A Review of Landing page concept for research paper library by Michael + Webcardinals

Hi Jens,

You seem to already have a viable idea with extensive data set and decent amount of users. This allows to be quite optimistic regarding future of your project.

Unfortunately you mentioned that you suffer from high bounce rate which is usually a good indication that there is something not working the way it should.

You got already a few very in-depth reviews (Ryan, Aurimas and others) so I will repeat their remarks which are very accurate.

1. My first impression is that something is not right. The site's design does not look like a typical user would expect a paper repository site to look like :)

2. Design is too similar to web 2.0 applications. Everything is candy looking which is hurting credibility of the content. The content should look serious but is ridiculed by the design. I think this confuses fist time users a lot and it shouldn't as the first impression is crucial.

3. On average homepage has only few seconds to grab new users attention, explain what it is about, show the value and convince to perform next action. Quite a lot for a few seconds. On your homepage most of this time is wasted.

4. Your site tells at once what it is but should rather explain how it could help and why is it so great - so called 'why WOW?'.

5. There are two calls to action (browsing & searching) and the funny thing is that 'the browsing button' takes user to the page with the same Library content which is on the homepage.

6. This topic catalogue on the homepage is too extensive. I think you should redesign it to get info from users and serve them customised categories and search results as soon as possible. Let users tell you what they are interested in first and than give it to them.

7. Sign up asking for money first looks like conversion killer to me. I would suggest splitting the process and get registration first and than offer payment options.

8. On the business model side I would suggest giving free access option (article for article) and paid option when time is of an essence for a user and he can't wait for his articles to be reviewed (which will be the majority anyway)

9. Stats & new essays are totally out of context and waste your valuable real-estate. This place should offer results relevant to the users needs.

I drew a quick simplified version of your homepage which is addressing some of the mentioned issues.

Hope this helps.

Michael

(user experience designer & strategist)