Web Site Modifications

[nealtex01]

A little tuning to the website navigation structure can help users find their way around our site and (existing) content a little more easily. The proposed changes should be straightforward to implement, and IMHO will bring the site nav to a more intuitive experience - one where a greenfield visitor is walked left to right as people (at least in western cultures) tend to think:

1. What is this thing?
2. What technology makes it go?
3. What features are made possible by the tech?
4. What applications are made possible by the features?
5. What actual solutions exist?
6. OK, cool. I'm sold. Now take me deeper.
7. I want to keep up, What's the latest news?
8. Who's behind this thing anyway? And what if I want to join?

To get there, these changes are recommended:

1. Main Nav 1 item shop due "What is FD.IO?". Create a new page and take the copy from the Get Involved page and put it here.
2. Main Nav 2 is the current "Get Started With VPP" page as is, but should be renamed as "Technology". Technology should be a single page, no sub nav. Simply use the existing Technology page content as it is.
3. Main Nav 3 should be the existing Features page - which is current sub nav item under "Get Started with VPP".
4. Main Nav 4 should be the current "Use Cases" page as is, but renamed as "Applications". By way of explanation, the actual listings are secure networking application highlights. Use cases more typically stories about a customer implementation of a given application.
5. Main Nav 5 should be the current "Customer Solutions" page, but renamed as "Solutions". The latter is exactly what is shown. Each vendor implementation should have a URL link to a page (Landing/Web) page of the vendor's choice -and one designed to cross promote the importance / presence of VPP.
6. "Customer Feedback" should be "Customer Quotes" and should be moved under "Customer Solutions" as a sub nav. This section has only 'vendor' quotes at present, but that is a separate matter. I'll take this opportunity to explain that, IMHO, we want the site to take on more of "end customer" feel, and less of a "vendor customer" feel. It has been agreed (in the FD.io MAC, at least) that VPP is well-established and accepted amongst secure networking vendors. That goal is largely achieved, as I understand. The challenge now is to get broader "end user" awareness, acceptance, and pull through for products that have "VPP within". I often draw a parallel to Intel's legendary branding campaign, "Intel Inside". We want end users to 'demand' that their products have 'VPP inside'. VPP is way down the stack, so it is harder to make into a headline story. The best way to do this is show end-user 'birds of feather' quotes, hence "Customer Quotes" stated by true end users, as opposed to vendor "technology fraternity". This is the key thrust of 2021 for the MAC - drive more end user (and by extension vendor) stories.
7. Main Nav 6 should be "Resources" and should have the following sub nav: "White Papers"(currently under "Use Cases"), "Project Documentation", "Installing", "Building" intuit order left to right. Each page currently exists, use as is for now.
8. Main Nav 7 should be "The Latest" page renamed to "News". Sub menu distinctions "News" and "Archive" should go away. Just have a single rolling list by date stamp. That removes the work of having to draw some arbitrary line and move assets on some interval basis - which is needless work.
9. Main Nav 8 should be the "Get Involved" page but renamed "About". "About" sub nav items should be "TSC", "Key Documents" (renamed from TSC Documents), and "Join Project" - in that order left to right.

[otroan]

Finally getting around to looking at this.
For bullet 9 (main nav 8).
What were you thinking should go into "Join project". Since that content is now also in "main nav 1".

[edwarnicke]

@nealtex01 In looking at the preview for #91 does it seem to you that our top nav is to crowded now:

Its up to seven items... which violates the 3-5 rule... thoughts?

[nealtex01]

@edwarnicke it's a valid observation.

There are many ways to reduce. It's interesting. When I suggested the above nav/content reorg, it was 100% born out of working from the "raw clay" of what we have on the site now (from a page perspective). It was not with an eye towards fitting to web motifs that seem common to other projects. I am naturally bent in the former direction, and think all LFN projects should follow suit :-). That approach also tends to serve better from a user experience and search engine crawler perspective both.

Said differently, I feel like the LFN web sites in general lean towards "inside baseball", which IMHO runs counter to the goals being set by the LFN Marketing Council.

That said, I could have a view of the world that is too "marketing-ish" for LFN's brand / web objectives. And you are really only asking about FD.io here, so perhaps it is off topic (although contextually important to consider).

Well, back to your specific observation. Of note, the following sites have this count of main nav items:
Calico (7)
Kubernets (8)
NSM (3)

So there really is no main nav "standard".

In looking at Calico and NSM web sites, both have adopted a (time-tested, and very suitable for mobile device) model of a long-form home page. Were we to go this route, the "What's FD.io?" main nav item could be rolled into the home page. That drops us from 8 to 7.

If we want to further condense, the above mentioned projects do not call out "News" or "About" on the main nav. So we could roll both under "Resources", dropping us from 7 to 5. These moves are unconventional for commercial web site design, but open source projects sort of follow a different "marketing framework".

So that is ONE path to main nav redux.

Regardless, it seems we need to consider a much better long-form home page, and one that is more "engaging". Calico smokes us on this front. But a good example of where we have improved our "visual appeal" is the recent infographic - which probably badly needs to the make the home page has a pdf, if not reshape the home page altogether.

Let's face it, open source projects need eye candy and approachability. Human attention span is shorter than that of a goldfish.

Let's discuss on the morning call today?

PS. BIG THANKS TO @otroan FOR GETTING THE ABOVE SANDBOX BUILT!!!

[edwarnicke]

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[edwarnicke]

Captured from conversation about nav length in the marketing committee meeting:

Look at the possibility of rolling 'What is FD.io' and 'Features' under 'Technology'

[sknat]

Hi,
I didn't notice this issue while doing site improvements on the side of documentation refactoring.
I created #104 which adds the a drop-down menu which might address overcrowding the header.
But I agree this isn't a very common design among such landing pages.

On the bright side, as the readthedocs is being refactored we could remove the Features and Technology
links and rely on those being exposed in the VPP documentation (and CSIT, HICN, ... counterparts)

[edwarnicke]

@nealtex01 Thoughts?

[nealtex01]

Hey @jadenisco,

The deck I built eons ago is attached below.

There is a google page under Netgate somewhere with most of the same info - but I no longer have access, so sending you this PPT.

Also, for anyone else who might have seen this before, there is a new slide at the end that describes a newly proposed nav.

Best,
Neal

fd.io home page rework.pptx

[edwarnicke]

@sknat may also be interested :)