DriveThruRPG Is Having A Facelift

If you head over to DTRPG, you'll see a link at the top to a 'sneak preview' of a new site redesign. For certain values of 'sneak'.

 

[Jd Smith1]

Unless the search feature is improved, color me unimpressed.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

As a product manager, I'd be really interested in the data around engagement on all the features they decided to keep. Like WHY did they decide to keep the horizontal scroll? Best practice on most ecommerce sites now is a gridded vertical infinite scroll (for example, the Gap); or descending into catetories. Current experience allows you to have gridded, "see all", or even just text links. They removed this functionality in the new experience. Did they A/B test into this new experience? I'm very curious.

Is "Bestselling Titles" really the most important thing to keep that the top? And then to have the very confusing "Most Popular under $5" right under - is that also really the 2nd most important thing?

Does the context change when someone is logged in as opposed to not logged in?

Why don't I see a "deal of the day" when someone comes to the front page?

My final point here - this only seems to be a redesign of their front page.

So many questions, so much opportunity. This actually looks a lot like they just updated the CSS (mostly); without actually altering much of the underlying functionality or conceptualization of the shopping workflow. As @Jd Smith1 noted, unless a lot of the feature logic (including search, for me too) is improved, shade me also as unimpressed.

(Ok, I also did a search, using EN Publishing as an example. Not an improvement)

 

[Bolongo]

The larger images are a bit much on my stationary computer's 32" screen, but I'd say they're an improvement on my laptop.

So I guess they believe most people are on laptops nowadays?

 

[Maggan]

My final point here - this only seems to be a redesign of their front page.

They did put up this caveat when I clicked on the preview-link:

This is just a sneak peek of a few pages and not necessarily our final design.

We would love your feedback using the green icon in the lower-right!

So presumably, they are working on the rest of the site.

/M

 

[imagineGod]

About damn time too.
The old site was very functional but was so out-dated like a throwback to the 90s.

 

[Bolongo]

About damn time too.
The old site was very functional but was so out-dated like a throwback to the 90s.

To the 90s?
Sounds like you weren't actually around for Web 1.0...

 

[imagineGod]

To the 90s?
Sounds like you weren't actually around for Web 1.0...

If you want to be pedantic about it, the design of DriveThruRPG is basically RPGNow from nearly two decades back, so 20 years out of date.

Seriously, look at the early days and look at it just before the new upgrade, and within those twenty years, the RPGNow/DriveThruRPG brand basically fossilized its early webdesign for those two decades. Where did all the profits go?

 

[imagineGod]

The logo redesign of DriveThruRPG is really good, a serious upgrade from two decades of excessive 3-D shadows (a throwback to heavy metal covers) and like those old clickable buttons that plagued those days of "Web 1.0" for you old geezers.

 

[imagineGod]

And in the excitement to show off the new site, we now know it is built with the Angular CMS (Google is the Angular brainchild).