My report navigating the D&D website as if I were new to RPGs

[Truename]

As end consumers/target demographic of the web site, our impressions of the site ARE valid because we DO know their business of selling to us.

But you don't know their business. You don't know how well D&D Encounters is attended on the west coast vs. the east coast. You don't know which regions are buying books, and which regions only want DDI. You don't know what people click on when they visit the site, how long they stay, what the bounce rate is, or how sales were affected when the new site went live. You don't know if the 5e discussion has brought in new visitors, if that's led to a corresponding increase in new sales, and whether those people are buying PH1 or Essentials. You don't even know if D&D is making a profit or a loss. There's a million things WotC knows that you don't know, and hundreds that affect how they choose to design their website.

You know what you like, but you don't know their business.

Sorry to pick on you specifically, Janx. It's just that every D&D fan and his cousin seem to think they can run WotC's business better than they can. I'm just tired of it. I'd like to see less tearing down and more building up around here. Think you can do better? Great! Go build something cool. It doesn't have to be big. I promise not to tear it down.

 

[Janx]

Sorry to pick on you specifically, Janx. It's just that every D&D fan and his cousin seem to think they can run WotC's business better than they can. I'm just tired of it. I'd like to see less tearing down and more building up around here. Think you can do better? Great! Go build something cool. It doesn't have to be big. I promise not to tear it down.

It's OK. It's been my experience that the people building stuff don't know all that stuff either.

The probability that the guys making the WotC site look at that data is low. The probability that people advising the builders use that data is low.

 

[BriarMonkey]

Problem is BriarMonkey, its not really that confusing. If people are disabling cookies, then they get the base front page which is about as easy to navigate as it can be - three giant buttons, one of which says, "Newbies press here!"

It's only confusing if you have come to the site more than once. So, yup, a public computer might have these issues. Of course, the next question is, how many people access the WOTC site from a public computer? I imagine Google Analytics might be able to tell you something about that.

...

Yeah, I think I was confusing things in my head from cookied vs. non-cookied because I myself switch browsers depending on what I'm doing.

Though, I will still say that for me, having tried to find things on that site is a mess. But in all fairness, I gave up looking there just after 4th edition was released...