Forum Discussion
Allen
Community Manager
Community ManagerTalking about our Homepage - Call for feedback
Hi all,
We are currently looking at making some changes to our homepage, connecting new members to our Getting Started guides (which will also get an overhaul) and encouraging un-registered users to sign in.
As I start to think about the homepage for logged-in users I would love to hear from current members:
- Do you currently use our homepage? If not, why not?
- Thinking about when you visit the Microsoft Tech Community and your logged in, what do you expect to see on the homepage?
- Looking at our current homepage, is there anything you particularly like or don't like?
- Do you use your dashboard as your homepage?
I want to take your feedback into account both for this, more immediate update, and for a wider redesign of the site we hope to launch early in 2023.
Please keep in mind everyone's feedback is valid and I want to hear the bad and the good.
Allen
Honestly I don't use Homepage. Checked it now, nothing what force me to visit it except to check when MTC has 1000000 members. Feed and latest blogs from 990 spaces are useless, I know what Excel is most popular tag and it doesn't matter who are top contributors.
However, it depends on auditory. For newcomers all above could be interesting for some while. At the same time links on Code of Conduct and support channels (e.g. techcommunity@microsft.com) disappeared. IMHO, main target auditory of homepage are newcomers, people who are for few years here found nothing new in any case. For newcomers current one is good enough if only add some support information.
- Allen
Thank you for the feedback, I am hoping to be able to show some mockups of what we are currently thinking about shortly but much of it is along the lines you have outlined.
On the metrics front we are planning to remove the 'all time' counts in favor of activity today metrics, i.e.:
- New Topics Today
- New Replies Today
- New Members Today
- Members currently Online
The main reason for this move is we are about to start clearing up old user accounts that have not logged in before and so the 'total members' count would be subject to some daily variation.
I would love to have your input on if that would break the experience for you?
Hi Allen,
Me and Deleted also shared some feedbacks, wondering do you have any comment on our posts?
- Hi Allen,
Thank you for your question, yes, I do use Home Page, but I would like to share some feedbacks.
I believe it depends on type of users, for example for me who is actively posting and replying to questions, it is important to see status of my last reply and see if anyone answered or response to the question which I engage to? I believe for new users who are posting questions, it is important to see if anyone response to them.
The Home Page is showing the latest reply in the entire community, and I believe user wants to have some filter like Show the entire forum or just the forum I subscribed to or the forum I am actively participating (e.g., post or replying in past months).
I am not sure about the "Dashboard" are you referring to the dashboard on the top of Home Page or "My Dashboard" page?
In case you are referring to the Dashboard on the top, I really like the Upcoming Event page. But I want to have ability to customize it and it could be smart like showing latest topic from forum which I regularly participate.
I believe the Home Page should be personalize when user login.
However, when user is not login, it is possible to show latest reply and posts and also trending topics (the one which have higher community engagements).
Some more links to Video Hub and Blogs would be nice too. Please vote for ideas -> this improves MTC!
Share your ideas and feedback for this community. (microsoft.com)
Great discussion will be interesting!
I saw these 3 banners and I think that the one inside should not be (marked as the most important topic in MTC) - it looks a little funny, and for new people it is certainly a negative surprise.
