start page as simple as possible (read: image and text box) and integrate the new functions maybe as a sidebar or something similar.
What do you think?
Well, I read the whole discussion and this topic, but I think it's really hard to choose between those two options. Both have some advantages.
I think the question you must ask yourself is what the main purpose of the site is. If it is the guessing game, you should probably show a snapshot page first. If the main purpose is to get a big community and a general moviesite (with the guessing game as big difference from other pages) you should take the lounge as 'home'page. Still, if you take the snapshot page as the first page, people who are interested will come back and they'll also find the lounge and community part eventually. (On the registerpage for example you can post a message saying: Do also check our lounge and community)
schnitzl has some very good points... But on the other hand, wtm 2.0 is more "professional" (meaning it's more complete, the interface is nicer, etc.) than the previous version (which I think is a good thing) and a such it's better to have a specific homepage that covers many things.
A solution in between the two would be to change the current lobby so that the movie guessing part appears more clearly.
Maybe you could modify it so the first box on the page describes only movie guessing (the text box that currently has 3 icons and 3 functionalities).
Have a title ("we care about movies"), a short sentence under that ("If you love movies as much as we do, you've come to the right place.") (or a movie quote as was suggested at some point by naut) and then a whole box about movie guessing, a larger image for it etc. Then, only after that has been proeminently explained, talk about the other aspects.
As Naut said he wanted WTM v.2 to be closer to a cinema-community website, I think a home-page like the one already proposed is OK, with the link of the several parts of the new site. The only link to change, for me, would be the link to the game, perhabs bigger or more visible, different from the other links.
I know I am a bit late with my two cents, since the site is going down tomorrow. However, I was really busy and could not do as much beta testing as I wanted to. In general, I like the new version very much. Thank's for your great work guys.
I agree with schnitzl the main feature will and should be the movie guessing by snapshots. And I think it would be better if new visitors directly land on a random picture to solve. Maybe one solution could be to open the lounge only for registered users. However, I don't know if this meets with the intentions of naut and tliff.
