Author Topic: Old sites stopped working on UI imprevements... (Read 4861 times)

melastmohican · « **on:** August 17, 2008, 13:36 »

It seem like when sales take off site is firing developers and hires more sales people :-) I have not seen any usability enhancements on top 6 sites for a while. Almost any of newcomers got better UI: YAYMicro, Cutcaster, Crestock, Mostphotos, Zymmetrical. Do you think that top ones wait until they will bleed themselves to death and them snap one of the small ones for their software?

icefront · « **Reply #1 on:** August 17, 2008, 14:17 »

I think somehow they follow the rule "don't repair if isn't broken", in the meaning if everything goes fine, everything is at it's well known place, then there is no reason to change. Also I think the loss during the downtime and fixing the bugs after the change is too high.

Of course there are a lot of things to improve, but the question is: who will benefit from the improvement and what are the costs? I guess, buyer-related improvements are on the first place.

During the time I wrote many suggestions on forums or PM's to the admins but I realized, these suggestions are good only for us, uploaders, there is a mass-need of a feature to be implemented.

ironarrow · « **Reply #2 on:** August 17, 2008, 15:03 »

Quote from: melastmohican on August 17, 2008, 13:36

It seem like when sales take off site is firing developers and hires more sales people :-) I have not seen any usability enhancements on top 6 sites for a while. Almost any of newcomers got better UI: YAYMicro, Cutcaster, Crestock, Mostphotos, Zymmetrical. Do you think that top ones wait until they will bleed themselves to death and them snap one of the small ones for their software?

The best UI is istockphoto! No doubt!

Yes, it is a bit harder process to upload for lazy people but they ensure they get the best images and the most relevant keywords..

mostphotos is hardly average btw!

thesentinel · « **Reply #3 on:** August 17, 2008, 15:21 »

The more users a site has the greater the uproar with any UI changes, everyone has their own little favourite methods, shortcuts, etc. There really needs to be a VERY compelling reason to make big changes.

And sometimes cool is not the best way to go. The funkiest UI hit the buffers even though it was on Rails.

bittersweet · « **Reply #4 on:** August 17, 2008, 15:27 »

There was an update about a month ago at istock which (finally) made it possible to see subscription sales, plus some additional features. Maybe you missed this thread:

http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=72979

melastmohican · « **Reply #5 on:** August 17, 2008, 17:47 »

I think sites like IS or FT are barely usable for contributors. When they sit on 3-4 millions of photos that cover mostly any subject possible they only care about buyers and do not want to take any risk improving side of the business they do not really need so badly anymore. It's good enough to filter out some extraordinary shots from huge flow of the contributors. New sites need to ingest as many pictures as possible in order to compete with older one so they made process very smooth. They also got less contributor so they have to compensate with higher acceptance rates. For newcomer contributors it's frustrating experience. You may easily upload to smaller site and see no result for long time or try to work you way on old sites. In both cases it will take long time to see any results. I have been doing this for 3 months so maybe my perspective is to short to draw any valid conclusion but this is how I feel it.

PaulieWalnuts · « **Reply #6 on:** August 17, 2008, 20:42 »

Quote from: melastmohican on August 17, 2008, 17:47

snip... For newcomer contributors it's frustrating experience. You may easily upload to smaller site and see no result for long time or try to work you way on old sites. In both cases it will take long time to see any results. I have been doing this for 3 months so maybe my perspective is to short to draw any valid conclusion but this is how I feel it.

Maybe you should find something you enjoy doing. It seems like every time I read one of your posts you just hate everythng about this business.

Give it more time. My first three months were pretty slow. I was just getting the hang of what works and what doesn't. Things picked up quickly after six months.

Although you didn't ask, here's my observation anyway. Looking at your IS portfolio, it's mostly a mix of flowers and landscapes. These are heavily covered subjects that can easily get lost with the gazillion other flowers and landscapes. And from what I remember you're using a point-and-shoot camera which is just asking for higher rejection rates at sites that actually have buyers.

No wonder why you're frustrated. High rejection rate and low sales. IS's UI isn't perfect but they do make improvements fairly regularly and you can use DeepMeta's software to make things easier.

Focus on things you have more direct control over. Like picking up a better camera and finding more saleable stuff to shoot. The UI will matter less and you have little influence on UI anyway.

epantha · « **Reply #7 on:** August 18, 2008, 14:11 »

Quote

For newcomer contributors it's frustrating experience. You may easily upload to smaller site and see no result for long time or try to work you way on old sites. In both cases it will take long time to see any results. I have been doing this for 3 months so maybe my perspective is to short to draw any valid conclusion but this is how I feel it.

As a fairly new contributor, I have found the experience exciting, challenging, uplifting and very rewarding. Sales and downloads are accelerating well beyond my expectations on the larger sites and are steadily improving on the smaller sites.

dnavarrojr · « **Reply #8 on:** August 18, 2008, 14:19 »

The biggest issue for me is the differences on the contributor side of the various sites...

Where some sites will give you data that others hide (like popular files by downloads and views).

Also, inconsistencies like the difference between submitting images vs video on StockXpert.

I know each site needs to maintain a uniqueness (otherwise they've just be one big supersite), but I think the uniqueness needs to be limited to the buyer experience... Contributors need to start making some noise about consistency for submitting and managing files.

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Author Topic: Old sites stopped working on UI imprevements... (Read 4861 times)

melastmohican

icefront

ironarrow

thesentinel

bittersweet

melastmohican

PaulieWalnuts

epantha

dnavarrojr

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