Know-How Exchange : Our Forum

Hi Val

Love the new look.

Couple of points about the CSS when users use html coding within their responses:

1. Ordered (numbered) lists result in a rather smaller font size - which is a departure from the previous style. Is this what was intended?
2. Unordered (bulleted) lists don't seem to have bullets or indents. I suspect that's an oversight.

Thanks to all members of the team who have obviously worked very hard to produce the new design. This is a wonderful place to collaborate and learn.

Best wishes to all,

Chris Blackman

Val,

I really like the open feel and the easy access to articles, and the different publications you provide - and the information rich front page. Wonderful!!

The pop-up log-in -- NICE.

There are some cross platform compatibility issues -- one thing that jumped out at me is the right sidebar does extend down below the footer in some places in FF.

Also, when I'm logged in, I don't see some of the ads, is that on purpose? I guess if they are encouraging me to sign up for premium membership or to join, and I am already a member, this is a good thing. :) Do you get to toggle those if they are non mprofs ads? neat.

For the membership page, I think it would be great to add links to the actual items (on the left column) on https://www.marketingprofs.com/membership page ... I especially like the member account tracking the member info module at the top of every page. Convenient to get to my stuff.

And here are some things that might be pretty easy to miss, and in the big picture don't really affect your look and feel - or diminish the new look - but you might be interested in adjusting...

Your headers -- from section to section are different sizes and indented differently

Some of your intro text on these pages is bold and some is not bold. The bold text starts to the left of the more indented header text on those pages. I actually prefer the size on About Us and Member Benefits (also the text below lines up there as well).

Premium Member Help & FAQs seems like it should have the nice orange header as well.

"Conference Mailing List" and "Contact Us" on the Conferences page is a serif font versus the sans serif headers throughout the site.

Do you have plans to shift the rest of the forum to the new look? That might be an interesting challenge. Regarding some of the sidebar links are now readily available through the improved navigation (strong feature): it seems like several of the links which are on the right side of the forum page might be better served in the sub nav or just deleted altogether.

Related to that, the two column spread with the small text in the middle (the top 25, etc) is a bit unnerving, though that is way too strong of a word. It seems like -- well, we want to keep this feature, so let's just make it wider here (instead of "redesigning" using more of the new look to accommodate those lists in a single column format).

Overall -- I think the nav and sub nav are easy to follow -- great look, nice open feel to it. Great site!!

Me likey.

Jennifer
XPRT Creative

Please test the site in Oprea, it doent look right.

Val,

The new look is definitely appealing.

Good work!

I love the new birdie icon! I also like the clean look with the new font.

Dear Val and Team

I’ve concluded that I like the overall look and feel of the site. The birdie reminds me that it is only a short time to the Glorious 12th of August when we can go shooting for dinner. Please ensure that the icon is identifiable as a Grouse – the Ptarmigan season is later in the year.

There do appear to be some carry over developments onto the Forum in that numbered lists indent these days and the smaller font is useful to differentiate what is essentially a list. Some indication of permissible HTML codes would be an advantage along with those which you auto-code. Chris has covered this pretty comprehensively (And given me a tutorial off line!! Many Thanks Cobber, I owe you.)

Only a minor point, but could I have my name in flashing script with the legend, “The greatest expert in the world for CRM, Sales Forecasting and Old Fashioned Manners” appearing when you hover the mouse over it? OK, maybe not!

The clean look is perhaps the most outstanding achievement, along with the improved functionality of page navigation. Is it just my imagination, or do the links actually work faster?

MarketingProfs is moving upwards and onwards to a more professional operation which is excellent, but it is not losing the friendliness it exhibits in the process. I was emailing with Bob Thompson the other day about www.customerthink.com (www.CRMguru.com as was) and he remembers with some fondness the 1999 text-only newsletter which kicked the CRM debate off.

CustomerThink is massive now and if he’d not kept up with the expectations of his readers and his sponsors, it would have gone down the tubes, no matter how good the content or contributions were. It is surely good that MarketingProfs is going down the same developmental road.

Best wishes and well done


Steve

Val -

I like it. Nice and clean.

Personal preference comment only, I think the gray tabs at the top and as section headers seem a little weak. Your eye is drawn elsewhere on the page initially except to the main navigation elements, the tabs.

I understand the fear of ending up too busy, but maybe a subtle screen of one of the two dominant colors would work.

Overall a very sharp, clean new look, congratulations.

I can be slow to warm for new things like this, but after some getting used to, I like the overall look & feel. Just a couple of things:

1) Although I don't have time to contribute much, I use the Know How Exchange as my home page. Does that make me a geek? Maybe. But now when my home page comes on, I can barely see the first questions. I really liked it before when I went to this forum, and the questions were prominent on my screen. For a new comer, they will understand completely what this is without having to scroll the screen.

My laptops screen resolution: 1280 x 800 and 1024 x 768

2) The bird ... for me it is not the best sign that you are asking for our stories of what it might mean. As with all major brand elements (images, colors, etc) there should be a strong reason for it, something that you believe really represents your brand. Unfortunately, the days of US $35 swooshes are over!

Just my 2 baht.

Hi... Just one comment to add. When I'm on a forum question, and I click my browser's back button, it doesn't take me back like it used to. The page just stays put. Looks like there's something from Cvent preventing it from navigating back to the forum page?

Thanks!

Hey - just a quick request / note. When you upgrade the know-how exchange to Web 2.0 (heh heh), can you make it so our answers to our own questions don't count as answers at all? I think it would be neat to see the overall questions answered / questions accepted ratio -- because the extra answers skews it a bit. ...

Thank you for providing this wonderful resource. I can't tell you how many times I have referred to this resource not only in my work, but also with clients as well.

Invaluable.

Jennifer
XPRT Creative

Sounds great it is a much needed update to make this site much more user friendly. Can I also recommend a Universal Log in, so that members don't need to log into the different parts of the site!

Hi Val,

New site has created fresh look for the marketing professionals. I found it has improved search facility on broad issues. It got good accessibility standards for users.

Best of Luck

Regards,

M Bhor

It is great to hear from MANSING again after a brief absence.

One of his hallmarks used to be to re-state the question in the terms in which he understood it. Initially, this used to irk me, leaving me thinking “Well, Mansing, we can all read, can we?!”

On reflection and after having answered (or attempted to answer) a series of questions where the contributor really didn’t have a clue about what they were asking about, I had to think – wistfully, that there is a lot of merit in his approach.

Maybe we could beef up the guidelines and encourage more new members to read them. If we cannot re-phrase the question in our own minds, then it is unlikely that we can come to any reasonable conclusions about a helpful answer. This pertains particularly to Statistics and Metrics, where the intent of the questioner’s exercise is often shrouded in mystery, including to them, their desire to extract information which is of use is unclear and regardless of the mathematical wizardry we propose, the conclusions are going to be invalid because the premise upon which they are based is incorrect and unclear.

There are experts on this forum who are capable of handling the toughest of questions. They need to clearly phrased in the first place before we can help them and maybe a little pre-posting reminder – “Can the forum really understand your question, given that they know little about you” might be a decent caveat.

In any case, great re-vamp of the site and welcome back Mansing!

Steve Alker
Unimax Solutions and SalesVision

The site looks great. It is easy to interact with and I have found it a great way to learn new ideas about different markets.

The color scheme is nice too.

Mark

Are you going to stay with legacy ASP or you are going to switch to ASP.NET (ASPX)?