Home Page with basic information

[Phil Këvin]

Hello,

Today new users do not see all or 50% of the page. Too much information overwhelms the user and therefore they end up leaving the site in a few minutes or seconds.
It is recommended to have a "Home Page" with the necessary information of all the areas of the site, in addition to a short description.

A great example of a real home page is the one with "invisioncommunity.com".
I would like to suggest that you please add a default page with the necessary information for all sections.

Best Regards!

[opentype]

3 minutes ago, Phil Këvin said:

page with the necessary information for all sections.

But what are the necessary information?

They already have a system in place for a custom homepage. You can use the Pages app, create an empty page with it and set it as homepage. 
Then you can add widgets with feeds from areas that are important on your site (“latest topics", “latest articles”…) as well as static information. Even group based content, like a widget just for guests. 

[Phil Këvin]

13 minutes ago, opentype said:

But what are the necessary information?

They already have a system in place for a custom homepage. You can use the Pages app, create an empty page with it and set it as homepage. 
Then you can add widgets with feeds from areas that are important on your site (“latest topics", “latest articles”…) as well as static information. Even group based content, like a widget just for guests. 

Hello,

A great example of a "real home page" is the one with "invisioncommunity.com", starting from this point, it would be great to have a similar home page.

By default, IPS displays forums which have too much information, category, sub-category, etc. (Categories that deal with different topics.)
I have received comments from many users who barely review 10% of the site and that there is so much information that they do not know where to start, they are lost. (My IPS site is normal like any other).

Due to the large number of topics started in the forums of the different categories, we have the "downloads" area that every day there is new content, and this we add blogs, clubs and other custom areas ends up overwhelming the user.

So my humble suggestion to add a nice default home page.

Regards!

Edited May 14, 2020 by Phil Këvin

[opentype]

8 minutes ago, Phil Këvin said:

Hello,

A great example of a "real home page" is the one with "invisioncommunity.com", starting from this point, it would be great to have a similar home page.

It’s IPS corporate homepage for selling their product—it has little to do with a community homepage for users of the community software. 

8 minutes ago, Phil Këvin said:

By default, IPS displays forums which have too much information, category, sub-category, etc. (Categories that deal with different topics.)

You can set any app you want as homepage. As mentioned before, you can set a Pages page and you can fully control what’s on it. 

 

[Phil Këvin]

33 minutes ago, opentype said:

It’s IPS corporate homepage for selling their product—it has little to do with a community homepage for users of the community software. 

Not necessarily, you can replace that information to guide the user. Similarly, replace the icons or images.

 

33 minutes ago, opentype said:

You can set any app you want as homepage. As mentioned before, you can set a Pages page and you can fully control what’s on it. 

The tools we have are limited and we cannot do much.
For example, when creating a page I can put the latest topics from all categories of the forum. In the same way, place "last files" in the Downloads area, following this example the same would be done with other areas such as: Blogs, Clubs, etc.
So far so good, the problem is when a community is large and every day there are many topics started in the forums, Downloads, Blogs, Clubs, etc.

On the home page that we have created it would show only 5 topics from all the forum categories, of course, we can also divide the sidebars, so that it shows the topics from a specific category, but that would take up too much space and an overload on the "home page "also taking into account that the forums have many categories.
So, it would be unnecessary to have a page that shows 5 topics from each area, forums, downloads, blogs, clubs, etc., because every 5 minutes it would be updated with new content, and it would be very difficult to appreciate the topics that interest me from the "home page "The only thing we would achieve would be to overwhelm the user by having too many sidebars, plugins or some application that we use to display the content of the site.

So the best thing would be to show a nice design from the "home page" to show what is necessary in each area with a short description to guide the user and show him what he really needs or wants to know. We would also achieve better SEO and page load.

Edited May 14, 2020 by Phil Këvin

[opentype]

Okay, no content feeds. Got it. 

6 minutes ago, Phil Këvin said:

So the best thing would be to show a nice design from the "home page" to show what is necessary in each area with a short description to guide the user and show him what he really needs or wants to know. 

I still don’t get it. You mean like static text describing the sections? You are being very vague. “necessary information”, “what he really needs” could mean anything.
And what is stopping you from doing these things right now with Pages?
Again, you can set a custom homepage and you can put what you want on it. If that is lacking somehow, you would need to tell IPS what you need on top of the current features. 

P.S. Some more styling options for blocks are coming soon: https://invisioncommunity.com/news/product-updates/45-page-builder-widgets-r1196/

 

[Phil Këvin]

37 minutes ago, opentype said:

Okay, no content feeds. Got it. 

I still don’t get it. You mean like static text describing the sections? You are being very vague. “necessary information”, “what he really needs” could mean anything.
And what is stopping you from doing these things right now with Pages?
Again, you can set a custom homepage and you can put what you want on it. If that is lacking somehow, you would need to tell IPS what you need on top of the current features. 

P.S. Some more styling options for blocks are coming soon: https://invisioncommunity.com/news/product-updates/45-page-builder-widgets-r1196/

It can be simply a small introduction to the forum in general, as well as Downloads, Clubs, Gallery, etc. Below the page we can leave details what you can find or achieve in each of these areas. Details with images plus a "See More" or "Know More" button.

Now if we go a little further we can do the following:

• Description of some parent categories of the forums, Downloads, etc may be one of the most popular categories. That is, show on the home page the areas that are most visited or popular, which will also have a brief description of what you can find in these spaces.
• What you can achieve by moving up in rank,
• Categories that we can unlock
• Show some basic rules of the site for the user to take into account before starting.

Of course, we can put more information but this will already depend on each site and what it has to offer.

In the end it would be like a simple page with good design that has details of each area of the site. Is this possible with the page creation tool?

Edited May 14, 2020 by Phil Këvin

[Morrigan]

@Phil Këvin I disagree. What you feel like your community needs versus what I feel like my community needs are change from person to person.

As @opentype is explaining, you need to make this for yourself because your goals will be different from mine, mine will be different from the next persons etc.

The described homepage you're providing I already do for my members when I welcome them to the site. That actually sounds like an awful homepage. I would never use such a useless feature because it is not the way I would want to focus my community or what my community is about.

You keep using IPS as an example but not all communities have a product(s) in mind or need to explain each feature of their community site because that could be done (again as opentype said) by creating your own page with your own goals.

If you find yourself not capable of this there are plenty of creators that can and will do this for you for a fee and I would recommend you reach out to them.

[Phil Këvin]

@Morrigan

Obviously everyone has different tastes, but unlike some I put myself in the shoes of a common user who is entering a site with a wide variety of content.
I do not think about my tastes, I think about what my users ask for and I want to offer them a solution to this.

In a few words this would be, the tastes of you vs the comfort of the users. If this is the case, I prefer the comfort of the users.

[Morrigan]

3 hours ago, Phil Këvin said:

Obviously everyone has different tastes, but unlike some I put myself in the shoes of a common user who is entering a site with a wide variety of content.
I do not think about my tastes, I think about what my users ask for and I want to offer them a solution to this.

But again, you are assuming every community is looking for the same experience (including the users experience).

If someone is running a tech forum, for example, its unlikely that they are going to need walkthroughs of all of the items on the site. On a site that is selling something they aren't going to want a walkthrough, they are going to want something that displays the individual traits of their product or their support (depending on what they are running), I run a site about community and writing so I don't need either of those things, I know other people run news sites and music sites and roleplay sites. There is no one size fits all answer like what I think you're seeking out here.

What you are looking for is guides, something that you can create FOR your users to improve the experience on YOUR site. Its really easy to do in a pages database. My site doesn't look like a default IPS site, in fact I move even more than the standard around for personal consistency where I believe MY users are looking for information because I know MY audience.

You can't expect IPS to know YOUR audience and build a default page that answers YOUR audiences questions. YOU know YOUR audience so YOU should build that information for them. I know MY audience so I built that information for them.

[Joel R]

10 hours ago, Phil Këvin said:

Hello,

A great example of a "real home page" is the one with "invisioncommunity.com", starting from this point, it would be great to have a similar home page.

By default, IPS displays forums which have too much information, category, sub-category, etc. (Categories that deal with different topics.)
I have received comments from many users who barely review 10% of the site and that there is so much information that they do not know where to start, they are lost. (My IPS site is normal like any other).

Due to the large number of topics started in the forums of the different categories, we have the "downloads" area that every day there is new content, and this we add blogs, clubs and other custom areas ends up overwhelming the user.

So my humble suggestion to add a nice default home page.

Regards!

There are enhancements coming in Invision Community 4.5 that can help you design a homepage.  You will need the Pages application:

 

[Phil Këvin]

12 hours ago, Morrigan said:

But again, you are assuming every community is looking for the same experience (including the users experience).

If someone is running a tech forum, for example, its unlikely that they are going to need walkthroughs of all of the items on the site. On a site that is selling something they aren't going to want a walkthrough, they are going to want something that displays the individual traits of their product or their support (depending on what they are running), I run a site about community and writing so I don't need either of those things, I know other people run news sites and music sites and roleplay sites. There is no one size fits all answer like what I think you're seeking out here.

What you are looking for is guides, something that you can create FOR your users to improve the experience on YOUR site. Its really easy to do in a pages database. My site doesn't look like a default IPS site, in fact I move even more than the standard around for personal consistency where I believe MY users are looking for information because I know MY audience.

You can't expect IPS to know YOUR audience and build a default page that answers YOUR audiences questions. YOU know YOUR audience so YOU should build that information for them. I know MY audience so I built that information for them.

I get it, and that's why you have to see this as a simple suggestion. I know that there are different types of community and each owner manages it as they see fit or best for their community, I am not asking everyone to like this idea and therefore should accept it. Only due to the large number of users that I have and requests that them make, I am suggesting that a nice home page be implemented to guide the user to have a better experience within the community.
Since visually the user could be overwhelmed with so much information from the home page and would not know where to start.

If I don't explain me well I'm sorry, my English is not good.

[Sheffielder]

 

 

Simply put, my users would see a homepage and log straight back off again.

As it stands they land straight on the forums page and straight into the action!

[Dean_]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Jackal's app - Landing Page.

Few of us are now using this, and he's happy to add any features. I use this to explain about our site and how to login, get started and tell the user a bit about us.

Is this of any use?

[Phil Këvin]

On 5/17/2020 at 4:13 PM, Sheffielder said:

Simply put, my users would see a homepage and log straight back off again.

As it stands they land straight on the forums page and straight into the action!

You are wrong, when a new user enters your site it does so through the results of their search on Google, Bing, etc.
When this happens, the user is directly redirected to the topic of their interest, in this action the user has not seen the home page.
But what if the user decided to go to the Home Page? (Most users usually go to the Home Page to know more.)
In this case the user will find all the necessary information to better understand the platform, thus improving his experience on the site.

Regards!

Edited May 19, 2020 by Phil Këvin

[Sheffielder]

7 hours ago, Phil Këvin said:

You are wrong, when a new user enters your site it does so through the results of their search on Google, Bing, etc.
When this happens, the user is directly redirected to the topic of their interest, in this action the user has not seen the home page.
But what if the user decided to go to the Home Page? (Most users usually go to the Home Page to know more.)
In this case the user will find all the necessary information to better understand the platform, thus improving his experience on the site.

Regards!

 

 

I only use Forums (I don't use pages etc)

The user lands on the home page of my website and immediately sees everything they need to 

Adding another step into this process and the user would log off

There's absolutely no need whatsoever for another random page for them to see before they get to what they've come for

My home page is my forum index. I'm happy with that. To put another page in the way of it would be ridiculous

Edited May 19, 2020 by Sheffielder

[Phil Këvin]

1 hour ago, Sheffielder said:

I only use Forums (I don't use pages etc)

The user lands on the home page of my website and immediately sees everything they need to 

Adding another step into this process and the user would log off

There's absolutely no need whatsoever for another random page for them to see before they get to what they've come for

My home page is my forum index. I'm happy with that. To put another page in the way of it would be ridiculous

If the user goes directly to your home page it means that they already know your website. I also have a lot of users who know my website and go directly to the Home Page, but that is not the point. As I explained previously, the home page will be useful for new users, helping them to better understand the community and everything it has to offer. In addition to that it improves the performance of the site and SEO.

Above all, it will help sites with a large community.

Regards!

[Sheffielder]

 

I think that's just your personal preference for your personal website.

It would have zero benefits for me, and would put my users off.

My users prefer to go straight into the forums to read the latest posts.

Any new users end up the same place and immediately get to grips with the site