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okr on 03 August 2009
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ioi said:

We are planning to add loads of new video stuff - game previews, video reviews, game guides and allsorts.

The downside is that it comes back to my initial problem here. As we expand and add even more cool stuff it's just going to get lost unless we can present it a better and easier-to-navigate way to visitors, I can't keep adding new boxes on the homepage for each new feature. DirtyP2002 and SamuelRSmith have the right idea of what I'm talking about - maybe make the homepage more of a portal and divide the site into distict areas or even new domains / sub-sites.

A portal would be great.

I like the new design, but in my opinion the homepage is extremely cluttered. Meanwhile all features get their own section on the homepage - latest news, latest videos, latest screenshots and so on, even latest cheats.

But why do we come here? For many members it's of course the forums, but it was first and foremost the sales data what brought us all here and what distincts this site from all other videogame sites on the web. With the new design the sales data on the homepage don't stand out anymore from other features like they used to in my opinion. Maybe this is preventing visitors more and more from clicking on the sales data - just a guess.

The VGChartz games database on the other hand is meanwhile the best I've ever seen on the web. The new design and content of the game DB pages is excellent, thanks to you and all the admins and helpers involved. In my opinion you included the sales section on the game pages better than on the front page and on a game page there's every info about a game available at one glance:

Sales history from all three regions, boxarts, release dates, other versions, ratings, "edit game" section, "need help?" section, alternative names, dev/publisher, genre, latest updates, summary/FAQs/cheats/screens/extras, links to 3 different types of reviews (VGC/users/critics), related news, community stats and members' opinions.

All information someone could ever ask for is avaiailable on one single game page and yet - unlike the homepage - the game pages don't look cluttered at all to me. Excellent layout IMO on the games pages. The downside: In order to get there you have lots of possiblities, e.g. "Home" => "Latest Charts/Browse Games/Reviews/Videos/Release Dates", "Wii" => "Wii Reviews/Wii Most Popular/Wii Cheats/Browse Wii Games/Wii User Reviews/Wii Screenshots" (same with the 5 other systems), "Charts" =>"Totals/World/Japan/Americas/Others" and so on.

This site has so much great stuff to offer, but I think that meanwhile some of the best features are buried under a labyrinth with endless doorways. Whenever I need a rest from the homepage and repetitive forum topics ("slim PS3!", "yet another Wii bashing journalist", "Forza 3 will smash GT5", "Shipped = Sold to customer?" ), I visit my favourite VGChartz sections like Game Pages, Games Search, Worldwide Total Sales, Hardware Table/by Date/From Launch and of course the Weekly Charts - all these sub sections are not only the most important ones of VGChartz IMO, they are also clearly and excellently designed and should be easily accessible (one way if possible). The sales  sections should dominate the homepage in my opinion.