- What the hell is Criticker?
The first page a visitor sees should scream what this site is all about. This is mentioned quite nicely when you go to 'your profile' as a guest: "When you signup to Criticker, you can compare your movie taste with thousands of registered users," but who would go to 'your profile' on his first visit to the site? It's also mentioned on the right that when you register for an account that you save your rankings, find like-minded users, and get the net's best recommendations, etc., however it doesn't scream at you, and I don't find it that alluring either. You need a clear slogan on the first page that tells the user immediately what the site is about so that the user thinks "Hey! That sounds cool! Let's rate some movies." Right now the visitor's eyes are immediately drawn to the big 10, where the visitor is immediately left wondering what the hell a 'TCI' is, which brings me to my next point. - Abbreviations are scary
This has been mentioned before already, but abbreviations like 'TCI' are confusing to new users, especially during their first minutes on the site. I strongly suggest that this abbreviation on the front page be replaced by something more down to Earth. Instead of saying "10 Rankings Needed to Generate TCIs!", why not say something like "10 Rankings Needed To Determine Your Film Taste" and then add something like "Click here to find out more about how we determine your film taste and find other users like you." - Is this site alive?
To me a site and a web application looks attractive to me when the first page I see shows how dynamic the site is and how recent it is. I don't care about sites that have been dead or static since 2005. What I want is a community and a site that lives. I don't want to spend an hour on a site to then come to the conclusion that actually there hasn't been any activity on it since 2005. Criticker is alive and kicking, but unfortunately you don't really witness that on the front page. It's been mentioned before that the blog could use some more visibility on the site. I think it should also be visible somehow on the visitor's front page to show the developer's commitment to the site. Also display forum threads and recent rankings for example to show that it's not just the developers that are alive and kicking, but that there's also an active userbase. When a user sees that the heart is dynamic and changes even in the past few hours (!) then he or she is more likely to take the time to rank movies and start using the site. I would also like to mention that there's a 'random, recent quote' on the front page. However this is collapsed by default (a shame!), and it's not that flashy, so it's unlikely that one would click it to see the quote. Furthermore it says 'recent quote', but it doesn't show how recent. Take random reviews from the last 24 hours, and mention the date so the visitor sees the site is active! - And now what?
My house mate whom I introduced to Criticker literally said at some point while I was looking at the site standing next to him: "And now what?". This is what a user is thinking when he visits the site for the first time:- Hmm... ok, so I need to rate movies to get recommendations?
- Ok, let's rate some movies.
- Hey, "Pulp Fiction", great movie, I should watch it again some time.
- Damn, I need to register. Heck, why not.
- This is actually quite fun, seeing all these movies again.
- Haha, "Speed 2", what an awful movie that was!
- Ok, I'm getting bored. I wanna see how accurate those recommendations are.
- Erm... crap. Now what? Where the hell can I see whether Criticker is any good?
- What are these numbers?
TCI's are a very abstract thing. What does '1.68' mean? Yes, it means the average number of tiers another user's ratings deviate from yours. However, it is still very abstract, in particular because we have nothing to compare it with. Is 1.68 good? Or is it bad? How good is it? I suggest that you convert the TCI's either into a percentage (100% = you're twins! 0% completely opposite ratings) or a value that has a clear bottom and a clear top (e.g. 0 to 10) or into something visual. For example you could make little bars that show how well a user's taste matches yours. A long green bar would be a low TCI, a short red bar would be a bad TCI, and a grey bar could be the 'N/A' TCI. I posted a quick mock-up for this at the bottom of my post. Another suggestion that popped up in my head just now: maybe you can show TCI's (visual or not) under the avatars in forum posts, just like the number of rated movies is mentioned. Then when you're discussing a movie with someone you also clearly see whether that person generally agrees with you in your movie taste or not.
So, to summarize, here's where I think Criticker can be improved to make the site more accessible to new users:
- Show more clearly what Criticker is about on the front page
- Get rid of the Chinese ("TCI")
- Demonstrate that the site is active and alive
- Guide the user better towards the pages that show off how well Criticker performs
- Make TCI's more understandable by making it less abstract or by visualizing it
I'm being quite tough on the site here, however I absolutely love the site, and I am only posting this so this can become a discussion about how Criticker can be made more attractive and easier to understand for visitors so that reviews like those on PC Magazine don't have to mention that it might all be too confusing for non-geeks. You can agree with my views on this or you can not, what is important is that we can share ideas about this. I'm also happy that the forum has become more active in the past months, but it's still a pretty small subset of the community. We need to show new users that we are an active community and that Criticker is not only about "Rank More Films", but also about sharing opinions about movies, directors, etc.!
If you have any comments or other suggestions, please mention them here.
(I apologize for the long post )
[EDIT] I added a section about making TCI's visual