At any rate, I'm not going to use this as a sounding board to pass judgment on the site as is -- I think we've covered that well enough. Rather, I'm more interested in the potential of what Active Worlds' homepage should be; what it should do, and what it should represent.
What should activeworlds.com represent?
Active Worlds is very much akin to a tourist destination, and in the real world I feel that one would encounter a similar problem. How would one go about getting the message out about their little chunk of the world? What if I run a beach resort? There's a ton of beach resorts! What makes mine stand out from all of the others?
These sorts of questions are what Active Worlds' web presence needs to address; you've got one page to really sell yourself, so you've got to make it count. Below I'll list some points that I feel cannot be stressed enough in this endeavor:
Audience
I don't know if you read through the thread that I linked a few paragraphs up, but between the flames a really consistent criticism sprouted that has everything to do with what sort of audience the front page attracts. Upon the release of the new page, several bullet points were made to list off quick reasons why you should come in and check out AW. Apparently there was a real stinker in their midst: "Join the virtual dating scene."
It's no big secret that plenty of AW's active citizenry is there for the social scene. Like it or hate it, socializing is as much a function as building is in AW; and that's not a bad thing. In fact, the bullet point wasn't even that crazy, especially compared to some of the advertising you'll see around the web by similar services such as IMVU. Nevertheless, the 'virtual dating scene' was a real sticking point with the community and generally, people seemed against the idea of pitching AW as that sort of service. Take note: that doesn't mean virtual dating can't happen or isn't approved of; but on Active Worlds' face to the world, that doesn't seem like the best way to identify what Active Worlds represents. To me, Active Worlds represents a virtual creative environment where you freely work, play, design, or socialize. Focus that into bullet-points and you'd have me sold.
Oh, and just in case you were curious as to the sort of ridiculous advertising IMVU has delved into recently...
 |
| It's only tasteless if you stare. |
Active Worlds has a great strength in its content creation community. In the universe, people are always looking for new ways to build, make bots, import objects, etc. We're always stressing the browser... looking for new ways to use it, though more often than not finding new ways to break it. It would take more work than a static front page, but to really show what Active Worlds is I feel that content should regularly be introduced on this page.
Think about it from the perspective of a new user; I just saw this cool bullet list of things Active Worlds does and it was going great until I got super-creeped out about the virtual dating scene. I'm on the fence now but you can still grab me, but I'm curious. What does Active Worlds do? What can I do with it?
What's that? No, I don't want to dance. Or a hug. Really, that's okay. I just want to know what I can do here. No listen, I meet unique people on the internet all the time. I want to know what I can do!
Integration
There is a vibrant forum community as well as a wiki that could go a long way to do the job of presenting content if they got some face-time on the main website. I know the forums are a long shot, what with you never knowing if you'll see a new thread featuring the latest out of Sedan or just some idiot trolling GSK, but user access to these resources integrated into one nice, tidy page wouldn't hurt; at least for the existing users.
For the new users, social networking integration may be a nudge in the right direction. Read: integration, not saturation. There hasn't been much attention drawn to this yet, but there are a few sneaky, sneaky widgets towards the bottom of activeworlds.com at present:
You know what? That's great, it really is. The widgets could do with some better exposure -- perhaps on the sidebar instead of in a quasi-footer, but I think there's something confident to be said about putting these widgets out in the open. New users can come along and see that while noting that:
- This program isn't a gazillion years old and dead because there are twitter and facebook widgets here.
- A sizable amount of people actually 'like' this. Maybe it isn't a crazy Nigerian banking scheme.
- This leads to an active facebook group where people are sharing their content.
If people pay attention to that sort of thing (which they do), you'll find your service an easier sell. At least they'll download the client, you know?
For promoting AW via a page, these points are key. You really need to identify what Active Worlds is, what is does, and what you can do there to honestly attract an audience that would be interested in what's here. Featuring content can and should assist with this, by providing 'demos' or examples of the product without making the website designer do all of the legwork. Integrate some trustworthy, exterior sources into this mix and you've got a fairly lively site on your hands.
Before we go full-on sunshine and rainbows; one objection here is how exactly do you represent this content? Videos? Screenshots? A web page is by and large a 2D presentation. Active Worlds is a 3D application.
How do you express a 3D product in a 2D browser?
This will be the subject of my next blog. ;)
No comments:
Post a Comment