SEOmoz's New Homepage Design - Sink or Swim?

[sutti]

SEOmoz has a homepage?

I don't think I've ever been on it since now ... no need to really - my rss feeder takes me straight to the blog, and I only ever visit YouMoz, tools or articles when I'm at the site.

Anyway, I took a short look - doesn't really bother me really. But the premium membership add looks funny there .... doesn't matter though, they have given so much to the SEO community I think they can get away with some advertising

Cheers.

[kichus]

SEOmoz has a homepage?

THAT's A NICE FEEDBACK QUESTION.... :evilgrin - produces Some more questions... he he

[mvandemar]

Originally Posted by leadegroot

I'd bet money that it isn't an intentional spiel (or if it then the intention didn't start with Rand!), but just incorrectly implemented. Everyone makes mistakes.
(Damn, I have much too high an opinion of you, Rand! You can't be that shiny and pure!)

Bah! See, that's the problem. There is nothing wrong with doing it that way. There is a world of difference between:

a) Offering a set of tools, telling the client that they need to be registered in order to use them, making them go through the registration process, confirm their email, set up their preferences, THEN telling them that they also need to pay

versus

b) Giving them a text box to type into the tool, and then telling them that sorry, you need to be a premium member to use this.

The first is deceptive, the second is just a neat little trick to pique their interests. With the kwd difficulty tool, it used to be that when you went to use it, it would first say that you had to be logged in for it to work. If you already had a membership, then it was easy enough to do, and then you were given the message when you went back that it also only applied to premium members. If you weren't a member before, then that means that you had to go through the whole signup process to find out that you also had to pay. That is, I'm pretty sure, not cool with many people.

With this term extraction tool, it let's you type in when not logged it, but as soon as you do so the message is very clearly given that you must be both signed up and a premium member. No ambiguity at all.

No need to take Rand off his pedestal Lea.

-Michael

[randfish]

Michael - thanks for the very good ideas. As you might probably imagine, the site has grown beyond my attention, so I'm often not 100% aware of everything that happens on it. However... I will have either Matt or Jeff from my team take a look and try to double-check that everything is "kosher."

We certainly don't want to create a bait-and-switch - not our style.

[A.N.Onym]

I wonder whose style is a pop up for the new unregistered visitors, then.

Your homepage promotes premium content pretty well, as well as other pages. Why make it a pop up?

I know it works wonders, but it significantly undermined my confidence on your "style"