Prototype Website Feedback

[old] c2bill · Post by **[old] c2bill** » March 14th, 2005, 10:21 am

to try and capture website feedback and user comments effectively, please post them here. thanks. -bill

[old] John Rupp · Post by **[old] John Rupp** » March 14th, 2005, 2:39 pm

For what web site -- this forum? I like the forum.

[old] Guest · Post by **[old] Guest** » March 15th, 2005, 8:15 am

<table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><div class='genmed'>QUOTE(c2bill @ Mar 14 2005, 09:21 AM)</div></td></tr><tr><td class='quote'>to try and capture website feedback and user comments effectively, please post them here. thanks. -bill </td></tr></table> Nice looking site... Think you should try and minimise the flash. Its very pretty but most users of the site are regular customers and dont need to be sold the virtues of the Concept2 with excessive graphics. Furthermore, I think the online ranking needs improving. I am 5'8 and the ranking at present gives me no idea of how good a rower I am due to my height. Sure, there are times for 2K of under 6minutes... However these tend to be posted by people who are 6'8 and over!!! We shorter rowers need a way of searching for equivalent results to give an idea of standing. For example, you already have Lightweight and Heavyweight... Why not make Over and Under 6ft parameters.

[old] Scott Robinson · Post by **[old] Scott Robinson** » March 21st, 2005, 5:08 pm

Clicked on the inspirational button and was taken to the old home page, with no immediate inspirational stories. (believe me I need all the inspiration I can get) Can sort and search on the group challenge page be updated? I would like to see a search on the same page as the current standings. The idea I'm thinking about is a search window where I type the word Michigan and I get all 5 or 6 results, with the ranking of team. This eliminates the searching through the list having to look for the "The University of Michigan", "University of Michigan", and "Michigan" Add a sort option on the number of persons in a group. This would allow a group of 5 rowers see other groups of 5 rowers by sorting and scrolling to the 5 rowers section. Kind of new to the whole C2 community so maybe a new rowers welcome page??? Listing the new rowers that join. This will allow for "recruiting" into rowing groups, and other first type contacts from local event organizers for the new people.

[old] Warduke · Post by **[old] Warduke** » March 25th, 2005, 5:58 pm

I see that <a href='http://www.concept2.com' target='_blank'>www.concept2.com</a> now takes you to the new site. While I like the new site, it doesn't seem to be done yet. Quite a few links do not work. This should have been fixed before moving over, but none the less, the new site is beautifully done and I do like it a lot.

[old] c2bill · Post by **[old] c2bill** » March 25th, 2005, 6:09 pm

<table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><div class='genmed'>QUOTE(Warduke @ Mar 25 2005, 04:58 PM)</div></td></tr><tr><td class='quote'>I see that <a href='http://www.concept2.com' target='_blank'>www.concept2.com</a> now takes you to the new site. While I like the new site, it doesn't seem to be done yet. Quite a few links do not work. This should have been fixed before moving over, but none the less, the new site is beautifully done and I do like it a lot. </td></tr></table> our goal was, of course, perfection... but in the interim - we'll try to fix broken links as quickly as possible. For future posts - if you have a specific bit of info that you couldn't find - or was broken, please post the specifics and i'll fix as quickly as possible. -bp

[old] Robbo · Post by **[old] Robbo** » March 25th, 2005, 10:07 pm

I thought it looked good and some things (photos) changed each time you went to it which made it interesting but there seemed to be less information available; am I right? Also the theme "why people rowed"only allowed access to 10 photos and not the 30+ discussed. Do not understand why you do not refer to your international users who are strong (especially UK). Still needs more good content like UK. Regards, Robbo

[old] kpd · Post by **[old] kpd** » March 26th, 2005, 12:40 pm

It looks very nice. These forums are great - especially the email notification feature. Don't change them. Glad to see the Health Clubs page. Perhaps you could add a link on that home page to a way to find the health clubs in an area that have Concept 2 erg's available? A truly spectacular solution would be to arrrange with maps.google.com so we could actually see a map to the clubs in an area with ergs available. This might be as easy as providing a page with keywords and addresses for google to crawl. Combined with their cell-phone based searches, this could be very useful when travelling. The search for workouts is nice and something I'd use as a coach. My goal is to search for a type of workout - say 'UT2' and see a list of workouts that target that zone. The search is close today, but it appears that the database could use more entries. The 'Why do you row' feature is thought-provoking. What a great idea. One thing, you would benefit from validating the html code with the free W3C validation service. This will go a long way towards making your site accessible both to a variety of browsers and to the visually impaired. An example of the validation test for the home page would be this link: <a href='http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1 ... 3Fbhcp%3D1' target='_blank'>http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1 ... 3D1</a> I agree with guest up top, minimzing use of flash and showy graphics is a great plan. Your regular users will benefit from this minimization.

[old] c2bill · Post by **[old] c2bill** » March 26th, 2005, 8:23 pm

in terms of minimizing flash - are you saying that we have already minimized it - and shouldn't add more... or that we have used too much flash and shouldn't use it at all? the links that appear below the flash mean that you don't have to wait for the flash to load before clicking out. also - if you don't have flash a simple jpg appears in place. as far as finding ergs - the link at the top of each page 'erg finder' does just this... i'll look into the w3c validation. bp <table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><div class='genmed'>QUOTE(kpd @ Mar 26 2005, 11:40 AM)</div></td></tr><tr><td class='quote'>It looks very nice. These forums are great - especially the email notification feature. Don't change them. Glad to see the Health Clubs page. Perhaps you could add a link on that home page to a way to find the health clubs in an area that have Concept 2 erg's available? A truly spectacular solution would be to arrrange with maps.google.com so we could actually see a map to the clubs in an area with ergs available. This might be as easy as providing a page with keywords and addresses for google to crawl. Combined with their cell-phone based searches, this could be very useful when travelling. The search for workouts is nice and something I'd use as a coach. My goal is to search for a type of workout - say 'UT2' and see a list of workouts that target that zone. The search is close today, but it appears that the database could use more entries. The 'Why do you row' feature is thought-provoking. What a great idea. One thing, you would benefit from validating the html code with the free W3C validation service. This will go a long way towards making your site accessible both to a variety of browsers and to the visually impaired. An example of the validation test for the home page would be this link: <a href='http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1 ... 3Fbhcp%3D1' target='_blank'>http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1 ... 3D1</a> I agree with guest up top, minimzing use of flash and showy graphics is a great plan. Your regular users will benefit from this minimization. </td></tr></table>

[old] kpd · Post by **[old] kpd** » March 27th, 2005, 1:41 pm

Sorry, I missed the 'erg finder' link. I was looking in the health club section as my mindset was that clubs thinking of buying ergs would look there, see the link, and say 'hey, this could draw people to our health club.' The flash that's there is fine. I just wouldn't go overboard by adding a lot more. This latter part is of course just one user's opinion, but after the first or second visit to heavily flashed site I find large amounts of flash distracting as I go to the content I'm looking for. [quote=c2bill,Mar 26 2005, 07:23 PM] in terms of minimizing flash - are you saying that we have already minimized it - and shouldn't add more... or that we have used too much flash and shouldn't use it at all? the links that appear below the flash mean that you don't have to wait for the flash to load before clicking out. also - if you don't have flash a simple jpg appears in place. as far as finding ergs - the link at the top of each page 'erg finder' does just this... i'll look into the w3c validation. bp

[old] John Rupp · Post by **[old] John Rupp** » March 27th, 2005, 2:39 pm

<table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><div class='genmed'>QUOTE(kpd @ Mar 26 2005, 08:40 AM)</div></td></tr><tr><td class='quote'>One thing, you would benefit from validating the html code with the free W3C validation service. This will go a long way towards making your site accessible </td></tr></table> 78 errors. That's not too bad really, but cleaning it up will be better. The site looks improved and loads much faster than a couple weeks ago. I would ditch the load screen thing at the beginning, then the picture of some dude with his back to the screen. The pictures after that look great.

[old] John Rupp · Post by **[old] John Rupp** » March 27th, 2005, 2:43 pm

Adding to what kpd said, you probably want 95+% of visitors to be able to access your site. If you had a lot of flash, preloading screens, and memory to load the first page, then a lot of potential visitors would be lost. Testing the pages with a dial up connection and slow computer would give you a good indication of the average connection time for users, or at least a minimum borderline for connectivity to your site.

[old] PaulH · Post by **[old] PaulH** » March 28th, 2005, 11:11 am

Just had a thought on the logo - on the first page it's a plain logo, but if I click on a link it changes to be the logo + Indoor Rower text. It wold look better if the logo was the same all the time. The only exception might be on the oar pages, when clearly the concern *isn't* indoor rowing On a related note, it seem like the logo should be bigger generally, perhaps double the size it is now. You're not ashamed of your name are you?

[old] RoCKo1 · Post by **[old] RoCKo1** » March 31st, 2005, 12:42 am

Excellent site... I am very new here. Just received my Model D and registered online. One problem encountered while registering. There are two text box areas for comments pertaining to different things. I added my comments and when I went to submit registration... it said that my comments exceeded the 300 char max. Ok so Im not going to count my letters so I hack off a bunch... now I know its under 300. Hit submit and same message. I kept tring, hacking off a little bit each time... once it told me that the max was 3! Finally I had zero letters in the text box and it let me register. I figured that it was probably from the new site coming in and still buggy. Anyway... I will give you input as I use the site. I love the forum! You really can learn alot from just reading. They are really valuable to have... I hope you have some kind of back up for old threads. Ive seen some really good forums go down and lose so much information. Anyway, keep up the excellent work! RoCKo

[old] RoCKo1 · Post by **[old] RoCKo1** » March 31st, 2005, 12:57 am

Ok... here's one. When I posted above, I noticed that it said "Not Registered". ??? I just got done logging in my meters for the day on the web site and then came here. Do I have to re-log in to use the forum? So I go and try to log in to the forum and it say's it can not find me? Confused now... I may have 2 different log in's??? Is this possible? Before I received my Model D I thought I registered... but the first time I came back it could not find me. I tried to have them send my password to my email... it never came. So I carefully registered and wrote down everything. This is what I have been using to log my meters online. This is the first time Ive been to the forums since. ?/?? Can somebody in admin mode check me out and see whats up. I only have one email address... but may have different log in names and passwords? RoCKo