Feedback on www.vvx.io

dangerman

Hey, been working on this game for the past 9 months - one bit of feedback from friends has been that it is hard to explain. - So I'm keen to nail the homepage in terms of explanation / making it clear what the game is and why its worth trying. (It really is worth trying, but of course I'd say that!)

http://www.vvx.io/

What do you guys think?

mneylon

The front page is very slow to load

dahamsta

No full site view on mobile.

dangerman

Blacknight wrote: »

The front page is very slow to load

That could be (hopefully) because it was shut down - heroku shuts down apps when no one accesses them. It's possible, as it was a Sunday, and great weather, that it hadn't been accessed and shut down, so when you accessed, it started up again.

Try now, it should be fine.

dangerman

dahamsta wrote: »

No full site view on mobile.

Ok, I think I need to set a session variable that lets you override the mobile detection.

On iPad & Nexus 7 it loads the full site, pretty much everything else it will redirect to the mobile version.

I'll look at how to make it optional - I had a switch-to-full-site based on URLs, but the way the Facebook integration & redirect works messed that up so I removed it until I find a better solution.

tricky D

dangerman wrote: »

That could be (hopefully) because it was shut down - heroku shuts down apps when no one accesses them. It's possible, as it was a Sunday, and great weather, that it hadn't been accessed and shut down, so when you accessed, it started up again.

Try now, it should be fine.

It was slow each time I visited no matter what day.

mneylon

The 1.5 megs in the main page probably aren't helping ..

dangerman

Yikes, ok fair point sorry I missed that. Some of the graphics are a bit heavy but the real problem is the 600k (!) of JavaScript - it's a huge 1 page app inside post login that preloads everything, but the way rails bundles all of the JS together means that even though the homepage doesn't need 90% of the JS it's loading it.

I'll look into separating out the JS for the homepage and generally optimising things. Thanks.

mneylon

Run it through http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/

I managed to increase the speed on one of my sites by removing a few dead images and other junk

dangerman

Nice!

'Your website is faster than 74% of all tested websites'

- that sounds good... but still 600k of js ... lol, I'll see what I can do...

Marty_McFly

The home page is still taking ages to load. I'd recommend using Google Page Speed. It is really useful as it details what you need to do to speed your page up.

The large JavaScript files seem to be the main problem.

dangerman

Thanks for the tips.

Enabled compression & gzip, gone from 1.4 meg initial load to 700kb - great savings!

dangerman

Down to 617kb ... ok obsessive compulsive part of my personality is kicking in, better stop for now.

dangerman

Down to 563kb.

Stumbled across:
http://imageoptim.com/ - painless tool that optomises PNG files. fantastic tool.

if you're on windows the above links to trimmage http://trimage.org/

Trojan

A free game where you trade shares in viral videos.
• Find the newest videos on the internet, first.
• Understand viral video trends.
• Revel in the glory of internet domination.

Explain to the visitor asking "what's in it for me". It doesn't look like a game, looks like something that needs time and thinking, and not at all fun.

On the positive front, getting the page size down is awesome.

dangerman

Trojan wrote: »

Explain to the visitor asking "what's in it for me". It doesn't look like a game, looks like something that needs time and thinking, and not at all fun.

On the positive front, getting the page size down is awesome.

First of all:

Time and thinking
Good. I'm glad it gave you that impression. It's not Temple Run or something that you aimlessly swipe a finger over while you're in the toilet. It's a different kind of game.

Not at all fun
I know. - I'm really struggling to articulate the fun aspect. Is it a case of using fun fonts? Is it looking less slick and having a more central stage for the in-game character and his plight? (the guy who pops out from behind the nexus image, if anyone even notices that, forms a major part of a storyline that reveals itself as users play.)

If finding and watching viral (i.e. interesting/funny/shocking etc.) videos isn't fun to you then I think this is definitely not something I could convince you to play... except that friends who played as a favour when it first kicked off got hooked to other aspects, like accumulating wealth, or the in-game story.

So it's a game that looks like a fancy spreadsheet that helps you find great videos ... but I still don't think I've figured out how to properly articulate whats in it for different types of user.

I've noticed two distinct reactions when I describe the game in person:
- Wow! Great idea I want to try it!
- Huh? *Complete ambivalence.*

So maybe it's just not going to get some types of people attention but I think there must be better things I can do on the home page, I've just hit a wall in terms of working out what those are. I'll keep plugging away.

Cheers.