Homepage redesign

Site Development
1

Unfortunately, I must report that I opened LinkedIn today, and I encountered something that I think is a good point.

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I think our homepage has a lot of platitudes about privacy, and not much about what makes us as a website different. For example, unlike basically everywhere else we are:

  • volunteer/community driven
  • non-profit
  • no affiliations with recommendations
  • 5 yrs+ of trust/experience
  • etc.

If we don’t make people understand WHY they should read Privacy Guides and join our forum right away as soon as they visit, I don’t think we’ll reach new people.

Interested in your thoughts on this, what this could look like, and what we could say.

16 Likes
2

tldr we’re losing people by complaining about surveillance and governments instead of getting to the point of why privacy and Privacy Guides are both good, I think

11 Likes
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Product branding seems so simple on the surface for those who are new, but once you get serious, it has deeper and more complex meaning to it.

Things to consider with branding:

  • Dumb things down. For the most part, people don’t care about anything past the first page of the search engine and attention to detail when browsing products at the store.
  • Make it short, sweet and simple where people are enticed enough to explore even deeper. That’s how you get return customers–in this case, site visitors.
  • Consistency. Making sure that across the brand’s platforms, things correlate with each other. From fonts, colors, logos, etc. This is why professional brands have Brand Identity as reference when publishing new or updated information to ensure consistency.
  • Memorable. When people think of “internet privacy”, would the first thing that come to their mind be Privacy Guides?

With that being said, I agree with the LinkedIn post and changing the UX/UI of the homepage can attract more visitors to the site.

Putting myself in the shoes of someone who doesn’t know much about technology and privacy, my first impressions of the homepage would be quite similar to companies who offer paid solutions to elevate businesses. Such as customer support solutions, front/back-end solutions, collaboration, etc. instead of a knowledge base for privacy tools that comes with a community behind it. The goal of the homepage doesn’t express the intent of the website, if that makes sense.

Having more blog posts and featuring a few of them as cards on the front page can be attractive instead of a few buttons that guide people to another page. The header links could be reduced to a maximum of 3–4 items and having the search bar in the center instead of the top right.

The website is also missing sitemaps and a proper footer. If you’d like to keep the donate link on the top, try changing it into an icon instead of letters, then add “Donate” or “Support the project” as a tooltip. The web footer can easily contain everything in the current web header, organized into separate tables accordingly, if needed.

5 Likes
4

Published a few initial changes while we think about other things:

Adding a real footer next is a great idea I think.

4 Likes
5

Here is exactly the WHY that you are looking for. Very simple and easy to understand philosophy. Links below.

Boils down to:

  • Privacy allows us to try new things, leading to a more innovate society that progresses
  • Privacy allows us to start a new “life”, doing things that we can’t or dont want to tie to our real identity, to freely explore and speak our mind or merely as protection from others.
  • Privacy allows us to participate in Wisdom that comes from a crowd of opining individuals without the downside of succumbing to peer pressure which only hinders innovations.

monero.garden/3-notes-for-humans/trying_things
monero.garden/3-notes-for-humans/fresh_start
monero.garden/3-notes-for-humans/wisdom_of_the_crowd

original post:

6

In their case, their success can also be owed to the minimalist graphic design choice of their product which complements the brand image they are going for. I think clean, minimalist design should overtake the cluttered mess that are websites and software programs today, where constant cheesy advertisements and crappy, complicated, jargon-filled and ugly UI are ubiquitous. This approach is not only unsuccessful from an aesthetic point of view, but from a practical point of view, preventing the user from easily finding, focusing and understanding information (i.e., information accessibility), wasting their time.

Why am I saying this? Because accessibility should be the number one priority of this site, as well as any other site or program. Keep the site simple, straight to the point, and use explanations and logic when describing things. The flow of the website should be like a textbook, where fundamental concepts are introduced and explained, followed by a progression to more complicated ones.

The subject of this site is inherently technical, so referrals should be made to academic computer science resources and documentation, especially for more advanced, lengthy concepts. Importantly, information should be referenced. I think taking an academic approach to this site would be warranted. Just like how scientists do not need to advertise the validity of their research, this site does not either.

Unfortunately, at the moment academic references are missing from this site. There is no better way to advertise yourselves by letting your work, and the academic work of others speak for themselves, this also means other people can criticise your references and work, allowing constructive changes to be made.

Lastly, this is something everyone is guilty of, centralise information! Reducing the amount of links and webpages that users need to go through (on the domain) should be one of the biggest goals of this website. These inefficiencies really do make a difference! Do not take this advice as bad faith, the minimalism points do not apply strongly to this website, but improvements can be made for sure. However, the lack of academic references is a major weak point that could be worked on.

7

Sorry for not doing this on Github (don’t have an account), but I have a few suggestions:

1.) The website footer should be updated to mirror the homepage:
“Privacy Guides is a not-for-profit, volunteer-run project that hosts online communities and publishes news and recommendations surrounding privacy and security tools, services, and knowledge.”

2.) Under the “We need you!” section, the “About” (next to “Donations”) icon should be removed, as it’s not a way to actually contribute (unlike all the other icons). This should be added to the footer icons instead! Also add an exclamation point to the very end of the paragraph (adds enthusiasm to the call to audience).

3.) Get rid of the “Latest discussions” section, as it clutters the homepage. There’s already an icon under “We need you!” linking to the forum, plus a link in the hamburger menu. I thought the intent of not having a link to the forum (as a box under Recommended Tools) was to force visitors to look around before asking questions which are answered elsewhere.
This also has the added benefit of preventing users abusing the forum in the future to get on the homepage (makes moderation easier), plus makes the forum look more lively and thus enticing (most recent posts will only get a handful of replies/reactions, and the most popular subjects will likely be most interesting to new site users).

1 Like
8

Thanks, we’d prefer discussion here anyways.

The button was just removed because it was too cluttered.

Honestly, the main intent of linking to latest discussions on the homepage is to encourage search engines to index new forum content quickly. I don’t think people linger long enough on the homepage for it to really impact people’s experience.

Abuse could be an issue, but we have decent moderation, and only linking to our own forum shouldn’t ever cause any lasting damage to us.

1 Like
9

Final changes for this proposal I think:

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The “more about who we are button on the homepage here redirects to the tools page instead of the about page”

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The new design is really nice, I like it very much. Congratulations :clap:t3:

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12

Good looking homepage, less bloated and essentials are kept in the homepage.

1 Like