Plugin Concept: "Last Week's Winner" & Awards

[chwolf]

Problem #1: One website dominates your top site list. They're in first place every day/week/month and nobody can unseat them. You don't want to block them but you also don't want them hogging the top spot, discouraging voters and site owners!

Solution: "Last Week's Winner" - but replace "week" with whatever time period votes reset.

With the "Last Week's Winner" plugin, a new spot would be created ABOVE the #1 position on the forum. This spot would say only this:

"Last week's winner: [NAME OF WEBSITE]!"

The name of course being clickable to go to that site. Traffic would still be recorded normally, but the site would not appear in the top list, but rather only in that special "Last Week's Winner" position.

After a week (or however long until votes reset) the #1 site for that week replaces the previous "winner", who goes back into the top site listings.

We've now effectively prevented "top spot stagnation".


Problem #2: "What do I get for being popular on your top site list? I bring voters in to your site, what do you bring me?" Let's face it - your top site thrives on voters coming in. That means you need POPULAR website owners more than they need you.

Solution: Awards.

Your site is in "Last Week's Winner" four times. You just got a Bronze Trophy! (An icon, essentially, next to your name in the stats page.)

Whoa. You got three Bronze Trophies and they converted into a Silver Trophy!!

Whoa!! You got six Silver Trophies and they converted to a Gold Trophy!!!

Oh man... You got 12 Gold Trophies and they converted to a Platinum Trophy!!!! :O


"So what?" you ask...


Well, let's say there's a credit system that lets people buy credits to advertise on your site or attain other special perks.

Get where this is going? Yes, every time you get a bronze trophy, you get X points. Whenthey convert so silver, you get X points. All the way up to the most points when Gold turns Platinum. You now have not only a visual "status symbol" for website owners to unlock, but you also attached a real benefit to attaining them.


Plus, there could also be other achievements to unlock if you want to spread the love beyond the "big hitter" popular websites.

For example, being with the site fo 3 months could also give people a Bronze Trophy... getting a certain # of hits out could give one... etc.


Okay, that's enough words for now.

 

[Mark]

looks like I should create a plugin requests section?

Or are you planning on posting this plugin?

 

[Basti]

1. Old aardvarks mod "Hall of Fame". Lists today, yesterday, this week, last week, this month, last month winning members. Today, this week - month can change depending on whos #1. Could be easily converted.

2. What do they get? Visitors.
The fact is, most topsite lists have poor seo in place. Owners dont know how to place onpage keyword correctly. Choose your toplist title clever, a few clever placed text phrases and you can send more to them than the other way around.

But indeed, combine "hall of fame" with awards might be something to consider.

 

[chwolf]

Mark - I thought I was supposed to post here. The stuff I posted in the Core Suggestions forum were said to be more geared for "plugins" so I thought I should post in the plugins area... If not, just let me know where, or if I shouldn't post them. :X

Basti - Well, sites don't really gain visitors from top sites pages unless they're near the top and are easily visible - which means they're already popular. I'd doubt that many people skip a few pages in to see how the low performers look, know what I mean? There are some concepts that can turn that around, but I'd wait to post them until I know if I'm posting in the right place.

 

[Basti]

I know, but thats not what you said in your post, you refered to the top members. But anyway, top members or not, good seo is required.
Neverless, you are right about the lower ranked members

 

[chwolf]

I didn't contradict myself. In the first post I said "what's in it for me?" on the part of popular sites. In the second post I said the only sites that gain visitors are already popular, meaning a small gain in clicks probably isn't a huge bonus "in it for them".

Same thought, different approach.

 

[Mark]

Mark - I thought I was supposed to post here. The stuff I posted in the Core Suggestions forum were said to be more geared for "plugins" so I thought I should post in the plugins area... If not, just let me know where, or if I shouldn't post them. :X

Indeed, there is no forum section setup for these type of requests yet. This plugins area was intended for actual plugins, not suggestions or requests. I''ll create a new section for this later today

 

[JoeyG]

I know this is a very old thread, sorry for bumping it.

I was wondering if anyone has worked on this concept for Visiolist?
I would really like to have this as a feature or plugin.

 

[chwolf]

Same here! XD lol

 

[Mark]

Unfortunately, I get a feature request every day and we have no volunteers creating mods so its a supply/demand issue. My focus is always going to be improving the core, with paid work following close behind.

We might need to look at a plugin store or bounty system to help get high demand plugins created... that said, this particular mod is still very low demand with only 2 users interested.

 

[chwolf]

It's inappropriate to judge interest solely on who posts in a thread. After all, not all of your customers check these forums routinely, and even then I doubt people know "this won't get done unless I chime in, too".

As for paying, I don't pay for mods. My contribution is the concept. It enhances the usability and therefore the saleability your product. VisioList is sold as a product that will be updated and has/will have Mods. Since that's a selling point, I wouldn't pay additionally for a mod request. If that means it languishes, so be it - we're all getting hurt by that.

This is a suggestion that benefits all users of all types, not just my site, and so is not a viable "pay request". If it was something nobody else would ever want, need, or use, then I could see buying it because it's for a selfish goal. In fact, in a perfect world companies, however small, would reward users for concepts that embetter their product, not the other way around.

Just my two cents. I'm a crusty bastard that way.

 

[Mark]

Reminds me of an old expression:
Good Ideas Are a Dime a Dozen, But Implementation is Priceless

 

[chwolf]

That attitude mixed with the lack of new features reminds me of an old expression, too.

Out of Business.

(That or "The Customer is Always Right"... or "He Who Hesitates is Lost"... or...)

"Pay us and we'll do it" - It doesn't take much to visualize any other business outside the pre-fab script arena saying this straight-faced for it to become ridiculous. Facebook, Twitter, Coke, Pepsi... "Something that makes our product better for everyone and might encourage future buyers? How about you pay us to do it, Mr. Single Customer?"

You have to take a bigger world view when you're putting out a product.

 

[Mark]

Ah I know the world view you are expecting... I personally prefer honest discourse over outdated customer service mumbo jumbo.

so here you are, the customer is always right:

Dear sir, thank you so much for your feedback and amazing suggestions. As you already know, you are absolutely right about everything, and I apologize for my small world view and apparently poor business instinct. I certainly hope we can survive in this harsh business climate and stay in business, as you have pointed out with regards to our current attitude and lack of new product features (forget about the work that went into 9 major releases in the past year). In the future we will do everything to ensure your full and complete satisfaction. We believe in going above and beyond to provide a product that is top of the food chain, while providing fast and helpful support, and fulfilling all of our customers wishes. Yes, the 2 of us working part time behind this project are committed to ensuring you are treated just as fair as coke, pepsi, twitter, and facebook would treat your product customization requests, because one thing is for sure, we have those type of resources and that was a totally fair and valid comparison you made.

We will also work hard to derive a way that is more acceptable by your standards as to which features should be prioritized for the 2 of us to work on in addition to our long list of planned features, we had thought that simple feedback from our community of active members was an adequate way of doing so, but since you disagree, then obviously its not fair and we need to do more. We also thought that the possibility of users paying for some aftermarket features was acceptable in our line of business as it is in every other industry, since time is limited and there is no shortage of ideas our there. To that end, I thank you deeply for your time and feedback and can only wish you well. Rest assured as of now, we are already doing everything to ensure your complete satisfaction and happiness with our product.

LOVE,
VisioList Customer Support

 

[chwolf]

If you honestly "preferred discourse", you wouldn't have locked the discourse. So I'm taking you and your word, and if you were indeed being honest, we can discuss this here.

http://visiolist.com/community/threads/plugin-concept-last-weeks-winner-awards.232/#post-4207

See, this is a major problem. Not only in my thread there have I seen you and your staff's seeming adversarial nature toward anyone who disagrees or simply has a different idea of something than you do.

You believe in mumbo-jumbo, friend. It's just that you believe in the version that benefits you. "Ideas are a dime a dozen, implimentation is priceless" is a laughably bad way to go about business.

You literally told me, a customer who paid you for a product, "You're a faceless drone amongst a sea of people who think they're geniuses. I produce the product, I'm invaluable."

In reality, implimentation is meaningless without a good idea. With your outlook, you'd might as well sell empty packs of "Swiss Cheese Holes" and laud your ability to produce the packaging.

I don't know, Mark. I could just be reading you wrong, this IS the internet after all, but it seems like you not only don't respect the input of users, but you actually resent it.

If you were any sort of professional, and remember YOU'RE the one representing his own business on his own site, not me, you'd not have been quite as insulting as you were from the start.

"Only two people want this", on a site as slow as this one, is completely mind-boggling. From that point it only got worse.

Essentially, I feel you're reading the wrong marketing blogs. I don't know. I'm the Marketing Director of a small company, so I tend to think I have some small mote of knowledge in that respect... but to hear you tell it, I'm some nut who deserves to be derided with a mocking "form letter" before which the thread is locked in an immature and unprofessional "so there".


The worst thing about it, though, is you actually just lost a customer. Automatically, you just lost the debate. If you'd gone about things the right way I wouldn't have even considered saying that.

I only used Visiolist because I succeeded with Aardvark's product in the past... creating my own Mods and styling the Hell out of it. Then the DDoS attacks began and I took a break for a few years. I guess it's time to look outside the Aardvark pool.

 

[Bart]

No point in crying over spilled milk, Mark and Basti both do their best to support the users of this forum to the best of their abilities, but we need to remember that they do have a personal life and other work commitments besides visiolist so they prioritize as to what is needed first instead of what is a luxury unless there is a lot of people wanting it (I've seen them create mods in a few hours because a thread got popular) so they do actually listen, A few of my suggestions were created and also a few of them were not but at the same time Visiolist offer no guarantee that they will create mods based on every single users request as they will be left with absolutely no time to do anything else.

 

[Basti]

Sorry to hear you dislike how we do things chwolf. About your thinking about how requests should be handled, i think your a bit wrong there. Even on a paid internet product you cant have everything and things get turned down. Anyway, like it has been said, we carefully choose in what we invest our tight timeframe. Well, you have your opinion and i respect that, iam sure Mark does as well and he didnt meant to harm you in any way.
Hope you reconsider your decision, aardvark, visiolist still is the most flexible and plugin rich toplist script. If not, i wish you best of luck with your new script.

 

[Mark]

fwiw that is the first thread I have closed in years.. I closed it because the discussion had degraded to a twisting of words and hurling of insults... which is continuing here.

Do what you need... nothing I can say at this point will improve this relationship. Best of luck to you. I know who I am and what I stand for, I dont need or have time to convince you of anything. Could I have handled your complaint better? sure, but at the end of a long day of coding (3 am now and I am still working on improving this product) to be put down by someone behind their monitor for my stance (which I maintain was reasonable) on a feature request for this product, might just get me a little annoyed.. and it did.

for me, the case is closed. I lost a customer but got to write a silly couple of paragrpahs to blow of some steam which I obviously needed.


LOVE
Mark

 

[chwolf]

Bart & Basti - It's not about getting the Mod done, that should be made clear - if I had the time I'd just do it myself like I modded the Aardvark version all those years ago, and like I modded Visiolist in tiny ways. It's about the attitude and denegration of customers. As previously stated, anyone can look at some requests and see a negativity toward users.

Mark - Did your replies accomplish anything other than scoring points for yourself? Is it worth the two, five, ten, twenty people who may theoretically come across your "dime a dozen" and whatnot and decide they don't want to have to ask that person for help/updates? Something to think about in the future.

Honestly, I've been on the web for... what, seventeen years... almost all of them I've spent involved in projects and products thereupon. What I'm getting at is that I've seen this a thousand times - "We spend our valuable time bringing you this product, so don't YOU tell US!"

That might work for a free product, Mark, but you have to ask yourself when the worm turns and you owe the customers more than they owe you. That line, to me, is when you're charging a good sum of money for a product that is competing with hordes of free alternatives.

Try working on the code of an online game much more advanced than a top site list, working through four, five AM, and then the only response to your work is having a user or two complain about the down time. I don't know, I handle stuff like that pretty well so maybe I have a skewed idea of your attitude.

If you're going to look at others' ideas as "a lot of people have to want it", you're already failing. A lot of people don't want ANYthing the same way. "A lot of people" probably don't even care about some core freatures of your product. Website thumbnails from a free web service? Who cares? I'm one click away from looking at the actual site, full-size. I want voting incentives that generate interest and revenue. And so on...

Basically it all comes down to this.

You can consider ideas a dime a dozen. You can toot your own horn and say implimentation is priceless. That won't change the fact that without happy customers, you're doomed.


That's not my opinion. That's fact.


I'm curious, Basti - when you talk about where you want to go with Visiolist, do you get shut down as well? This is strictly a curiosity, I assume the answer could easilybo "No way!"

 

[Basti]

Website thumbnails from a free web service?

Not a free service, but our own. But your right, some may do not care

I'm curious, Basti - when you talk about where you want to go with Visiolist, do you get shut down as well? This is strictly a curiosity, I assume the answer could easilybo "No way!"

Exactly.

Well, we both devoted countless months helping people even for the free aardvark script, we know what we did and what we do now. Some of your words i find pretty unfair, but thats your opinion, so nothing i can do against it.
Think enough is said on both sides and we should all come down