Tapastic Update: Comic Categorization

UzukiCheverie 2015-03-25 01:21:52 UTC #6

Nice! I was a little iffy with it at first, but reading the thread here made me feel a bit more confident with it :3 I might get lost with it ever now and then just because it does seem to be a WHOLE new layout, but it seems to be alright so far.

..... Yeah I have no idea what you're talking about either :I

ratique 2015-03-25 03:18:34 UTC #7

I really like this categorization. My only complaint:

Why is this not on the front page? It looks way more interesting and I would love it as landing page. I realize that it is easily accessible by just clicking one button, but we all know how lazy we become when browsing the internet.

And what about people who get to this site for the first time? Would they be more impressed if they would see the categories on the first page instead of the second?

Aside from that I am really happy. At least on first glance it looks like it is going to be easier to find new comics now. Thank you Tapastic team!

NagashiKhan 2015-03-25 06:03:06 UTC #8

Out of curiosity, how long will fresh series' be posted? I don't know what the rate of updates per minute is, but that seems like either a really good gambit, or nothing to put your dollar on, unless you're feeling lucky. If the number of updates is overwhelming, doesn't it become like Deviantart? I can't stand Deviant art, it's pretty much random.

But hey, that's just one feature. For the most part this update sounds pretty legit. =3

MylCreates 2015-03-25 06:35:06 UTC #9

Same I was like ... oh great... how are people with few yet very engaging fans going to make it to the first page (because they could though comments), but the descriptions did make sense, however, does that mean it's now clumping "likes, comments, etc" all into one section?

Because now I'm just seeing the effect where "popular comics" and "trending comics" are ALMOST EXACTLY the same. Because, duh, popular comics most likely have the most subscribers, thus most likes which I'm guessing would straddle any number of comments smaller comics could amass like they used to.

I'm so sorry if I'm sounding picky , I'm just still skeptical of the new format and I wish the option of picking most "comments" "likes" "subscribers" etc was still an option. Atleast with the old popular comics format I actually saw diversity in the comics depending on their category and I did actually catch, not so prominent comics featured within those sections. Now I'm seeing the same comics in both categories.

I do like the option of "Fresh" though. It wasn't as obvious in the previous update. That's a +.

But I no longer see categories, does this mean Tapastic's no longer doing themed categories for say holidays or special events?

AnnaLandin 2015-03-25 07:30:19 UTC #10

This looks like a really good update! However, I agree with @ratique in that the "Fresh" category would do better to appear on the front page - that gives lesser known/less popular comics more exposure, which is great for everyone.

I know the category is only a click away as it is, but with all those other categories grabbing attention on the front page, people are less likely to make that one click to find it.

taihendechu 2015-03-25 12:04:21 UTC #11

I like the layout of the front page... but I think it's not the best solution.
As @MylCreates already mentioned: The chances that in the popular and trending section are the exactly same series, is pretty high. I'm personally not a fan of that... I think it suggests that we don't have enough different good series to fill the places. I have absolutely no idea about programming but wouldn't it be possible to write a little code that automatically avoids duplicates on the front page?

Aside of that I like the new algorithm!

I really understand @ratique's point. I was a little confused at first as I wasn't able to find the "Fresh" section. Personally I would really like to see this on the front page! It's a great way to discover new series!

Another thing about the front page.. and I would really like to hear other people's opinion about that: Imo The best solution for the big banner, was the one one year ago. Three series featured at the same time (the images was changing). The banner pictures are always gorgeous, it gave the page such a dynamic WOOSH. Now I find it a bit static... especially because when a new series gets featured.. I check it out. Depending on the content I subscribe.. or I don't... and for the next 5 days I'm just looking at a pretty picture. When I got featured I noticed a huge boom at the beginning... and a little less every following day (still a lot, but slowly falling). That might have been just my impression though! However... If you'd put it down in numbers featuring more artists at the same time (maybe again with the moving header WOOSH) would help more people in less time... I guess... ?

shade277 2015-03-25 12:10:17 UTC #12

Hope it will work =)

And I truly hope - it will be as fair to small projects as to big ones!

Iron 2015-03-25 12:21:10 UTC #13

Agree 100%

Also, I vote for the 'fresh' to go to the frontpage. The way I see it now is that staff is worried that 'low quality' comics will make a negative impression of the site if they are displayed on the front yard. But since we have here so many comics here, the list would be dynamically changing, and it would give a chance to many creators to draw a bit of attention. And we have to remember that people (includingmesadlyforthemostoftime)are generally lazy creatures, so if they have a choice of finding a comic by 'search +scroll + click +search +several clicks' or 'scroll + click' they choose the later option...

Foxjorch 2015-03-25 12:32:01 UTC #14

Woh, this is great

shinepaw 2015-03-25 12:45:59 UTC #15

I totally agree, I'd love to see some changes to the top banner! It's just boring to see the same series featured for a week. I'd say let it be either 3 series featured for a week with the old carousel type header, or change it daily or every other day!

panos 2015-03-25 13:41:57 UTC #16

I'm pretty sure it will help new comics, nice job!

Mane 2015-03-25 14:56:12 UTC #17

The"fresh" section is a great idea and I think it will help artists get more exposure!

brianorlando 2015-03-25 17:28:42 UTC #18

We totally agree. We are working on an improvement for this right now. Thanks for the feedback!

Drawnicula 2015-03-25 17:37:47 UTC #19

It's better than it was before, but there are still some things which I would like to see (hope you don't mind):

banner changes (3-5 comics per week are promoted instead of 1)
popular and trendy shouldn't feature the same comics, because if I don't sub a a "popular" comic I certainly won't sub the same "trendy" comic and other series won't get the exposure.
Also, it looks like Tapastic has only a few comics to visitors, because "why would the same stuff be featured twice if there were enough comics?"
the collections are gone and most of my favourite comics were part of collections (manga madness).
Many creators were glad to be featured in a collection and it was a nice way to find good comics from a particular genre without having to search.
I already suggested something similar in feedback:
*Just like the collections, there could be a weekly/monthly theme which is shown on the front page. For an example: Supernatural, The brave, thought-provoking, silly, Zombies - anything goes!
Themes show a small selection of comics which are picked by Tapastic's staff and belong to that theme.*
please let "fresh" on the front page. "Fresh" doesn't only show bad comics, it shows many many good works which otherwise go unnoticed.

brianorlando 2015-03-25 17:38:45 UTC #20

This all depends on how many creators update per day. Fresh displays 150 unique series episode upload results. Once a series is updated today, it will move up to the top of the Fresh list and push previously updated series down 1 space. Keep in mind, uploading more than one episode back to back won't bring a series to the top of the list repeatedly. So technically a series that uploaded today still should be in the Fresh section for more than half the day (depending on the amount of episode uploads we have per day). Hope this sheds some light. Thanks for the feedback!

brianorlando 2015-03-25 17:57:05 UTC #21

Thanks for the feedback!

Right now, the homepage is intended to display the top content across all genres and categories on Tapastic. To address the issue of genre discovery, we added clickable genre tags to the thumbnails to allow readers to jump into the corresponding genres on the browse page. We're hoping that readers will make use of these tags to jump into desired genres. With that being said, we're constantly iterating to see what works best.

jjfresh 2015-03-25 18:02:33 UTC #22

Well...hmmm interesting...discourages me from condensing my pages into a whole chapter.... Fresh is best for everyone as it allow everyone to see the most recently updated. Although, I noticed with the Popular page, it only goes to 5 pages- oh wait, nevermind. The ALL category lets people see everything. Okee. Yeah, that's pretty good. Very helpful...for me...

EDIT: ACTUALLY, can you eventually make a place for all completed webcomics? That would be helpful for those who don't go to Premium when theirs finally end.

brianorlando 2015-03-25 18:02:54 UTC #23

We appreciate the feedback.

We just updated the Trending section. Take a look.

This is still accessible under the "All" category on the browse page.

Genres are accessible on the browse page as well, and are now clickable on each series thumbnail on the homepage and browse page.

Anyways, hope this addresses some of the concerns. Thanks!

kurisquare 2015-03-25 18:07:53 UTC #24

Nice update! of course we'll always find new things to improve, but this was a nice step (good to know the popular/trending issue is already being taken care of)

YES!! I loved the old dynamic banner! seeing the weekly feature is nice the first 2-3 days, but then it's just...the same thing...until a point in which I'm just waiting eagerly for the front page to change the weekly feature XD

Also, what happened to collections? those were a nice subcategory of staff-picked series. The "Picked" section is nice but if it is like New & Noteworthy there's a big chance it'll have a lot of one-episode series. Collections usually had "older" series which had more content.

michaelson 2015-03-25 18:45:24 UTC #25

We also have to consider that not every reader comes to the site everyday. Our experience using the site everyday does have an impact on how we perceive it, but ultimately the decision from going from 3 features to 1 main feature was based on sampling data.
When we featured 3 series at a time, depending on the day and the position, we saw huge fluctuations between number of click throughs and number of subscribes. I think this kind of variability in behavior made me uncomfortable with sticking with that system. So we opted to do one main feature per week.
Since then, we've seen almost triple the amount of click throughs, and a much higher rate of subscription. I do agree that there's some exposure fatigue for people that visit the site frequently, but we should try our best to approach featuring based on what the data says. Also, carousel type headers don't work.

The only problem is that there's no hierarchy for a first time reader.

We have to remember that this is only the second day of using the algorithm. It will diversify more as time goes on.

The staff isn't worried about 'low quality comics.' I'm more worried about the types of behavior it would encourage. We really want creators to start focusing on the reading experience, and by rewarding frequent updates we are promoting more of a page based approach.

Also, with the frequency of series created and episodes uploaded, it's very difficult to police when spam content makes it to front page if the fresh section were to be there.