Constant Content

Here is an interesting article on this trending practice of using low contrast text. contrastrebellion.com

Seeing as we have a new updated site now, do you think the issues around the "contact us" button could be addressed? If CC is reading this, I have read so many posts about people saying they have used the contact form many times and received no reply, even if the problem is urgent. They post messages on the forum in desperation. There are at least two threads currently where a writer is asking if CC ever responds.

In my experience, the only way to get a reply is to email a staff member directly (then they respond very quickly and helpfully), although not everyone has these addresses. I think that this situation occurs so often that there has to be a problem with the contact form not delivering messages to CC. Does anyone else agree that this is a basic issue that should be resolved finally to minimize frustration for writers and improve communication?

Abba

Hey everyone,

Thanks for the feedback here! I'm sorry to hear that some of you are having difficulty using the new site, and I'm here to confirm that we will address that very quickly. If you can provide a bit more detail, that will be very helpful. Here are the issues I'm currently looking into:

1. I'm getting that the primary issue seems to be the green hyperlink font that's appearing on many of the pages in your writer accounts; would you say that's accurate? Requested Content seems to be a particularly problematic page. I'm talking to the designer to find a solution to this.

2. Clicking logo taking you to dashboard when logged in - should be done quickly.

3. Buttons on the requested content not standing out enough.

4. Clarifying what each of the menus in persistent navigation contain per Celeste's post.

5. Also, going to add Requested Content to the main nav per Celeste's post.

I'll update you guys as we make progress with this. We want to make sure this ends up working well for you, and your feedback is invaluable.

I do want to let you know that we have gone through a lot of testing with this new design and workflow over the last couple months, making adjustments and improvements as we went, and this new site does convert way better than the old which should mean more customers and requests for everyone.

Let me know if you have any other questions.

Thanks,

Eric

Eric:

Thank YOU for responding to this thread.

- Any chance of adding the 'recently added content' section back to the site?
- The 'lack of response' to Support emails is an ongoing concern. Resolutions only seem to come if a writer emails specific Constant Content staff members.

Hi Eric,

Thanks for your input. For me the green is annoying, but tolerable. The real difficulty is trying to read the gray text, which is difficult for me because there is so little contrast with the background. I have to cut and paste everything into my text editor to be sure I can read it correctly.

HiredGun wrote:Eric:

Thank YOU for responding to this thread.

- Any chance of adding the 'recently added content' section back to the site?
- The 'lack of response' to Support emails is an ongoing concern. Resolutions only seem to come if a writer emails specific Constant Content staff members.

Probably not adding back the recently added content section. As mentioned above, the new design is getting us significantly more new clients which should result in more sales all around.

I've spotted a couple forum posts citing lack of response from Support. I've asked our Support team to look into those.

Judith wrote:Hi Eric,

Thanks for your input. For me the green is annoying, but tolerable. The real difficulty is trying to read the gray text, which is difficult for me because there is so little contrast with the background. I have to cut and paste everything into my text editor to be sure I can read it correctly.

Which pages do you notice this most on?

Constant wrote:

HiredGun wrote:Eric:

Thank YOU for responding to this thread.

- Any chance of adding the 'recently added content' section back to the site?
- The 'lack of response' to Support emails is an ongoing concern. Resolutions only seem to come if a writer emails specific Constant Content staff members.

Probably not adding back the recently added content section. As mentioned above, the new design is getting us significantly more new clients which should result in more sales all around.

I've spotted a couple forum posts citing lack of response from Support. I've asked our Support team to look into those.

Thanks, Eric. I figured 'recently added content' was probably gone for good, but never hurts to ask.

If you search the forum for "no response", you'll find plenty of posts from writers who have had trouble receiving replies from Support.

Again, appreciate you jumping into this thread.

Thank you for your messages, Eric.

Thank you Eric for responding.

The contrast is perhaps my biggest issue. Lighter fonts are difficult for many people to see on a white background. As Celeste mentioned, the darker blue and black font of the older version of the site were easier to read.

I also have to refresh the page when claiming a request, which is annoying. By the time the page reloaded, all of the other requests that I could see for a specific pool were taken!

Eric - There's also an issue with bugs in search on the new site (I did cover this in another thread, plus I sent a couple of emails to CC without a reply; I am reposting here in the hope this will have a response.)

Advanced search has some bugs in it, specifically:
- It defaults to "Full rights" only, meaning that unless searchers know to search for usage rights, usage articles won't show in search; even then...
- Once a license type is selected, it is impossible to unselect it, meaning it is currently impossible to search for usage rights in advanced search (since full rights is selected by default)
- Advanced search defaults to prices between $25-$100 and word count between 500 and a thousand; since many searchers won't adjust these parameters, articles outside these limits won't get found and purchased


Suggestions
- Make advanced search default to searching for all license types
- Allow license types to be unselected (perhaps as a tick box, rather than a radio button)
- Remove the defaults (So advanced search shows all prices and word counts, unless the searcher limits them)

Thanks.

PaulMaplesden wrote:Eric - There's also an issue with bugs in search on the new site (I did cover this in another thread, plus I sent a couple of emails to CC without a reply; I am reposting here in the hope this will have a response.)

Advanced search has some bugs in it, specifically:
- It defaults to "Full rights" only, meaning that unless searchers know to search for usage rights, usage articles won't show in search; even then...
- Once a license type is selected, it is impossible to unselect it, meaning it is currently impossible to search for usage rights in advanced search (since full rights is selected by default)
- Advanced search defaults to prices between $25-$100 and word count between 500 and a thousand; since many searchers won't adjust these parameters, articles outside these limits won't get found and purchased


Suggestions
- Make advanced search default to searching for all license types
- Allow license types to be unselected (perhaps as a tick box, rather than a radio button)
- Remove the defaults (So advanced search shows all prices and word counts, unless the searcher limits them)

Thanks.

Hey Paul. We've updated the advanced search so that the license types are selectable, and none are set as the default. The defaults set for the other fields are examples, and aren't actually doing anything to filter searches unless a user enters another value.

Constant wrote:
Hey Paul. We've updated the advanced search so that the license types are selectable, and none are set as the default. The defaults set for the other fields are examples, and aren't actually doing anything to filter searches unless a user enters another value.

Excellent, thanks for taking care of this.

Eric:

Are there any plans to fix the Recent/Popular Search Topics section of the site? The same topics have been showing for months.
(And who the heck are Rita and Meg? )

apps
hes
gardening
rita
marketing
BS7671
anxiety
insurance
pit
education
mobile
meg
photoshop
fitness
apprentice
electrician

HiredGun wrote:Eric:

Are there any plans to fix the Recent/Popular Search Topics section of the site? The same topics have been showing for months.
(And who the heck are Rita and Meg? )

apps
hes
gardening
rita
marketing
BS7671
anxiety
insurance
pit
education
mobile
meg
photoshop
fitness
apprentice
electrician

That's a separate issue, but yes we're going to be fixing and improving that feature to be more useful.