It’s been a little over a week since we launched the site. We emailed people and mentioned it on a number of sites, and we’ve been getting between 60 plus to 100 plus hits a day. We’ve been responding to feedback… making small tweaks… and we’ve learned a number of interesting things.
1. Practically no one reads our help file. I don’t know why. Maybe, no one wants to ask for directions; maybe most people think they shouldn’t have to. Pop-up help and other just-in-time hint messages work better for people in our kind of site.
2. People who get the site tend to spend a lot of time—some over an hour at a time.
3. Sales have been few.
4. Some folks want it to be like the other sites they visit. For example,
“…to be honest, I have trouble navigating it. Clicking on the “Explore” or “Discover” link from the pop-up window, doesn’t go anywhere (I use Safari and Firefox on a Mac). Clicking on the globe goes to a “Myst-like” interface that is not very intuitive. This is one reason that I don’t like Flash, it doesn’t follow a standard interface that most people would expect. As a result, they’ll get frustrated looking for information on the site and leave too soon. It’s artistic and clever, but you should have the option of an HTML version for people who don’t want the Flash “experience”
I’m really grateful when people take the time to write and I try to respond to everyone at this point. I thought I might share my answer as a post as well. Here goes:
Thanks so much for your feedback. I appreciate your taking the time to write. The opening card is just a card… to be read… to make people aware of a few choices… whether to look at the help file for some hints or not.
The site reflects the limitations as well as the advantages of our marketing approach. It’s not about getting people to the books and music as fast as possible… it’s about trying to get them to slow down and engage… and, then, maybe they’ll turn a few pages and even read.
Some people leave our site frustrated… others stay for an hour or more… we’re compiling stats on that. It’s all an experiment since there’s no approach to the web marketing of works of fiction and music by an unknown that has been proven to work well at this point.
That doesn’t mean I’m convinced we have the right approach. It just means we’re committed to trying to make some new mistakes, rather than doing all the things we know that don’t work.
Perhaps, you’ll revisit at some point and just stroll around inside… read the pop up hints… and go at a slower pace; perhaps it will never be your pail of blueberries. It’s all good. I honestly have no idea whether any of it will work.
That’s what makes this so interesting. We’re learning as we go.