jamescutts
I’m sure I could chip in with a huge list here, and a may well do so but my hit list would be:
- Return of Bootcamps, including virtual ones,
- I feel these where a big driver for community engagement and excitement and created a whole host of excellent supporting content in their build-ups along with being potentially great sponsorship opportunities.
- Updated project system, its the really unique and differentiating feature of BoW and it deserves more love both to make it more usable when contributing but also to drive people to it and interact.
- Currently there’s no easy way to get to the projects your working on it takes several pages and clicks
- using it is a bit clunky, and anything around images especially so, this needs to be drag drop and forget.
- theres no feed/timeline of project updates, instead you just get reordering of the list of projects and you have to then open the project to see its latest content. to comment you then need to open it up further, this just makes it hard. a timeline you could just directly comment on and interact would improve engagement. Activity wall is similar but lacks the more detailed view of content and has the same issues as above.
- remove the item limit in project posts, this limits people creating longer pieces of content
- add in new features and functionality that would be useful and improve it, e.g. a paint list selector that let you pick and brand, paint range and colour and then adds that to the post with a colour swatch, relevant codes and maybe even a link to wayland games to purchase.
- More great content, the revitalised weekender over the past month has really brought that spark back, the VLOG format was great of old so I’d love to see it more often, maybe a mid week episode of whats going on? I also love how varied the teams interests are so I think this could create some awesome content. For me I love the 10-15min limited editing rambles about projects, be it in the studio or not, more of that content would be awesome, its your guys passions that make this so awesome.
- Improved homepage design, while this was once great i feel its become dated and has far too much information its just huge cognitive overload, here’s my suggestions:
- bin off the scrolling game logos, its distracting and adds little
- consolidate the features and breaking news sections, these are just too diseperate and also a bit confusing. Have a upfront focus on the latest content, and then a news section. at the moment these have several breaks and splits in the.
- remove the forum, game ratings, reviews and other extra stuff from the homepage, make it more focused on the BoW content, breaking news and latest project updates and key things like events your going to.
- review the navigation, its too busy with confusing icons and too much. keep it simple, News, Projects, Forums an CoGs should be key navigation items and emphasised, the other stuff less so.
- a more subtle integrated way of doing the big add, I think by having a bigger BoW content section above it.
- General site cleanup
- Remove the extra noise in sidebars, latest from the forum on every page even with caching adds load and adds noise to the user
- remove dead feature links in the footer, no more [coming soon]
- Even better themed weeks, i love these but on the site they get a bit mixed and and lost as there not the most emphaised thing, again teaks to the homepage but i think this could easily be adjusted to that the themed week section is front and center.
- I’d possibly suggest having the full weeks content on show as a timeline, but with the upcoming bits greyed out with a coming at “wed 10am” sort of thing, to build up the hype train
- thinks like a themed week having its own page section so you can go back and revist the past ones
- look for some easy tie ins, links to go buy you stuff at wayland, or the company direct. Maybe look at them sponsoring things like discounts for actions to gamify it, create a project and share 3 posts for this game during themed week and if your a CoG member MAWM will give you a small freebie on your next order with X Code that will be sent. Finish the project in a month MAWM will give you a 5% discount code off your next order.
- separate out the forums
- this is the bottom of my list, mainly because and sundancer im sorry, its a red herring, forums as a whole have become much quieter, investing in them will have limited returns but i agree they need improving and need moving away from the site in terms of wordpress and the the performance hits they create.
- You can do Single Sign on using wordpress, find a forum solution that works with Single Sign on and setup a new forums on a subdomain e.g. forum.ontabletop.com it will split of a thing that is too tied to the main site, offer a better experience.
- id favour moving to a better platform than keeping old posts, as sad as it makes me.
Oh dear that turned into a longer list than expected. I love BoW its the one site i always visit every day so I’d love to see it improved, they key points for me are, focus on the good and differentiating bits, bootcamps, the great content and the project system.
