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    Site Improvement

    • Started by NeoMenlo
    • 8 Replies:
    • Reputation: 0
    • Registered: 05-Oct-2006
    • Posts: 105

    Help make the website prettier. - Shai (https://colemak.com/Advocate)

    I am offering my services in either improving the current site or completely reworking it from the ground up.
    I would like to hear a little bit about what Shai wants before making specific suggestions.

    Easy Improvements

    More visitors

    Social Networking
    I see that you have digg, and that whether or not you know it, you're on StumbleUpon.

    I mention social networking first because it is becoming even more important than search engines. These sites draw not only 'hits', but people who are genuinely interested in the website.

    I was thinking that you should add something in the wiki that is similar to the toolbar at alluc
    Of course, this is not at all the first or best example, just the only one that I could think of off the top of my head.

    When you have great content like this site, it only takes a tiny seed to make it massively popular. My site is by no means popular, but about 20% of my visitors are from stumbleupon. More importantly, the majority of those that end up signing up are actually from stumble upon. (there are few enough that I can ask each personally).

    Better Interface
    Graphs and Images

    You give amazing statistics and information. However, the majority of it can easily be shown in an image/graph.

    "Your fingers on QWERTY move 2.2x more than on Colemak. QWERTY has 16x more same hand row jumping than Colemak. There are 35x more words you can type using only the home row on Colemak."

    Staggering statistics! First of all, 2.2x... most people would think either "that's not much" or "WHAT???". Put this into perspective. 2.2 times more is far more easy to picture in the form of an image/graph.

    Off 'topic', but you need to realize that when people see numbers like that, they often get confused, can't put it into perspective, or assume that you are being misleading. To be as straight forward as possible, I would consider something like "When you write 2 pages, you're fingers will move ____" I have done some rough calculations, and I think it should be something like 200m (qwerty) and 80m (Colemak). 2.2x... who cares? 120 METERS LESS!! All of the sudden the benefits become alot more clear. Maybe thats just me though...
    Thoughts??

    Use of LISTS
    Look at the main page, more specifically the Advantages section.

    "Allows easy transition from QWERTY. Only 2 keys move between hands. Many common shortcuts (including Ctrl+Z/X/C/V) remain the same. Typing lessons available."

    Each of those sentences there... well first of all, they aren't sentences. You probably went with your instincts with that. They're brief and easy to read. The thing is, each of those should really be a subpoint. I don't think that I can do them in BB. It should look more like:

    Easy To Learn
    - Allows easy transition from QWERTY
    _- Only 2 keys move between hands
    - Common shortcuts (including Ctrl+Z/X/C/V) remain the same
    - Typing lessons available.

    ^ignore the underline, it is the only way I could space it correctly

    Concise but Informative
    You've done a great job of keeping everything concise and powerful. The only thing is, when someone finds something that they are interested in, they want to read more.

    I'll use the Advantages section again as an example:
    After reading about all the great things, someone will either think "That's fantastic! Say no more! How do I start?" or "I still don't care enough. Besides, I like QWERTY fine anyway."

    As a web designer, you need to accommodate for both of these important groups of people.

    I suggest that directly below the last advantage, you should have two separate links. One to a new "Getting started" page, most likely including a ton of the helpful information buried in the FAQ, as well as a link to the Windows, Mac, and Linux download sections. For the "I still don't care enough" people, they may have enough interest to click a link titled "I'm still not convinced", which would lead to a page which includes much more information than you currently have.

    Another thing that is important is to keep in mind who is actually going to be at each page.
    The best example that I can think of is, again, the home page.
    You're gonna get two broad groups of people: New visitors, and returning users. BOTH kinds of visitors will not care about the large image of the keyboard layout. Now, I'm not saying that it's not helpful, just not appropriate.

    New visitors will see that layout and think "I can't memorize that" or "Thats even more confusing that QWERTY!". If they don't think that, they most certainly don't care! Now, theres the returning users. They may want a reminder of what they layout is, like maybe they forgot a key and that's why they're coming back. In that case, theres still the logo at the top left!

    Emphasis
    Putting emphasis on certain words can drastically increase the reader's reading speed. Truly lazy readers can read a few of the underlined words and grasp the important points that you want everyone to understand. After that, many of these lazy readers may gain interest and read deeper.

    I personally am guilty of abusing these far to easily. If used too much, the page can appear cluttered, unorganized, and messy. I've also found that the author should pick ONE and stick to it. Underline everything, Italicize everything, OR Bold everything. Don't mix and match.

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    • Shai
    • Administrator
    • Reputation: 36
    • Registered: 11-Dec-2005
    • Posts: 423

    The home page definitely needs to be worked on. I've set up an editable copy of Colemak homepage on http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/Colemak , that would be the best place to put down all your suggestion.

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    • Registered: 05-Oct-2006
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    I'm currently working on it.

    Did you want anything more advanced like a complete overhaul?

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    • Shai
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    Maybe later, let's concentrate on the content for now.

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    I have emailed you an .ods (and a .xls) with some suggestions for the statistics

    Each graph would require some explanation in the webpage, but I wanted some feedback before I pretty it up for the web.

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    • From: Houston, Texas
    • Registered: 03-Jan-2007
    • Posts: 358

    this looks cool !

    my only small suggestion is to drop  Mac OS X from the Ktouch on the Learn page.  It's not Mac OS X native and requires too much effort to install.  The "recommended" gives the impression that Ktouch is what you need on you Mac.   IMO you want the effort in switching to be as little as possible. You can leave information on the Ktouch page about how to get it running on a Mac for those more technically proficient to use Ktouch (those that know Ktouch is part of KDE).  Be kind to us Mac users, we need Colemak too.

    Last edited by keyboard samurai (12-Apr-2007 04:39:59)
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    Speaking of Operating systems

    We aren't fooling anyone when we try to act like OS usage is distributed equally.
    When the user clicks on download, 92% of the time (actual statistic!), the user will be using SOME form of windows. Surprisingly, about 20% - 40% (a year ago) was actually Windows 98.

    So I'm saying maybe we should just get rid of that 'select your operating system' page, and just bring every user right to the windows section, but at the top (and possibly the bottom), include a link to the Mac and Linux pages.

    Part of me hates doing this, because I have tried and loved Linux (Fedora Core and Ubuntu), but it's really not about what some of us want, it's about the actual audience. I would never say completely forget about it though, because they are still potential users, and not individually less important than the rest. Looking at it as a whole though, there's not much of a point...

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    • Shai
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    • Registered: 11-Dec-2005
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    People who are open minded enough to use an alternative keyboard layout, are much more likely to run alternative operating system as well. According to my statistics, about 60% of the downloads are for Windows, 25% for Linux/FreeBSD/Unix, and 15% for Mac. I estimate that about 25% of the users use more than one operating system.

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    Thats very unusual...

    We should definitely consider that when marketing...

    Are you also tracking what sites the users are coming from?

    I'm just thinking, if there were some kind of popular link from something like sourceforge, or maybe even a Linux Distro Development team's forum, you could explain it as an anomaly

    If not, it means that the users are actually more open minded, like you just said.

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