I sent a user through the new page…

I sent a user through the new page on front flow, as well as a few steps in the customizerCustomizer Tool built into WordPress core that hooks into most modern themes. You can use it to preview and modify many of your site’s appearance settings. (including the new color picker). I sort of cheated on this one by telling him exactly where to click at times, but the purpose of this test was not to test if he could get there, but once he got there if the changes we’ve made make sense.

Here’s the video, and my notes:

Step One notes – Log in

No problems.

Step Two notes – Add static front pageStatic Front Page A WordPress website can have a dynamic blog-like front page, or a “static front page” which is used to show customized content. Typically this is the first page you see when you visit a site url, like wordpress.org for example.

No problems.

Step Three notes – Preview your blog

2:19 – “So people can leave a comment on my homepage?” (see my note below)

Step Four notes – Go to customizer

No problems.

Step Five notes – Change your tagline

No problems.

Step Six notes – Change your background color

4:23 – Unfortunately, the new color picker failed again, even with the new “current color” tooltip. User simply clicked the right hue selector, and assumed that the color had been changed to blue.
5:55 – “Ah, I have to drag this, oh. Well that was a little bit confusing”, as he goes back to the customizer color selector and discovers that he has to move the puck in the left-side box.

Step Seven notes – Edit your home page

7:31 – Makes it to the home page to edit it, but then says, “Alright I’m confused”.
8:30 – Goes back to dashboard, “How come this doesn’t look the same as what I was just messing around with”, referring to the customizer.
9:09 – He’s getting confused from my instructions, I said “Change the title” but he’s thinking about the site title, which he saw in the customizer. I’ll have to fix my wording here.

Recap

  • He pointed out that comments are turned on for his static home page. Should we consider turning comments off by default when a static home page is enabled?
  • Having to click twice to select a color is still confusing.
  • Having the static auto-generated “home” page be blank might be a bit confusing. Perhaps we could pre-fill the page description with a bit of helper text. Something like, “This is your new default home page, you can edit the content of this page via the pages section of your dashboard.”.