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Ian bradbury
Ian bradbury

Posted on

Becoming a sustaining member of dev.to is not optimal

I wanted to sign up and become a Sustaining Member of dev.to.

Without looking. Say out loud where the link to do that is.

I'm not a betting man but I would guess that you were not even close.

Come on dev.to team. Sort it out. Front and centre. Big call to action button.

And..... Even if you find the page - chances are you'll be disappointed that you can't just click the $10 or $25 box.

Harsh? Maybe. I just want the community to grow and flourish.

Top comments (7)

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michaelgv profile image
Mike

Sustaining membership as a CTA is a risky move however, visitors may see it as a “you need to pay to access”

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern

Super duly noted. We tend to have an attitude in our shop of taking our time to get things right instead of being super proactive and in-your-face about new things. I think it is to our detriment sometimes where we don't even take the time to, as you mentioned, figure out where to put a general, useful call-to-action.

Thanks for the nudge. It always helps when someone tells us how they feel. And thanks for eventually finding the page and signing up Ian. I'll ping you when we improve the situation with a follow-up thanks.

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bizzibody profile image
Ian bradbury • Edited

Thinking about location....

A simple link/button below the profile element and reading list elements over on the left could be prominent but at the same time unobtrusive.

If what ever it is could present an appropriate message that would be great. Learn about Sustainable Membership. Or - Thanks for being a sustainable member. Or - You are awesome.

I'm sure you've a million better ideas.....because mine are all rubbish.

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evanoman profile image
Evan Oman

Love the response, keep up the top-notch interactions with the community :+1:

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chrisvasqm profile image
Christian Vasquez

I believe it was in the book called "Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability" that I read a phrase that goes like:

"Everyone has the ability to say when something is well designed or not, but not everyone knows how to actually come up with one."

With this in mind, I do agree with your statements about how hard it can be to go through the process of becoming a Sustaining Member. But there are things to consider when you put something "Front and centre. Big call to action button". Like how would that affect someone who just came across this website for the very first time? this would probably hurt their user experience because some people have really high standards with their first impressions.

So, I think a better approach would be to come up with something like a really bad drawing mockup made by hand, screenshots of where do you think things could be placed, etc. That would have way more power than a "harsh" post.

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bizzibody profile image
Ian bradbury

Good. Nope. Maybe. Good idea. Was it?

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vinaypai profile image
Vinay Pai

It does highlight one of my UI pet peeves...

  1. Important links that exist only (or mainly) in the footer
  2. Pages uses infinite scrolling so you only get a glimpse of the footer before it runs away.