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iwatchus

Really Experienced
Joined
Sep 12, 2015
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I have been a reader on here for about twenty years, but an author for just a few months. There are several tweaks to the site that would make it better for both roles, for me at least.
I know Laurel and Manu do not have time to do such things, but I can dream.

* As a reader, I want an idea of how long a story is before I read it. Most readers think in pages, so listing it in Lit pages on the standard lists would be ideal.

* As a writer, I want to understand m readers' interaction more deeply. For multiple page stories, I would love to see how many pages they actually saw. Do my readers make it to end? If not, when do I lose them. I suspect many bail almost immediately.

* Similarly some form of histogram of scores on my control panel would be nice. I feel very differently about the early returns on a story if it four 4;s and four 5's versus being one 1 and seven 5's.

None of these are technically challenging in any way. They would slightly increase storage requirements, but there are not so many stories here for that to be a real factor.

I would also love to be able to edit a mistake I see in the Preview mode, but that could be much more challenging, depeniding on what software they are using beneath this all.
 
iwatchus said:
I would also love to be able to edit a mistake I see in the Preview mode, but that could be much more challenging, depeniding on what software they are using beneath this all.
Click to expand...
Supposedly this is in the works. Who knows when/if it actually ever happens.


iwatchus said:
* Similarly some form of histogram of scores on my control panel would be nice. I feel very differently about the early returns on a story if it four 4;s and four 5's versus being one 1 and seven 5's.
Click to expand...
Easily doable, since they are able to remove specific votes, they know exactly how many votes there are and the score of each one.

iwatchus said:
* As a reader, I want an idea of how long a story is before I read it. Most readers think in pages, so listing it in Lit pages on the standard lists would be ideal.
Click to expand...

A common request, not likely to happen.
 
iwatchus said:
I have been a reader on here for about twenty years, but an author for just a few months. There are several tweaks to the site that would make it better for both roles, for me at least.
I know Laurel and Manu do not have time to do such things, but I can dream.

* As a reader, I want an idea of how long a story is before I read it. Most readers think in pages, so listing it in Lit pages on the standard lists would be ideal.

* As a writer, I want to understand m readers' interaction more deeply. For multiple page stories, I would love to see how many pages they actually saw. Do my readers make it to end? If not, when do I lose them. I suspect many bail almost immediately.

* Similarly some form of histogram of scores on my control panel would be nice. I feel very differently about the early returns on a story if it four 4;s and four 5's versus being one 1 and seven 5's.

None of these are technically challenging in any way. They would slightly increase storage requirements, but there are not so many stories here for that to be a real factor.

I would also love to be able to edit a mistake I see in the Preview mode, but that could be much more challenging, depeniding on what software they are using beneath this all.
Click to expand...
FYI...

1747754808026.png
 
StillStunned said:
And why would the site want to reduce the number of clicks?
Click to expand...
Because at some point you have to acknowledge that user experience is important.

By that logic, no stories should have titles or descriptions, or categories. You have to click on every single story to find out if it's something you want to read. Users would not stick around for that.

Is the lack of word/page count driving users away? Probably not. It would be a good thing to have, and arguably it's one of the easiest things they could do to help people who are looking for stories.
 
alohadave said:
By that logic, no stories should have titles or descriptions, or categories. You have to click on every single story to find out if it's something you want to read. Users would not stick around for that.
Click to expand...
The difference is that titles, descriptions and categories are all information designed to attract readers. Word count isn't. Visible tags aren't either.
 
alohadave said:
Because at some point you have to acknowledge that user experience is important.

By that logic, no stories should have titles or descriptions, or categories. You have to click on every single story to find out if it's something you want to read. Users would not stick around for that.

Is the lack of word/page count driving users away? Probably not. It would be a good thing to have, and arguably it's one of the easiest things they could do to help people who are looking for stories.
Click to expand...
Was about to say something along the same lines.
Would including such a simple number in the story list influence clicks that much? Should Literotica then forego tags and categories as well, so that every reader has to click and at least skim through each of the 400-ish new daily stories? Where is the balance between user experience and more clicks? I don't think including word count would break the balance, if there is any.
 
iwatchus said:
* As a reader, I want an idea of how long a story is before I read it. Most readers think in pages, so listing it in Lit pages on the standard lists would be ideal.
Click to expand...
I don't care too much about how long a story is. I care more about knowing whether it is completed before I invest any time into reading it.

A well written and compelling tale can be hundreds of pages long and I will keep reading it. If I can't determine if a story is completed, I won't even start on it.

Indicating that a story is complete is something that authors could do on their own without site involvement, but making it a consistent and obvious indication could be coded in.
 
StillStunned said:
The difference is that titles, descriptions and categories are all information designed to attract readers. Word count isn't. Visible tags aren't either.
Click to expand...
I disagree with this. As a reader, sometimes I want a quick read. I will close the story if I open it and it looks too long. If I go through too many, I will go away and not read anything on the site for a while. It helps clicks in the short term, but also decreases customer (the readers) satisfaction. Balancing short term wins versus long term retention can be tricky.

I think the same could be said for making the tags visible. It would definitely help me find stories I wanted to read more accurately.
 
Here's the thing about most suggestions for "making the site better." I don't mean to disparage people's ideas, but most of the ideas basically can be summarized as "here's what the site could do to make ME happier."

The Site doesn't care. It shouldn't. The Site is interested in maximizing user interest overall. I suspect many of the suggestions that people make in this forum would have a negligible positive impact, and might have an offsetting negative impact.

The Site already tells you how many words a story is. You get this information after you click on a story. It takes a matter of seconds to click on a story, see its first page, see how many words it is, and click out of it because the story is too short/too long. What is the marginal benefit of adding word total/page total to the site link at the point where the reader first sees it? I don't know, but probably not great. And there's the marginal cost--too much information at the point of initial contact. Just speaking for myself, this feature wouldn't add anything. I'm content to click on the story, see its word count, and click off of it if the count is too much. There's something to be said for keeping things simple and streamlined.
 
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