Organization of the My Account menu

[Tinalles]

The new "My Account" menu is currently organized as follows:

1 Order History
2 Digital Content
3 Private Messages
4 Organized Play
5 My Profile
6 Account Settings
7 Sign Out

Perhaps my own case is unusual, but I think I've accessed my order history all of 2 or 3 times since signing up on the site eight years ago. It's mostly irrelevant -- you place the order, it's done, and you never have to think about it ever again.

On the other hand, I access my profile daily. Usually multiple times daily. It's the fastest way to find the posts I've made so I can see if anyone has responded to them.

So I would like to suggest that the order of the links in the My Account menu may not be ideal. If it were up to me, I would organize it thus:

1 My Profile
2 Organized Play
3 Private Messages
4 Digital Content
5 Order History
6 Account Settings
7 Sign Out

"My Profile" gets top billing as the central hub for your own activity.

"Organized Play" a close second because PFS/SFS people need to access that routinely.

"Private Messages" supports both of the first two items, particularly for people in play-by-post games.

"Digital Content" is important, but not key to site navigation. Paizo's digital content consists of PDFs; I suspect people tend to download them once and then keep a copy on their local machine, and only have to revisit it for new stuff or if they're not using their usual computer for some reason.

"Order History" -- eh, does this even really need to be present in the top-level My Account navigation? It's got top-right column billing in the Account Settings page, so if it were up to me I'd remove it entirely and just leave it under Account Settings.

"Account Settings" -- makes sense where it is, next to last.

"Sign Out" -- is exactly where it should be; it's at the bottom by standard convention.

I hope Paizo is tracking analytics on how many times each of these links get used. This kind of thing is where tracking usage data excels at telling you how your customers are voting with their clicks. Keep an eye on that for the first few months of the new site, and adjust if a pattern emerges in the data.

[CrystalSeas]

I agree.

I you don't do it now, could you set some counters to sample which parts of the accounts settings are most accesses From The Messageboards.

I suspect those who use the message boards have much more need to use Tinalles' order than the current order.

[Steve Geddes]

Heh. It doesn't really bother me, but I visit my order history a lot and can't remember the last time I wanted to visit my profile page. I suspect my experience is unusual.

[Parody]

Steve Geddes wrote:

Heh. It doesn't really bother me, but I visit my order history a lot and can't remember the last time I wanted to visit my profile page. I suspect my experience is unusual.

Does it have anything to do with the number of subscriptions listed under your name? ;)

FWIW, I believe the main link I've used over the years is "Digital Content" (formerly "My Downloads").

[Tinalles]

And that's why stuff like this should be based on data from across multiple users. No one user's experience is definitive.

Steve, I'm curious. What do you visit your order history for?

[David knott 242]

Some things that used to be easy to find have become harder to find. I had to do quite a bit of hunting to find the "My Subscriptions" page -- and even after I found it, I could see no more direct route to it than the roundabout route that I took.

[Chris Lambertz]

Thank you for this feedback! The menu was based on some of our assumptions for hierarchy combined with the other sitemap changes. We do plan to revisit the organization in the coming days, so input is very appreciated.

[Rysky]

I’d love it if there was a “My Campaigns” section added ^w^

[Steve Geddes]

Tinalles wrote:

Steve, I'm curious. What do you visit your order history for?

Not really relevant to the feedback purpose of this thread:

Partly it's to check what I've got and when - particularly when I've bought multiple copies of things. The "you bought this on such-and-such a date" feature isn't terrific, since it only tracks the first purchase and if you've bought then cancelled something, it shows as purchased forever more.

Mainly though it's budget management. I spend quite a lot on RPGs but I have an annual budget. Periodically, I dig through my prior orders to split out how much I've spent on paizo.com, how much went on shipping, etcetera, etcetera. I've also got a mini-project going where I click through to the shipping number listed on the invoice (rather than the order number) with a view to modelling Paizo's activity and graphing busy periods, estimating turnover and so on and so forth. I have some experience in business modelling and when I see data like that (however incomplete) I just can't help myself. :)

So yeah - I suspect your experience is far more representative than mine! :)

[Tallow]

I agree that order history is likely the least important.

[schyzm]

Chris Lambertz wrote:

Thank you for this feedback! The menu was based on some of our assumptions for hierarchy combined with the other sitemap changes. We do plan to revisit the organization in the coming days, so input is very appreciated.

Chris, when you re-organize, I suggest you put a "my subscriptions" link on the My Account drop-down.

[Tinalles]

That's actually pretty interesting, Steve. I don't think I'd ever do that myself, but I can appreciate wanting to nerd out when you have a tasty pile of data!

[mdt]

Honestly, I wish we could have a button or two at the top that was configurable from our account screen, so I could put 'My Campaign' there. Before I used to just click on my name a the top, it was quick and easy. Two clicks.

Now it's click (my account), scroll (to My Campaign), Click, click on campaigns.

And that's repeated every time I post in a campaign, to get back to my campaign tab.

Alternately, if the campaigns had a link at the top that led to your campaign tab (something in the stylesheet for the campaign threads) then that would make my life SOOOOOO much easier. One click to get back to campaigns.