As a new person, I dissected my experience of attempting to figure out what LessWrong was about and the decision-making process that caused me to join for you. I have a lot of stuff to say, and 99% of seems unexpected.
“I think reading posts is probably best way to figure out what Less Wrong is about.”
I vehemently disagree.
People do a very, very fast assessment in order to determine whether the website is worth investing in. What I’m talking about is this: You come in off the search engine, or plug in the url after seeing it mentioned somewhere in an interesting enough context, or a friend tells you it’s cool and to go check it out. Now you’re at the home page. If it doesn’t grab your attention in just a few seconds, you’re gone. Obviously, people eventually need more information than that before they hit the join button, so there have to be different levels. First the front page has to immediately prove to the user that it’s worth going deeper. Something significant has to happen (I have a really easy idea for this actually) before they even click a link. Here’s why that is:
Am I going to click a link about a topic I’ve thought about already? No. I’m assuming your take on it is the same as the average take. So I will never see how awesome it is. Conversely, show me a link about a topic I’ve never heard of before. “What is Bayesianism?” for instance (I’ve heard of it by now, but didn’t, before I found LessWrong). I don’t have any reason to believe that this new word is the sign of something awesome. The world is full of a lot of links with words I don’t know to things that are not awesome.
Imagine again that you’re on this home page for a site you’ve never been to. It has links with words you already know (probably the same old boring crap) and links with words you don’t already know (Is it any good, or am I going to waste ten minutes reading about the etymology of supercalifragilisticexpialidocious?).
For these reasons, I had NO IDEA how awesome this site was the first few times I came here. I only joined because so many different people kept referring me over, that I kept “poking” at the site every so often, and eventually discovered something that hooked me.
Being hooked needs to happen on the front page.
Here’s how to hook them:
Look at the website statistics and see which pages get the most new visitors to stay the longest. Not the ones that get the most visits from logged in users, but NEW users. “New Visitors” is the website statistic term you want. And the best ones don’t just get a lot of new visitors, but they actually KEEP the user on the page. There are website statistics that will tell you how many seconds users stay on the pages. That’s what I’m talking about.
Make a list. Of the list, select some on core topics that, together, do a pretty good job of giving the gist of LessWrong’s culture. Or possibly, more importantly, the culture you guys want to be creating. Take the first paragraph of each page—which, theoretically has been composed by a person that’s good enough at writing that they’re able to hook an audience immediately—and rotate those on the front page. Show a limited number at one time. This prevents information overload. (Note: In order to ensure fresh content, and for really super duper extremely important search engine optimization reasons, this needs to be done in a particular way. I explained that in: “Home Page vs Search Engines”)
If I begin reading a paragraph and it shows a new twist on the topic which I have thought about already, will I read the rest? Yes! But give me a link with a few words? No. To say enough to convince me that your site worth reading takes more than one sentence. The world is full of boring takes on things, so you have to prove that this place is awesome on the front page.
The best thing is, you already know what’s going to hook the readers. The introductory paragraphs that are proven to work are sitting in your website statistics.
After an “ooh this is interesting” has occurred on the front page, then people may wonder “What is this about?” (Next Post)
You put in 4100 words in this thread’s comments which would be about 16 pages if it were in dead tree format. Such a quantity is overwhelming to try and read and reply to.
I also suffer from being excessively wordy and struggle to pare down my comments. I found much better reception when I started writing minimally, and I suspect you would as well.
That writer does the most, who gives his reader the most knowledge, and takes from him the least time. ~Charles Caleb Colton
Getting Their Attention
As a new person, I dissected my experience of attempting to figure out what LessWrong was about and the decision-making process that caused me to join for you. I have a lot of stuff to say, and 99% of seems unexpected.
“I think reading posts is probably best way to figure out what Less Wrong is about.”
I vehemently disagree.
People do a very, very fast assessment in order to determine whether the website is worth investing in. What I’m talking about is this: You come in off the search engine, or plug in the url after seeing it mentioned somewhere in an interesting enough context, or a friend tells you it’s cool and to go check it out. Now you’re at the home page. If it doesn’t grab your attention in just a few seconds, you’re gone. Obviously, people eventually need more information than that before they hit the join button, so there have to be different levels. First the front page has to immediately prove to the user that it’s worth going deeper. Something significant has to happen (I have a really easy idea for this actually) before they even click a link. Here’s why that is:
Am I going to click a link about a topic I’ve thought about already? No. I’m assuming your take on it is the same as the average take. So I will never see how awesome it is. Conversely, show me a link about a topic I’ve never heard of before. “What is Bayesianism?” for instance (I’ve heard of it by now, but didn’t, before I found LessWrong). I don’t have any reason to believe that this new word is the sign of something awesome. The world is full of a lot of links with words I don’t know to things that are not awesome.
Imagine again that you’re on this home page for a site you’ve never been to. It has links with words you already know (probably the same old boring crap) and links with words you don’t already know (Is it any good, or am I going to waste ten minutes reading about the etymology of supercalifragilisticexpialidocious?).
For these reasons, I had NO IDEA how awesome this site was the first few times I came here. I only joined because so many different people kept referring me over, that I kept “poking” at the site every so often, and eventually discovered something that hooked me.
Being hooked needs to happen on the front page.
Here’s how to hook them:
Look at the website statistics and see which pages get the most new visitors to stay the longest. Not the ones that get the most visits from logged in users, but NEW users. “New Visitors” is the website statistic term you want. And the best ones don’t just get a lot of new visitors, but they actually KEEP the user on the page. There are website statistics that will tell you how many seconds users stay on the pages. That’s what I’m talking about.
Make a list. Of the list, select some on core topics that, together, do a pretty good job of giving the gist of LessWrong’s culture. Or possibly, more importantly, the culture you guys want to be creating. Take the first paragraph of each page—which, theoretically has been composed by a person that’s good enough at writing that they’re able to hook an audience immediately—and rotate those on the front page. Show a limited number at one time. This prevents information overload. (Note: In order to ensure fresh content, and for really super duper extremely important search engine optimization reasons, this needs to be done in a particular way. I explained that in: “Home Page vs Search Engines”)
If I begin reading a paragraph and it shows a new twist on the topic which I have thought about already, will I read the rest? Yes! But give me a link with a few words? No. To say enough to convince me that your site worth reading takes more than one sentence. The world is full of boring takes on things, so you have to prove that this place is awesome on the front page.
The best thing is, you already know what’s going to hook the readers. The introductory paragraphs that are proven to work are sitting in your website statistics.
After an “ooh this is interesting” has occurred on the front page, then people may wonder “What is this about?” (Next Post)
I split it into several comments because the site told me that it was too long to post. Sorry if that’s inconvenient.
You put in 4100 words in this thread’s comments which would be about 16 pages if it were in dead tree format. Such a quantity is overwhelming to try and read and reply to.
I also suffer from being excessively wordy and struggle to pare down my comments. I found much better reception when I started writing minimally, and I suspect you would as well.