Author Topic: Making a new website - Feedback appreciated (Read 4892 times)

shmokes · « **on:** July 30, 2011, 03:28:18 am »

I've been working all week on a new review blog for children's iPad apps. It's about 80% designed, and looking pretty good, I think. But I'd appreciate any feedback anyone has on the design, content, navigation, features, etc. Is there anything there that you really like about the site? Anything you think is missing? What do you think of the length, tone and depth of the reviews? And so on.

So far I only have a handfull of children's book app reviews up. The book apps are kind of my specialty since my daughter and I read three books every night before bed, and for the last year we've read almost exclusively on the iPad. So I've read a lot of these books I'm reviewing like a couple dozen times. But I'll get some games and education apps reviewed soon too, so those categories won't remain empty for long.

Also, I haven't even looked at the CSS for the table (Books and Story Apps>All Book Ratings), so it's ugly now, with print that's a bit too small, but it'll get better soon.

I wanna think of everything and get the structure of my site as close to permanent as possible so I don't have to go back and update all of the existing content. For example, I'm thinking that I should categorize apps by age group, so visitors can, e.g., opt to only see apps that are appropriate for kids under 4. But since I haven't already implemented that, I will have to go into every review I've written so far and add that feature.

Anyway, please have a look. http://bestkidipadapps.com

And if you have kids, and you have an iPad, I hope you find that it's worth visiting regularly.

shmokes · « **Reply #1 on:** July 30, 2011, 03:33:37 am »

Oh . . . I should note that while you are certainly welcome to point out typos, I haven't actually read through any of those reviews, yet. So I expect that there are quite a few and I will catch most of them on my own since I still need to read through all the articles and add hyperlinks throughout them. Once I have everything nailed down I will, of course, make all my links as I'm writing the reviews.

drventure · « **Reply #2 on:** July 30, 2011, 09:27:04 am »

Nice site! It's clean and nicely organized.

I gotta wonder, though about the whole iPad childrens books concept in general. So, I spend 2-5$ each on these apps, which is not much granted. But then, how long will they last?

My daughter's got books on her shelf that were mine and my wife's when we were kids, and that she loves reading. I don't see that likely to happen with digital stuff.

Just wondering what your thoughts were on that? No big deal.. Just another way to get kids reading (which is never bad)...

Howard_Casto · « **Reply #3 on:** July 30, 2011, 12:37:25 pm »

Quote from: drventure on July 30, 2011, 09:27:04 am

Nice site! It's clean and nicely organized.

I gotta wonder, though about the whole iPad childrens books concept in general. So, I spend 2-5$ each on these apps, which is not much granted. But then, how long will they last?

My daughter's got books on her shelf that were mine and my wife's when we were kids, and that she loves reading. I don't see that likely to happen with digital stuff.

Just wondering what your thoughts were on that? No big deal.. Just another way to get kids reading (which is never bad)...

I agree. I still have my little golden books in a storage box somewhere. But then again, as an adult I've went almost entirely digital, so I dunno.

In regards to the site, I think it looks really good, but I've never been a fan of those blogs with the "reverse letterbox" bars on either side. It isn't that it looks bad, it's just such a common practice with those web templates floating around that whenever I see it I think "this site was put together in 10 minutes". I think those bars could be better utilized by perhaps links to recent books (with thumbs of course) for quick reference. And maybe links to buy the books on the right... would get some ad revenue in there.

Also in regards to the "split blog" style where you put two links on the same row. I realize your site is for childrens books and it isn't the same audience, but they updated kotaku's site with that style and the users revolted until they put in an option to use the old blog style. For me it isn't that big a deal either way, but the reason a lot of people don't like it is that when you fit two reviews on one row there isn't much room for text. A combination of quick links in the left vertical bar in conjunction with a more traditional blog list might work, at least as an option.

I'm not saying the layout is bad btw... I think you could use it as-is and it would be great, but you asked for some suggestions so I just gave my 2 cents.

DaveMMR · « **Reply #4 on:** July 30, 2011, 01:11:51 pm »

I like it, pretty well organized. I assume you're using Wordpress (well I guessed that by peeking at the source) and I must say I like the way that theme looks. If I had to offer up one complain it's the link colors are a little too light on a white background.

ark_ader · « **Reply #5 on:** July 30, 2011, 06:24:15 pm »

Looks good to me. Nice job!

shmokes · « **Reply #6 on:** July 30, 2011, 10:44:28 pm »

Is that on the App Store? I saw a video of it online, but I thought Samuel L. Jackson messed up the the delivery. It started out hilarious, but then he stopped deadpanning it and got all the exasperation in his voice and it lost its humor.

Thanks for the suggestions. As for the longevity of digital books, what Howard and drventure said makes no sense to me at all. Why would your digital books not last as long as physical books? They literally never wear out. Ever. And you carry your entire library with you everywhere you go, rather than, for example, boxing up your golden books. It seems similar to thinking digital music will never fly because you still have the records you had as a kid boxed up in the attic.

drventure · « **Reply #7 on:** July 31, 2011, 12:19:24 am »

True enough, technically speaking, the digital copies would never wear out.

I'm more concerned about file formats, and such. For instance, music files are strictly data. And the formats at this point are fairly well established.

The online book apps are +apps+. Ie they're essentially games, just with a lot of reading in them.

There aren't many games for win98 that I can run successfully on Win7.

Now, if they were straight PDF's, or plain ol' text files, I'd be more inclined to believe they'll still be usable in 10-20 years. But straight PDf's and text files aren't exactly "interactive"

But hey, at the end of the day, reading to kids is good, period. And I'd be willing to bet there'll be a lot of people plunking down cash for those online app books as tablets become more and more popular, regardless of whether they'll be able to hand those books down to they're kids' kids.

fallacy · « **Reply #8 on:** July 31, 2011, 03:42:26 am »

For me it would be a site that I would click the back button as soon as I entered it. I see useless text everywhere my eyes can’t lock on anything... it’s one of those sites.

shmokes · « **Reply #9 on:** July 31, 2011, 11:04:01 am »

Can you be more specific? Like, if you were a parent specifically seeking reviews of iPad apps for your kids, can you give me examples of some of the stuff that would make you back out of my site and go elsewhere? I actually look at that site and see some pretty clean, uncluttered design. There isn't even a single ad on the site at this point. But it's hard to see the flaws in your own children, so I'm interested in what you all think.

shmokes · « **Reply #10 on:** July 31, 2011, 11:17:17 am »

Quote from: drventure on July 31, 2011, 12:19:24 am

There aren't many games for win98 that I can run successfully on Win7.

That's true. Plus, the apps are platform specific, so if I switch to an Android or Windows 8 tablet down the road, I can't read the books I've purchased on the new devices. Paper books are only platform specific in terms of being only written in one language (actually a limitation many apps do not share). And it's probably pretty unlikely that at one point down the road you will stop speaking English.

With that said, though, it's not much of a limitation. They're a great value, generally priced between $1 and $4, and they're super coonvenient. Plus, they can be superior to their paper-based counterparts. The iPad remake of the classic Monster at the End of this Book is amazing, and far, far better than the dead-tree original could ever be. All the Dr. Seuss treatments (there are more than 20) improve upon the paper versions as well, though not as dramatically. Cheap, convenient (I'm writing this post on my iPad, and thus am currently holding in my hand my entire library of more than 100 children's books), high quality products made for a huge market of people who have disposable income (parents with iPads), are sure to sell well.

shmokes · « **Reply #11 on:** July 31, 2011, 01:11:59 pm »

Quote from: Howard_Casto on July 30, 2011, 12:37:25 pm

Also in regards to the "split blog" style where you put two links on the same row. I realize your site is for childrens books and it isn't the same audience, but they updated kotaku's site with that style and the users revolted until they put in an option to use the old blog style.

I think you're right. It's switched back to a single column now. I think the way I had it looks nice from a design perspective, but it's not as usable. It's better now.

shmokes · « **Reply #12 on:** July 31, 2011, 02:38:09 pm »

The point is to monetize the site. I'd love to make a name for myself with the site and have Best Kid become a huge name in children product reviews, but that's not so much a goal as a, "That'd be awesome if . . ." The goal is simply to increase the search rankings of this site and have it generate a nice chunk of extra revenue for something that doesn't take too much of my time. I don't think that I could leverage this into a real job because I'm not looking for jobs in any remotely related market.

I think your instincts about parents behavior are pretty off the mark. What led me to get into this was that for almost the entire time I had the iPad there was no decent resource for sifting through the hundreds of kids books available on the app store. Parents, you'll be surprised to know, do not base their concern about the development of their children solely on economics. I want my daughter to have good books and good toys and see good movies and shows. I want her to have fun. I want her to learn. I want these things, even when the stuff I'm buying her is inexpensive. Almost all parents do. In fact, they get pretty fanatical about it.

User reviews on the app store are utterly worthless. Most of the people on the app store have no frame of reference because they only own maybe one or two kids books apps. So they're like, "Oh, this is pretty cool. Five stars," when actually it's comparative garbage. Also, most the one star reviews are statistical outliers because they're just random instances of someone downloading an app only to have the app be completely non-functional on their device. That person would otherwise be disinclined to voice their opinion. But EVERY person with a defective product is inclined to voice his opinion. I've purchased a ---steaming pile of meadow muffin----ton of books on the app store that had 4.5 star ratings and almost invariably they're crap. I think it likely that I'm not alone.

edit: typo

shmokes · « **Reply #13 on:** July 31, 2011, 03:00:06 pm »

Quote from: pinballjim on July 31, 2011, 02:09:18 pm

I expect Disney products to be good quality. Why do I want to read a review that confirms this? I would divide your reviews into sections like, "books I expected to be good that are horrible", "books I never heard of that we liked", "books that annoy the crap out of me that my kid loves", "books that look good on an iphone."

I didn't address this in my last post, but it's worth mentioning.

Expecting Disney products to be good quality seems to me to be almost entirely without basis. Have you ever played a videogame based on a Disney character? They are almost without exception abominable. Have you ever seen a sequel to a Disney blockbuster? Aladdin 3, for example? Have you seen all of the Disney blockbusters? Chicken Little? Pocahontas? Cars 2 (or Cars 1, for that matter)? Hercules? Emperors New Groove? Have you seen any of the shows on the Disney Channel--Suite Life on Deck, Hannah Montana?

And nobody anywhere capitalizes on their properties more than Disney. They will slap their brands on absolutely everything from high-quality robotic toys, to garbage party-favors.

Disney makes a boatload of ---steaming pile of meadow muffin---. Everyone knows that. And there's no way to know where on Disney's wide quality spectrum a product falls other than buying the thing or finding out through some other means.

As for the sections you suggest dividing the site into, that just seems like a really poor way to organize a review site. All of your suggestions are worth noting in a given review (in fact, in I rate every single book in the category of how annoying it is for parents regardless of how much the kid loves it). But breaking the reviews into the seemingly arbitrary (and sort of narcissistic) categories that you suggest strikes me as not nearly as useful to most people as separating them up into more sensible, objective categories (like educational apps, games, books).

shmokes · « **Reply #14 on:** July 31, 2011, 04:07:55 pm »

I'm not sure I understand your point. The reviews are already separated by genre (books, educational, games). They can also be easily sorted by score. I think that I will add age categories so parents can choose to filter out apps that aren't good for their kids age group. But the categories you suggest make no sense. Why do people care whether I expected the app to suck before I read the review? Why do they care whether I had ever heard of the app before I heard of it? I mean, that stuff might be fine for breathing words in the body of the article. But you think I should organize my site based on whether or not I thought the book would be good before I'd read it? That makes no sense to me. I really don't believe people would prefer that to what I'm doing now.

Is anybody else inclined to chime in here? Is there something to what pinball is saying that I'm missing?

shmokes · « **Reply #15 on:** July 31, 2011, 04:11:37 pm »

Maybe what you'd like to see is periodic feature articles with titles like, "Top Ten Great iPad Books that Nobody's Heard Of," and, "Books to Avoid That Should Have Been Good."

That seems like a good idea to me. But permanently organizing my site on those criteria does not.

shmokes · « **Reply #16 on:** July 31, 2011, 04:30:35 pm »

Quote from: pinballjim on July 31, 2011, 03:43:40 pm

So, if the problem with app store reviews is that they're chaotic, unreliable, and overwhelming in their sheer numbers, why aren't you organizing your reviews?? Is the intention that someone googles a specific book title and lands on your respective review page?

Are you able to review an app store book, set up a hotlink to it, and skim a percentage off the sale if they buy it?

I never said the app store was chaotic or overwhelming in sheer numbers. I said the reviews were unreliable. I think that's enough to justify the existence of a review site.

If I understand that last sentence correctly, the answer is yes. At the end of every review is a button that says, "Available on the App Store." If you clicking that link wil redirect you to that app's page on the App Store. If you buy it, Apple sends me a 5% commission (so, probably like 10-20 cents per app). In other words, if the site ever generates a nontrivial amount of money it will be through advertising, not commissions.

drventure · « **Reply #17 on:** July 31, 2011, 04:54:01 pm »

Personally, If I landed on a site like yours, I'd want to see three basic things.

1) A "quick look" page that shows title, and rating 1-5 stars or something similar, and maybe a VERY short synopsis. This is where I'd go to browse for something new.

2) a prominent "SEARCH" bar, to find a specific title, or reviews for all books with "elephant" or similar type searches.

3) Lower on the list but still important is for each review a link or collection of "books like this". Might not be populated much at first, but when you find something you like, it's nice to see links to related or like titles. The books like this area should likely be similar to the "Quick look" page above, just a list of title links and rating, ordered by descending ratings.

shmokes · « **Reply #18 on:** July 31, 2011, 05:50:53 pm »

1- What I have now along those lines is the chart you see by clicking a category in the top navigation menu and then selecting "All Ratings". That will display a chart that, I think, meets all your criteria. It can also be sorted by clicking the column headers, or you can easily apply any filter you want by typing a term into the filter box. Do you think this feature needs to be more prominant than it is? Remember, not just for your sake (you'd probably just as soon have me make that the homepage). On any site like this you want visitors to actually read the reviews. You want them to spend as much of their time as possible on your site. Because that will translate to more ad revenue. But features like this chart still have to be available enough that people know whwere to find them and can access them easily, so they will not hate the site and will keep returning. These are my thoughts, anyway.

2- I think this is covered. Search bar is right up top, prominantly displayed.

3- Agreed. I'll get that implemented.

drventure · « **Reply #19 on:** July 31, 2011, 05:53:51 pm »

See, now that's why I shouldn't just go on my memory of what I thought the sight looked like when I first checked it out

shmokes · « **Reply #20 on:** July 31, 2011, 06:12:04 pm »

A couple things. The chart I mentioned in the last post shows the star rating in one column. Since those stars don't obviously represent a numerical value (to a computer), the table won't sort right if you click on that header. I'm thinking that I can figure a way to make it so when you click on that header, the table will actually sort based on the next column, as though you had clicked the header for the numerical score column. Then I'll just hide the numerical score column. If I can't figure that out I'll probably ditch the column with the star ratings altogether, cos having both columns is just redundant.

Speaking of the star rating, I'm pretty sure I'm going to switch to a five-star system. The scale will be the same because I'll use half-star increments. But I think it'll be a bit cleaner and more usable. Any thoughts? 10 star full increments vs. 5 star half increments?

drventure · « **Reply #21 on:** July 31, 2011, 08:24:08 pm »

I think 5 star with .5 increments would be more inline with what's typical.

I can't remember ever seeing a 10 star scale anywhere.

shmokes · « **Reply #22 on:** July 31, 2011, 10:06:39 pm »

IGN and Gamespot both use a 10 point system (they actually use .5 increments, so it's really 20 points). I've been looking at those sites for ideas on structure and review categories. But you're right, they don't actually use stars and now that you mention it, I'm thinking I've never seen a 10 point system that used stars. I am using stars, though, so I'll go with the 10 point, 5 star system. 20 points is way too granular anyway. How can you really grade one thing a 17 out of 20 and another an 18 oit of 20 if it's not a black-and-white test with a set number of right and wrong answers?

Anyway, thanks for all the suggestions. I hope they keep coming, and please recommend the site to friends with kids and iPads.

drventure · « **Reply #23 on:** July 31, 2011, 10:26:43 pm »

Hadn't seen then, but yeah 20 points seems a tad to much. For this sort of general purpose rating system, 1-5 seems to make the most sense to me.

1-Terrible. Don't bother
2- not good but a few redeeming points
3 - mediocre
4 - pretty good
5 - Fantastic. Get it!

Even then, 1-3 almost seem to want to be one number themselves<g>

SavannahLion · « **Reply #24 on:** August 01, 2011, 12:00:07 am »

Quote from: shmokes on July 31, 2011, 11:17:17 am

Quote from: drventure on July 31, 2011, 12:19:24 am

There aren't many games for win98 that I can run successfully on Win7.

That's true. Plus, the apps are platform specific, so if I switch to an Android or Windows 8 tablet down the road, I can't read the books I've purchased on the new devices. Paper books are only platform specific in terms of being only written in one language (actually a limitation many apps do not share). And it's probably pretty unlikely that at one point down the road you will stop speaking English.

With that said, though, it's not much of a limitation. They're a great value, generally priced between $1 and $4, and they're super coonvenient. Plus, they can be superior to their paper-based counterparts. The iPad remake of the classic Monster at the End of this Book is amazing, and far, far better than the dead-tree original could ever be. All the Dr. Seuss treatments (there are more than 20) improve upon the paper versions as well, though not as dramatically. Cheap, convenient (I'm writing this post on my iPad, and thus am currently holding in my hand my entire library of more than 100 children's books), high quality products made for a huge market of people who have disposable income (parents with iPads), are sure to sell well.

I thought I should just chime in here.

While I think both of you have valid points, I think you're kind of missing the point that drventure is making. Or maybe I'm misunderstanding him and I've got my own point.... whatever.

Statistically speaking, What percentage of applications (or more importantly file formats) are still accessible from say... twenty years ago....

How about thirty years ago?

How much data is now permanently locked away on a medium that is inaccessible for one reason or another?

When you look beyond the computing age and look at the hundreds of storage mediums over the years, you begin to realize that none, not one of them, has lasted anywhere near as long as the printed word. And for good reason, That ---steaming pile of meadow muffin--- lasts damn near forever... as long as no one burns it... or leaves it in their compost pile... or lets the baby get a hold of it. Point is, there are manuscripts hundreds or even thousands of years old still in existence. Can't really expect that of digital media.

Take a different media, such as audio. We've had wax cylinders, eight tracks, vinyl records, various cassette tapes, CD's and of course, digital audio. But how many can recall wire was used as a storage medium (someone did, it's been featured more than once on Eureka), dictabelts? How about those ridiculous DCC or MD formats? Yeah... You would be surprised to know how much audio (good stuff at that) is just locked away waiting for someone to at least convert it to a more modern format. (note: that used to be my job. Believe me, the number of people doing that and getting paid for it is tiny).

But TBH it's not as bad I make it out to be. Some team out there might put together an emulator to run these apps again so the expectation that such medium will become unusable as it has in the past has diminished.

All that said, let's move on.

Here's my suggestion. The books I tend to obtain first are either A) ones that catches my kids eyes. or B) ones that I remember from my own youth.

Some examples (off the top of my head) of books I want to share with my son from my youth are books like those by Richard Scary. For instance, Best Word Book Ever have been altered at least three times (by my count) in varying degrees and is not the only RS book to be altered. When a book is adapted to a digital medium, I would like to see, wherever feasible, how the story itself has been altered. I'm usually not concerned with the extra, digital only, portions. More with how the story itself might have been altered to fit the medium. Of course, a couple of bucks isn't much, but my time is precious.

Just a suggestion. If you're only buying the digital books, it's not likely you would have the paper versions as well.

shmokes · « **Reply #25 on:** August 01, 2011, 12:24:25 am »

No, I got his point and I even added to it (when I discussed potentially changing platforms from iOS to Android or Windows

. But it's neither here nor there, really. The fact is, even if it's ill-advised, people are buying these digital storybooks. Millions of people. And even if twenty years down the road all the stuff they buy today will be obsolete and unusable, that doesn't lessen their desire to make informed buying decisions today.

So, it's an interesting academic discussion for sure. But, I'm not concerned about the digital medium's failings negatively impacting the success of my website.

Howard_Casto · « **Reply #26 on:** August 01, 2011, 12:30:31 am »

I think the site is shaping up. My last suggestion..... more pictures... lots more.

When it comes to blog posts when I see text I see "blah blah blah" unless there is an eye-catching picture. For the individual blog entries I think you have it covered, but for links and filter you might want to try something a tad more visual.

Btw in regards to digital formats (I know, I know we are getting off topic). The problem has never been getting the data to run, it's getting the data off of whatever it was on and onto something else. MAME is a great example of this. Most of the unemulated games have chips that are hard to crack or pcbs that are hard to find. Once a dump is made it's only a matter of time until somebody gets it running.

I honestly think that all digital downloads will be lost to time simply because they are such purposefully disposable media. When apple's e-book format changes due to some new tablet and all old books are invalid do you really think many people are going to bother to try to keep the old ones when a brand new version will be available for just a couple of bucks and they've already read all of these books? Now the master copy on the other hand... in this case the physical book... will always be around and thus will always be available, but individual files.... nah, they are mostly toast.

ark_ader · « **Reply #27 on:** August 01, 2011, 12:01:14 pm »

With regard to file formats I completely agree with you.

I bought a Kindle whilst on holiday. I found that the device did not real all the book formats, and the screen was too small. I got the Nook Classic and it read all the formats I wanted, with the correct sizing.

Then I started trolling through all my ebooks I collected over the years, and was baffled on the sheer amount of different formats available which would be problematic for my device(s).

I was advised by a friend to check out calibre which resolved the formatting of books for my device. So whatever device I use, like my Galaxy S phone or the Nook, I can access all the books in my collection. Convert Comics, Office Documents and the like.

calibre also allows for ratings for books, and you can subscribe to online journals, purchase books etc.

So if the problem is file format in consideration of the intended target, I would at least have a look at calibre as it is open sourced and very helpful.

BobA · « **Reply #28 on:** August 02, 2011, 11:44:20 am »

I like the site but did not read much as I don't have an interest in children's ebooks or software. I have one comment though. You might dedicate some of the site to children related hardware. I hear a large problem with the younger kids is that the ipad often slips out of their hands and goes splat on the coffee table or floor. This causes a whole lot of damage. Some hardware addresses this giving a kids a more solid hold on the ipad.

drventure · « **Reply #29 on:** August 02, 2011, 12:52:29 pm »

Calibre looks like a very interesting project. A rosetta stone of ebooks. Thing is, for ebook "apps" that are very interactive (more like games), I'm guessing it won't be much help. But, good to know about anywhere.

@Shmoakes Don't get me wrong. I +LOVE+ the idea of being able to carry a whole library in my hand! I just want to be able to read it 10 hardware generations from now....

shmokes · « **Reply #30 on:** August 02, 2011, 01:18:07 pm »

I never think about the future. It detracts from the now.


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