Thank you.
 

Thank you. And thanks for sharing your experience. Good points.

We have different users and user experiences on the site, I'll do more research and see what I (and the site) can do for you/your experience. Will get back to you soon, I have a few ideas, but I'd like to review and be comprehensive.

Last question for you: what device(s) do you usually browse the site w/?

Generally speaking though, and back to the original topic, I am more interested in users coming back to the site.

Page views is sometimes tricky to decipher because a decrease in PVs may sometimes be the result of a better user experience. How so? If the user finds what the user needs easily, than it takes fewer clicks per session, as such fewer PVs per session. Is this bad? I don't think so.

I'll do more research and I'll get back to you soon. Bestest. N

To answer your direct question, I would estimate that 70% of the time that I visit this site, I use a good old fashion computer with web browser. The other 30% I would be on my cell phone.

If I may ask, why did you make the change to begin with?

Lastly, I want to supply a little information about the users of this site (as I see it) to help you better understand us. This is not all encompassing. Pilots who work at the regional airlines are trying to get to the major airlines. In doing so, some pilots will quit their job at a regional and go to work at another regional if it is perceived that will help them on their journey to get to a major quicker. Pilots at regionals might have a preference for which major they want to work at, but generally will go to the first major to offer them the job (there is only a handful of choices so you generally do not say no when offered). This is why I'm a little skeptical about the website change, regional pilots generally want to keep informed as to what is going on at all the majors and will click interesting topics if they see them. They also participate in other regional airline topics.

Major airline pilots want to forget as quick as possible their regional experience and will generally never look back to the regional forum, maybe every once in a while for some nostalgia. Basically, the entire regional section is dead to the major airline pilot since they have made it. A newly hired major pilot may linger for a few months, but that generally goes away pretty quick.

In summary, I'm willing to bet that the vast majority of people who come to this forum do not know what they are looking for most of the time. It's not like a search engine where you type in a topic and get zeroed in to what you are looking for immediately. They come here to waste a little time, blow off a little steam, and participate in interesting topics as they come up.

Another thing I just thought of is these changes may also mean that a user spends less time on the site as well.

And this reminds me of another topic to bring up since you are listening. The vast majority of the ads I'm seeing is for ads that basically entice a user to "come work at our regional airline". These ads are fine in the regional forum. But they are the wrong ad in the major forum. A major airline pilot working for United, Delta, American, Southwest etc.. has made it. They are NEVER going to click an ad enticing them to go backwards and work for a regional. Its a waste to show those ads there. You should be showing ads for expensive toys and hobbies as they now have large dollars to part with.

Thank you.
 

Very interesting. Thanks for the details. I'll review and get back to you.

If you use Tapatalk on your mobile device, it makes viewing new threads simple, under the New Posts tab. Which is what I use.

I like the new subforums as it will in time make it a lot easier to find threads on a specific topic way better than the megathreads that exist for the regional airlines.

Need more time
 

Need more time, been busy w/ the release that we are staging for next week. thanks, happy cinco de mayo and have a great weekend!!

I think you have your answer right here.

https://www.airlinepilotforums.com/r...ub-forums.html

Although user reaction to the changes is mixed, it seems activity is down which is not good for business.

Thanks
 

I don't know, it's hard to say... I see # of posts and threads are still strong, not clear that we are experiencing an impact on performance yet.

if I look at the comments, it seems it's a mixed bag. I think the answer lies, at least for the regional, in a UI/UX approach, where I'd change the template of the page to be able to accommodate both experiences: the users who wants to browse by "airline" and the ones who'd rather just see the list of topics.

Question: the 2 experiences are still on the page, first you'd be hitting the categories, by scrolling, you'd be seeing the list of threads.

The scrolling certainly adds a little bit of extra work.

Questions for you:
A) Do you see the most recently updated threads, when you scroll down?
b) Is the scrolling down the only extra step preventing you from enjoying the full list of threads, or are there other "impediments" that I should consider?

Thank you for your time and feedback.

Nick

If you have the ability to allow the user to choose whether or not to see the subcategories, that might be a big win. I assume that means that all the posts from all the subcategories would simply be shown in one place, in the main category.

To answer your question, "do I see the most recently updated threads", I do see recently updated threads below the subcategories. But I'm not sure what you mean by asking that. Will I only see those below the subcategories if someone decides to post there (not in one of the subcategories).

For B, the answer is no. I don't mind scrolling at all. The crux of the issue the way I see it is having to take the extra step of going in and out of each subcategory to see what is happening at all the airlines.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the people who do not like the subcategories are the ones who want to see what is going on at all the airlines.

I like to see what is happening at all the RJs. I like the subforums. (Anyone who has follow this thread the knows this.) I find it is easier to follow with them. Some days I only have time to check out a few RJs. It makes it easier to just look at the ones that interest me the most (both the ones I like and the dumpster fires).

Other days, when I have time to spend, I go through all the RJ subforums and the general uncategoried group. One thing that I am doing to make life easier when I am pretty well caught up is to look at the day/time of the last post. Some airlines may go 2 or 3 days without a post, and then a rash of postings. Others seem to get a dozen every day.

Regarding the perception of fewer postings, you can run metrics. My guess is breaking them into subforums gives an impression of fewer postings, without really much of a change. After all, you look at a subforums with just a couple of unread threads vs. a general uncategoried group with 20 unread threads and it is easy to get the feeling you are looking at fewer posts.

I have seen a diminishing of the number of postings on American, without any changes to it as a subforums. I attribute this to the Seniority List Integration being a done deal, flow and OTS hiring starting in earnest (after all the Letter T furloughs got called back), and AAG getting pay matching Delta and United. Fewer controversies, fewer posts. They need to drag a passenger off the plane to stir more posts. NOT. (I don't wish that on anyone!)