Testing “attention grabber” on front page for Personal Ads

[Michael_Admin]

Just trying out a few ideas for mini “rewards” for members : “Ta-da! attention grabber” for individual female Personal Ads on the front page.

Just a test, to see if it useful yet doesn’t annoy the hell out of everyone.

[Jack]

Not sure I agree. That kind of thing was done during the early years of Ebay. Then people started doing it competitively. The whole thing descended into an unreadable vulgar mass of capital letters, exclamation points, and the word “Wow” on everything. It was the opposite of informative. Since ANR/ABF is invariably a contact sport, the most important piece of information is location. Because of people’s common preferences, gender and age should be included as well. Simple brief, quick-to-read headers like “W4M 42 DFW” tells the reader most of whether it is worth his time to read the ad. The alluring prose can and should be contained within the ad, not in its header.

[Michael_Admin]

Thanks Jack.
It’s not really much more than a slight “ta-da!” animation effect on the ad itself. Just to make it stand out a little on the front page. The title & text of the ad are written by the member, not me.

It’s not intended for general use, just trying out ideas of ways to offer mini rewards, occasional little extras to members. It can only be activated by me, when I copy the truncated ad to the front page. But don’t worry, I won’t be plastering the site in flashing lights & gimmicks.

I’m not sure it’s necessary or useful for female ads anyway. They get read a million times over, animation or no animation.

Just a test, a visual try-out.

[MilkMan808J]

Sorry Michael, this is just a gimmick! Members can quite easily find & see the adverts from the members they feel they’d like to chat & connect with without them being highlighted like this & it sounds like just another “device” that’s going to use up the site’s data capacity & slow everything down again & that’s the last thing we all want! 👎 😒

[Michael_Admin]

Milkman, yes I agree it’s rather gimmicky looking. And probably not particularly useful. I take your point. It will be removed.

But good practice for me to learn how to implement such devices. Remember, I am not an IT person, at all.

I’m just looking at different options to brighten up the front page, make it more visually appealing to new visitors. Yeah, I get that the sites functionality is probably much more important to potential new members than visuals, but a bit of extra pizzazz won’t do any harm.

[MilkMan808J]

Its fair enough the points you raise & if trying these different things allows you to understand your site better them that’s probably all to the good. I think this site is already very attractive to new people already attracted by the idea of ABF/ANR but ok yes, as long as it doesn’t drain the site’s data capacity then a little bit of extra
“pizzazz” is fine. 😊 👍

[Anonymous]

I tend to agree with @jack-d-1-2-3 the site needs to be functional first and foremost. Any additional pizzazz should not be at the cost of usability.

Edit: actually speaking of which, is there a way make it so that when you @ someone it doesn’t show their username but their screen name instead? I’ve tagged MilkMan in my comment but it’s showing up as his username jack-d-1-2-3 which might be confusing if you’re just reading through the thread and trying to see who I’m quoting or referring to?

[Michael_Admin]

Lee, there’s no easy way to do that. If there was I’d do it because it is indeed confusing.

Technically, it’s definitely possible. But way, way beyond me.

[Author]

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