Neil wrote this review of Riya's new home page. He was quite critical.
While I disagree with some of their UI comments (especiall because they wrote it before I blogged the new search strategy), from an SEO perspective, Riya is a disaster. We haven't done even the most basic things like good meta-tags. I've asked Neil and his partner Ethan to send me a proposal on the specific items they can help us with.
So what about the new homepage.
a) I agree it does need a more clear statement of our unique value at least within the framework of our new strategy which I just wrote about here : Public Image Search.
b) The CEO blog is a bit out of place - okay okay ... enough about me...;-)
c) This page was actually designed by Tara. In was one of the last things she did. However, in her defense you are not seeing the final version of this page. As we roll out more functionality you will see more of what she envisioned... and I'm sure you will be blown away.
d) On the RSS comment about not putting the RSS link everwhere. I disagree and I know Tara did too. You can never make it too easy to get the feed for something.
e) In the end, the new homepage's browse functionality (which are the catalogs you see at the bottom) are driving a lot more usage. We'll see if it lasts.
I've never really believed in design for design's sake. There are many cluttered pages (like Myspace) or hard to navigate sites (like Flickr used to be before this has release or Ebay) that just work. The proof is in the number of people using it and continuing to use it.
BTW - Neil's partner Ethan Shah, answered the phone when I called him. He thought I was going to be mad and was surprised when I asked them to provide a proposal to us for work.
Munjal, I am continually impressed by how you pay attention to your buzz :-)
Just to clarify d) about the RSS feeds, we agree 100% about having RSS links everywhere, we just felt that the placement of the RSS link could use some improvements.
As for the design changes, you have a very strong point, and I will not say anymore until I can show you something!
Posted by: Neil Patel | June 08, 2006 at 04:21 PM
I think what Neil meant by the RSS links is that some of them don't make sense. RSS is a feed...so the albums, for instance. I don't know if those are interesting feeds. Albums are pretty stagnant + not personal.
When subscribing to a feed, I think people think about getting the newest photos of themselves, their friends, their favorite celebrity, hot cars, vacation spots they dream of, etc. Albums, which is what Neil mentioned in his post isn't intuitively that.
And, though the concept of that homepage is mine, the execution is very different. My mockups broke up the barrage of photo blocks and had more white space so people's eyes could rest. I look forward to the color search et al to be added.
And, yes, it will take people a while to wrap their minds around the paradigm of photosearch. Riya is breaking new ground...always a painful process. ;) Keep it up!
Posted by: Tara 'Miss Rogue' Hunt | June 08, 2006 at 06:16 PM
The most annoying thing about the new design is the huge number of photos, that I think will distract people from focusing on any of them, one or two photos of each category is more than enough and will deliver the intended message.
The list of most popular searches is nice and serves the new strategy shift well, but it's buried among photos, and with that layout (non-capital, beside each other) and font color, this section will be hard to spot, I think moving it to the top in place of "locations" is better.
Most of Neil comments are on-point, and I hope you will work something out together, wish you luck.
Posted by: Baher | June 08, 2006 at 11:06 PM
I would have to agree with Neil and Baher about the usability.
Posted by: Matt | June 09, 2006 at 02:37 PM
Munjal. I really admired what you were trying to do both as an entpreneneur and a product developer and I am completely disappointed with both the new version and the change of strategy. I just don't agree with your thinking at all. Your comments about flexibility are noted but I think that you should have stuck to your guns and not just shifted with the wind (or the change in ussage statistics). In my book the flexibility you have shown was not courageous, sticking to your simple and original concept and being patient enough to invest the time and money in educating people about this would have been. I know that it is in vogue to listen to everybody and be responsive in real time but nothing great was ever built that way. You were an individual Munjal, who had some of the best forward thinking minds on your side, now you are at risk of being subsumed into the mire of collective mediocrity. Munjal - listen by all means - but don't forget who you are and don't forget your original concept for Riya - because it was divine.
Posted by: Adam Lindemann | June 09, 2006 at 05:35 PM
I think that you should really scrap all of the images on the page. And make it into a Google-style straight search page. If you want to be a site where people search for photos ahead of a photo sharing site, which you keep claiming then make me want to search. If I want a photo of something I normally have a specific idea of what I want. And if you have millions in your index (as you do) then the chance of the exact picture that I want being on the front page is next to none.
Why do you make me load all that clutter before I can get at the photos that I am interested in? At the moment you seem undecided between competing with flickr and Google image search. If you want to compete with Google image search then make your front page as fast loading.
Posted by: Sam Davyson | June 11, 2006 at 03:09 PM
Wow...This is a great discussion.
Sam and everyone else - I have a thought I'd like to invite some of you to design a new version of our homepage for us. I will post the requirements and the credit in my next post.
Andy - Your comment is a tough one. I must say there is a very fine line between having to back bone and killing your company due to stubborness. Here is the thing - 20x the number of people who uploaded and used Riya for it's original purpose used it as a search engine. Just to illustrate in numbers: if 50K people used it for their own 1M used it as a search engine. That's just overwhelming isn't it.
On the flip side you are correct that frequently you can also be let astray by feedback from people. However, I was very carefuly not just to read feedback but to look at people's actions. I think many user studies are inaccurate because they measure what people say they will do vs. what they will actually do. In this case we were looking at what they actually do.
This doesn't mean you might not be right in the end. The nice thing is that the original functionality of Riya is stil available and will stay available. If it takes off faster than the search... we'll at least be able to see that.
Your comment was great in challenging the strategic premise. I love arguments that go deep like this...;-)
Posted by: Munjal Shah | June 11, 2006 at 06:39 PM
Your comment was great in challenging the strategic promise. i love arguments an sharing of ideas.
Posted by: Juno888 | May 20, 2007 at 07:05 PM