How We’re Improving The LinkedMusicians User Experience Based on Your Feedback and Site Usage and Making the Site Easier to Use for Former Cakewalk Forum Users

Getting acclimated to a new website is never easy. I originally referred to this period in the LM subreddit as beta testing, and it largely is. Most of the Early Adopters Group now using this community while it is closed to public registration came from Cakewalk Forums. Knowing that has been, and continues to be, invaluable to the design and development of this site. Of course, this site has a different design, a different forum platform, a different (and superior) messaging platform and notification system, and adds a social media wall platform — all of which entail change for users. While much of this can be seen as advances or enhancements from Cakewalk Deals Forums, it’s still change, nontheless. And making that period of adjustment easier is one of the greatest challenges for getting any new community off the ground.

I’ve been learning about how you react and behave in this environment and am trying to make the site reflect what works best for our community within the technology and budget constraints I have, But with creativity, experience leading websites, communities, and social media at global brands, and establishing and leading online communities on my own, the benefit of open source platforms greatly reducing the costs, combined with our passion, spirit, and energy, I’m confident that we can make this community a very special place. It may not have the exact functionality of other forums, but it has the major functionality and a lot more on top of that — features that none of the popular music-related forums have. We just need to get acclimated to it and start enjoying it. So let’s get started.

Some of You Found the Initial Release of the Site to Be Overwhelming. Here’s How That’s Been Addressed.

Most of us were avid users of the Cakewalk Deals subform, drawn in by cclarry’s prolific deals posts. Most of us rarely ventured beyond that subforum, but those who did tended to go to two different places: the Coffee House and the Songs Forums. Most often, we returned to the Deals subforum page directly, either through our browser remembering the page or a bookmark; not by entering from the Cakewalk Forums home page as we now do with LinkedMusicians. That sounds like a small detail, but it’s significant from a user experience standpoint and it’s caused me to think about how to make LM have a better user experience for those users accustomed to focusing primarily on the Cakewalk Deals page. Of course, one approach is to tell everyone to start bookmarking the LM Deals Forum, which I did, but such recommendations are rarely enough to change behavior. The LM Deals Forum is much deeper than Cakewalk Deals subforum. We break down deals into software, physical musical instruments / hardware, non-music related items (e.g., video editing, games, etc.), and services. Our beloved Deals Guru cclarry and I discussed all of this before I created the site and we both agreed that a better taxonomy would make for a far superior user experience than what exists at Cakewalk Forum — which reflects the company agreeing to bolt a Deals subforum unto their Coffee House at Larry’s request years ago. This is also reflected in the Deals subforum being completely invisible on the Cakewalk Forums home page — it’s literally not there or even referenced there.

Here are some of the major changes I’ve made to the site to make it easier for former Cakewalk Forums members:

• The Forums and Subforums have been significantly simplified and scaled back
  Seeing so many forums and subforums — especially when they’re empty — just seemed overwhelming to many users, so I pulled them back and eliminated the copy explaining the various forums intended to be helpful, as it was instead seen as clutter. The pulled back forums still exist, but I’ll only re-introduce them after an extended period when the community has become more active and people start requesting additional forums.
  
• The Social Walls / Groups have been scaled back
  The Facebook-like Social Walls / Groups are a departure from forums many are used to, and here again, I had feedback that some users felt overwhelmed and unsure of when to use the Forums over the Groups. So I’ve increased communications about the Groups and scaled back the number of Groups. I’ve also experimented with different approaches to presenting them and will continue to experiment. To those still wondering when to use forums vs Groups, forums are great for structured information, like deals or a post on how to optimize your computer for a DAW, where you want to keep something front and center for a while and have lots of people refer back to it. Social Media Walls / Groups are superior for more fluid conversations. But if you still feel more comfortable in a forum setting, that’s fine. You can enjoy that. I hope you’ll keep checking out the social walls / Groups from time to time, but you absolutely should enjoy this community as you choose.
  
• A Menu Item that Takes You to the LM Web Pages Similar to Your Favorite Cakewalk Forums Pages
  This was my unorthodox and temporary solution to help members through the transition from Cakewalk Forums to LinkedMusicians. The menu lets former Cakewalk find the LM equivalents to Cakewalk Forums’ pages you once enjoyed there (see the yellow highlighted section below).
  
  
  

OPTIONAL: COMPARING THE CAKEWALK FORUM USER EXPERIENCE TO THE LINKEDMUSICIANS USER EXPERIENCE

The User Experience to Find the Cakewalk Deals Subforum

Cakewalk Forums Home Page with no mention of a Deals subforum. It’s invisible.

If you clicked on the Coffee House, congratulations, you’re either clairvoyant or you’ve been here before and know the drill. Either way, this isn’t a great testimony to BandLab’s user experience design talents. More than anything, it conveys how unimportant the Deals community is to the brand.

Congratulations if you made it to the Deals subforum from the Forums home page. But your journey should have been far earier.

The User Experience to Find the LinkedMusicains Deals Forum

ALL of the LinkedMusicians forums and subforums are available in one click from the home page. Even more, each link features a count of the number of topics and comments for each forum and subforum.

The same page in the dark version. Cakewalk Forums does not offer this option.

The user can get to their desired forum or subforum with a single click.

The same page in the dark version. Again, not an option with Cakewalk Forums. Why does Linked Musicians offer this? Because there was a poll where I asked you what you wanted. It was clear that the ideal was to have a light / dark option, so that became a requirement for the site design.