Second Life Finds Gaining Residents as Simple as Redesigning Home Page
Sometimes, no matter how compelling your service, it all comes down to the basics. When the buzz begins to die down, you have to resort to compelling content to sell your site and services. This goes for every site. Even Second Life, who recently discovered that their existing home page design wasn't doing the site justice. Now, after testing a new design for their landing page, they're going live with a new design and the Lindens are hoping that it will continue to motivate more residents to join the Second Life community.
This year was a rocky one for virtual worlds. They continued to move out of the spotlight as media darlings and found, instead, more taciturn media and struggling communities. Second Life dealt with stagnant numbers and Google decided to pull the plug on Lively.
Now, the shot in the arm for Second Life seems to be as simple as a redesign that emphasizes the benefits of the community to would-be users and encourages them to register to try the service for themselves. Plus, they've thrown some Cooliris-like panning interactivity in there for good measure.
After testing the new design for one week, Linden Lab is convinced the new design is doing a better job than its current home page:
"Over the past week we've been comparing the core metrics (traffic, registrations, logins, economic and inworld activity) of the new page with our existing new user home page. The data is encouraging: the new design performed better in almost all aspects, so we are moving full steam ahead with launching the redesigned page."
And so it seems that finding new life - or a Second Life - could be as simple as communicating more effectively. It will be interesting to see if this return to basics makes 2009 a better year for Linden Lab and the residents of its community.
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Nice but darker..
There are always some ways to improve a software service like Second Life and its strength has been having the chance to encounter and address many issues.
The most useful area of focus is the increase of feedback to find the things like this that can keep improving the player's experience.
Posted by: michael.chelen.myopenid.com
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December 24, 2008 12:38 AM
More than just a home page change they need to do more to attract people to it. As such these kind of services/websites are sort of on downward path. Best example is Google shutting down "Lively"
Anita CM
http://www.vantrix.net
Funny, when I initially took a quick look at this without seeing the descriptions below each screenshot, I assumed the one on the left was the new design.
ı have followed your writing for a long time.really you have given very successful information.
I have always found the information on the SecondLife.com site to be useful. It is a valuable resource for facts, media coverage, community links and event information. Kudos to Linden Lab for recognizing the need to diversify the website of the world it represents. I look forward to the transformation of this valuable resource as it now becomes visually descriptive and complexly interesting, like its residents.
Except most web experts would tell you this is a horrid design to get new users to click signup. Sliding squares with pointless bits of fluff content. I hope it wasn't awfully expensive.
Problem is they paid a 3rd party company to come up with it to boot.