Revamp GFL Homepage

[Decoy 119 / 2,421]

Using my experience as a business owner, I've been thinking of ideas to help GFL. There are several areas where GFL can improve, I've been discussing these ideas with @Roy. One major area is GFL's homepage. Roy touched on this a little in one of his status updates. What I've proposed is taking cues from large online businesses.

 

The idea I'll explain today is essentially simplifying the homepage to convert more visitors into members. It's best to imagine every visitor as a drunk person with A.D.D. You need to grab their attention as quickly as possible without overwhelming them.

 

Let's take a look at Evernote for example:

 

Notice their homepage is very clean and simple. When a new visitor lands on their page, they immediately know what Evernote is, how it will benefit them, and they're able to sign up quickly and easily.

 

We can see this same practice with Dropbox:

 

There is an obvious objective here, that is to capture a visitor's attention and get them to sign up. Once a user is signed up, we can follow through with other objectives (I'll elaborate in follow up threads).

 

In the last 90 days GFL has had over 210,000 visits:

 

That's 17,500 visits per week, or nearly 2,500 visits per day. 62% of visitors are immediately turning away. That's a massive amount of potential members.

 

We need to capitalize on GFL's traffic. Revamping the homepage to more effectively acquire new members is just the first step.  

Edited March 1, 2018 by Decoy

[Roy 10,832 / 0]

I agree 100% on this. We will be doing this in the near future once the About GFL project is complete. With that said, @Decoy has been giving me many other ideas for GFL as well and we've been discussing them for quite some time now.

 

This is just the first step out of many we will be taking!

 

Thanks!

[Texas Toast 44 / 3,774]

Gud idea but don’t force them to cus they might be liek “fuck this shit i don’t wanna have to sign up for anything.” Other than that u r genius keep up gud work pls ?

Edited March 1, 2018 by One odd boi

[tealchicken 56 / 2,768]

I really agree with you @Decoy you have some good ideas. I have nothing to complain about this. I also have something unless you already have it, I think forums should be easier for people to get to because some of the younger kids maybe don't know how to get to forums - Divisons - game - server

[Texas Toast 44 / 3,774]

Or what forums are.

[Decoy 119 / 2,421]

18 minutes ago, One odd boi said:

Gud idea but don’t force them

I agree. It's important that most sections of the forum remain accessible without forum membership. The most important reason for that is so threads are indexed by search engines, which in turn brings more traffic to GFL. Another reason is that visitors who stumble upon a forum discussion that interests them may actually sign up to join the discussion.

[Snoopy 1,480 / 15,610]

The majority of people visiting the site are viewing MOTDs when they join a server which has a link to their rule page on the forum, hence why they turn away so quickly. That's why you also see quite a few guests on the forums.

Edited March 1, 2018 by Snoopy

[Decoy 119 / 2,421]

27 minutes ago, Snoopy said:

The majority of people visiting the site are viewing MOTDs when they join a server which has a link to their rule page on the forum, hence why they turn away so quickly. That's why you also see quite a few guests on the forums.

That's a good point I didn't touch on and great avenue for marketing.

 

Edit: An idea off the top of my head would be to include the sign up form directly in the header. So where it says:

Existing user? Sign in > [Sign Up]

 

We could change it to:

Existing user? Sign in > | Sign up: [USERNAME] [PASSWORD] [ EMAIL]

 

Most people probably won't sign up while in game, however it's worth simplifying the process and potentially gaining new registrations we wouldn't have otherwise had. And even if the user doesn't visit the website afterwards, we'll have their email for marketing campaigns (events, new servers, etc).

 

Edited March 1, 2018 by Decoy

[Snoopy 1,480 / 15,610]

Something in this gap here could be cool. Like a sign in and/or sign up box.

 

 

Edit:

 

21 minutes ago, Decoy said:

we'll have their email for marketing campaigns (events, new servers, etc).

 

We should make use of this a lot more. During my time as a Higher Up and Director we didn't make use of the email function once. It would be nice to see a Higher Up "Press Team" as such who can send out mass emails advertising events or other announcements. I might bring something up in trusted about this and get the higher ups attention.

Edited March 1, 2018 by Snoopy

[Decoy 119 / 2,421]

Thinking a bit more about it, it makes a lot of sense. People already playing on GFL servers will be the easiest to convert to members. And rather than forcing them out of game to sign up, we could have an in game advertisement that reads "Type MOTD to sign up and become a member of GFL!"

[Royce 201 / 4,813]

I absolutely love this idea as it gives a nice retouch to the homepage as it can grab the viewer’s attention and allow us to have more member traffic, as it is a main focus point to my understanding. Good on you

 

In addition, I think that this can be even more benefitted if we can get the media team and their creative minds to put together some layouts or any other ideas to make the homepage more enticing and inviting.

Edited March 1, 2018 by RockRoyce

[Roy 10,832 / 0]

I have moved this thread to the public suggestions forum (already discussed with @Decoy). We want to know what the public thinks about these changes.

 

@Decoy will be posting another thread in the Administration forum soon and we will move that down into here after a day.

 

Thanks.

[Decoy 119 / 2,421]

A lot of great feedback so far... would love to hear from the public; constructive criticism, related ideas, etc.

[Worgee 812 / 13,264]

@Decoy idk if Roy told you but we talked about having a public meeting about all the planned events/changed/ideas, if you have time then we can look at the preparation together?

Edited March 2, 2018 by Worgee

[Roy 10,832 / 0]

2 hours ago, Worgee said:

@Decoy idk if Roy told you but we talked about having a public meeting about all the planned events/changed/ideas, if you have time then we can look at the preparation together?

Yes, we should schedule a time to talk with each other. I'm not sure when, hopefully soon.

 

I will probably be scheduling to talk to others as well since I want to get updates on projects/divisions in GFL.

Thanks.

[Worgee 812 / 13,264]

I'm available now and like 2-3 hours on

@Decoy @Roy

Edited March 2, 2018 by Worgee

[rapperdan 2,323 / 0]

if you want to know the biggest thing you guys might be doing wrong atm, it's the fact that you think people will get hooked with an about gfl page that is simply not the case.

I don't see people over here when they are looking for entertainment finding them harping over there next history class and looking forward to it.

most people just want to simply enjoy themselves and the forums is just something that nobody really goes to, I also can not count how many times I've had to help someone find where to get membership and not to mention the fact that signing up does not equal being a member like @Decoy said simple is always better and tbh you guys are over focusing on that about gfl page nonsense and expecting it to get people hooked.

 

let me bring this up how many people do you think wait outside there history class in school giddy with excitement now let's take note how that is also relevant history lessons for the real world, now how many people will be giddy ready to read about gfl and get "hooked" you guys are looking at things that should not be the path to take and making this harder then it is, when it's very simple.

 

TL:DR stop focusing on things that we should not be focused on such as the about gfl page and look at this in a more simplistic way as simple stuff will always beat over complication of things.

 

now let me also bring this up since this was brought up.

On 3/1/2018 at 6:32 PM, Decoy said:

Thinking a bit more about it, it makes a lot of sense. People already playing on GFL servers will be the easiest to convert to members. And rather than forcing them out of game to sign up, we could have an in game advertisement that reads "Type MOTD to sign up and become a member of GFL!"

now take note of this 

I just used 3 different shortcut urls and ended up with the same result from all 3 and it all kept going to the one I used first.

now I will also bring up the fact of how bad and slow this webshortcut url plugins interface seems to react.

but this 

popped up with 3 different webshortcut url commands and the one that just kept dominating others was the first one I used aka !register then I used !signup then I used !admins feel free to join the 1v1 server but your biggest issues are a lack of care and updating things for the servers till it's simply to late and you guys focus on things that you should never be focused on like cmon how hard can it be to even get the calladmin feature working for the 1v1 server? and I am sure there is countless other servers with this same issue a lack of caring for the server.

Edited March 3, 2018 by i have had it up to duck

[Worgee 812 / 13,264]

22 minutes ago, i have had it up to duck said:

tbh you guys are over focusing on that about gfl page nonsense and expecting it to get people hooked.

The main focus is not the about GFL atm but making things, such as applying for member much easier. More information will follow at a later point and Decoy is involved in making it simpler and better due to knowledge and experience in that area etc.

[rapperdan 2,323 / 0]

10 minutes ago, Worgee said:

The main focus is not the about GFL atm but making things, such as applying for member much easier. More information will follow at a later point and Decoy is involved in making it simpler and better due to knowledge and experience in that area etc.

thanks it's a small sign of possible hope where there normally is simply none but I added other examples and things that I am sure effect other servers, you guys honestly know almost nothing about the server issues them self it seems as you guys have a huge lack of exposure to the servers themselves and it's sad to have to watch so much die off when it's so possible to not happen.

our biggest issue is that of neglect and it's such an easy fix and it involves not hating people who show what is wrong instead simply welcoming them we can not last very long if we are not willing to accept what anyone tells us if it might be bad simply welcome people who tell you the bad as they care enough to bring it up and mention what is wrong but sadly through time I have noticed how much we look down upon those that show what we are doing wrong.

[Decoy 119 / 2,421]

48 minutes ago, i have had it up to duck said:

@Decoy

 

now take note of this 

I just used 3 different shortcut urls and ended up with the same result from all 3 and it all kept going to the one I used first.

now I will also bring up the fact of how bad and slow this webshortcut url plugins interface seems to react.

...

That's awesome, so I'm behind haha, the dust2 server I spend most of my time in doesn't have this setup. So maybe going through the MOTD would be more responsive? (since it doesn't require an additional plugin)

 

I tested navigating the site through the MOTD in CSS and it is very responsive (at least on my computer). I can't speak for other games/computers. But assuming it works well, once the forum is updated and the in-game advertisements are updated, it should work proactively without continued maintenance.