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How I Experience Web Today

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101–110 of 326 posts

Re: How I Experience Web Today

#101

Post by ratww »

pjerem wrote: post #49
eveningsteps wrote: post #17

Very bitter and to the point. I regularly wonder, do the people who want features like these installed — feedback form, "support chat" windows of various degrees of fakeness, subscription offer popups jumping in your face, and other absolutely baffling obstacles — really use their own web sites? Have they ever had to?

As someone who used to work for one of those companies selling a « support chat » platform, no, they don’t. The marketing and sales departments never targeted the editorial/dev team of a website/company but directly the sales department or an upper management department of the potential new customer. Chances are that the developers of those websites have to suffer those bullshit integrations as much as you do. And th…

Those things are often added using Google Tag Manager, so developers (and anyone else seeing non-production pages) normally don't see them.

Funny story: at my previous job the widgets were disabled "forever" from the site (via a cookie) once you logged with your company email. Marketing and marketing devs had emails in another domain to test their widgets.

Re: How I Experience Web Today

#102

Post by heroprotagonist »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #83
herodotus wrote: post #19

Brilliant! Thank you for doing this! I wish I could send the link to almost every organization whose web sites I have had to endure. If you had offered me a rating pop-up, you would have been the first one I ever use (and gave 5 stars to). Now do one for those horrible CRM messages "Thank you for XXXX. You are very important to us at YYY. Please click here to give us important feedback on your experience." After I bo…

> If you had offered me a rating pop-up, you would have been the first one I ever use (and gave 5 stars to). I've recently started to. For example, just last week, my telco's app (that I use because it's the least-hassle way to pay my phone/Internet bills) got 2 stars on Google Play Store, with a comment explaining that the app is fine, except slowish, and constantly nags about rating it on the Play Store.

I usually get the "Bad? Rate on our own feedback page" "Good? Rate on the store" scam.

Re: How I Experience Web Today

#105

Post by danuker »

leavenotracks wrote: post #82

So true, so sad. These days, when even a few hurdles of crap present themselves, I often just leave. I don’t care what the site has to say or sell me. Whenever I come across a site that just displays content immediately, it fills me with joy. Usually it’s some obscure personal or academic site, but for a moment I feel like I’ve found a gem in the desert and I browse happily for a while…then I promptly add to a list o…

Here's mine: https://danuker.go.ro/

Tip: add your site to your HN profile, and look at others' profile.

Re: How I Experience Web Today

#106

Post by sdevonoes »

IMHO, I think everyone here is missing the big point: all these "features" are being pushed to the web because A/B tests say so. The usual way things go is:

- option 1: don't add feature X

- option 2: add feature X

- option 3: add feature X slightly modified

So, since option 1 is not an option at all (businesses want to grow; they don't want "stable software", they want to push features live every sprint), then lean product managers say "let's do an A/B test and see what our customers like more: either option 1 or option 2!". The A/B test is done and it appears that option 2 increases conversion slightly more than option 1. The team pushes the feature live and everyone call it a day.

The next sprint: the same story. So, the net result is that applications and websites get "features" on of top of each other without any order or purpose, but everyone is happy because metrics look good. I know it's very counterintuitive, but that's how things work these days: no one wants to hear your "common sense" opinion, they only want to listen to what the data says; and data says the more ads the more revenue, the more newsletter pop ups the more user emails store in the db, etc.

I know this because I have worked for such companies, and they are not precisely going bankrupt.

Re: How I Experience Web Today

#107

Post by wisethrowaway »

dredmorbius wrote: post #38

An admirable attempt. But nowhere near sufficient. - Not NEARLY enough link-litter (social links). - No Taboola Chumbox. SAD! PATHETIC!!! - Needs a CTA interruption about 15--30s after landing on the payload page. - Needs a useless hero image. - Needs more interstitial nags within the article itself. In bold and annoying context. - Needs more social links after the byline. Yes, today's web is an utter and complete cl…

- CAPTCHA

- cloudflare redirections

- Affiliate links to Amazon

... to read a minimally informative article.

Re: How I Experience Web Today

#109

Post by naravara »

tick_tock_tick wrote: post #26

Honestly the site is way too performant to be realistic. All those buttons worked nearly instantly. I'm assuming you're missing the awaited tracking networking calls.

I was about to say it needs about 7 or 8 additional ads inserted into the text of the article. Ideally they would load at random times and displace text out of the way as you're trying to read so you keep losing your place.

Also, the article itself is clickbaity garbage that you resent yourself for clicking into in the first place.

Re: How I Experience Web Today

#110

Post by ratww »

wisethrowaway wrote: post #103

It's been terrible in the last year. uBlock is not detecting Youtube ads, Twitter is blocking anonymous navigation And the examples of OP are all too accurate (Business Insider, Bloomberg, Forbes, Medium, virtually any platform).

I'm honestly liking it.

When Youtube started showing ads for me I just stopped binge-watching videos on the site, and started using YouTube-dl and watching everything offline.

I added those paywall sites to my hosts file block, I just don't care anymore. I already block everything from Facebook/Instagram, and I'm about to do the same with Twitter. My whole family and friend circle only really use WhatsApp/Telegram anyway, so it doesn't matter.

Those things reduced my screen time a lot and I honestly find it healthy.

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