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Thanks!
Is there a timeline for the page being overhauled?We already have the designs, mock-ups, and proof-of-concepts completed for a fantastic new downloads page, and have for quite some time. Unfortunately, page and usability overhauls that you all ask for (and that we love to deliver) are frequently trapped in a prioritization limbo.
3. Essential business functions - we have to be able to advertise, sell, and ship/distribute our products effectively. This also includes proactive maintenance of our infrastructure. Without these, we have no business and no jobs, and our customers have no new products or content.
4. User experience - we want our users to have a wonderful experience navigating and using the site. Issues in this category are often inconveniences, but either have workarounds or affect non-essential site features. Things like overhauling the downloads page fall into this category.
This prioritization is a classic one from IT since the 90s. I appreciate the sentiments having run help desks and special projects as an architect for the past 25 years, but I would strongly implore you to consider the following points:
1. User Experience (UX) isn't an afterthought anymore - everything is getting too complex and digital platforms everywhere are going to live or die by whether their services are painful to use. UX review and design should be a required element of everything you produce, just like editing is for the written word. Whether it's a printed book or a website forum, how your customer interacts with it and whether that interaction is pleasant and compelling should not be an optional idea.
I urge you to consider a dedicated and trained UX designer; it's a role that engineers scoff at, and think they can do themselves, but most are terrible at it due to the curse of knowledge (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_knowledge).
2. Digital first / only approaches have exploded in importance since the pandemic. Paizo has been years behind since 2015 or so, and the market is quickly shifting at a speed it's never done before. It's not an understatement to call it transformative. We can't rely on "what you've always done" to make sense of this - check your analytics for how many users are getting PDFs only and VTT only products, for instance. I would imagine you're seeing a huge spike since 2020 that has only paced upwards.
3. Hasbro has given you one hell of a gift, and a lot of it was around their digital platform and experience. Thousands of customers have said very loudly (with their wallets) that they care about these things. To think that the website experience is not business critical in importance to your customers is absolutely outdated and dangerous thinking as a whole.
4. Splitting your tasks between Mission Critical and Not Mission Critical is absolutely smart, but each task (mission critical or not) should absolutely include User Experience 100%. The PDF downloads page, by your own definition, should be mission critical - it's how you distribute all of your PDFs in a secured fashion. Why would you think it's not mission critical to make that bottle neck as painless and pleasant as you can for your customers?
I wish the best for you and your team.