| Phil Minchin Contributor |
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Hi folks,
I don't have time to see if this has already been suggested, but a (potentially? I think?) simple tweak that might help is to modify the "Personalising, click again in 10 seconds" message. Effectively, you're actively instructing people to "please repeatedly reset your personalisation for no gain to either you or us".
With the volume of traffic we're seeing, that's tens if not hundreds of thousands of personalisation processes being restarted. That's got to account for a good chunk of the server load, which of course compounds the problem and makes it more likely that other people will have the same problem - and it's all happening because people are literally just doing exactly what you've told them to do.
Especially with people who are unfamiliar with the service, people will re-click several times before they start searching forums. And yes, there's the text in red at the top of the screen - but that's pro-forma text, whereas the "click again in 10 seconds" is added "live" and therefore feels like more up-to-date instructions.
(The red text is also a little inaccurate in that you don't actually click the "10 seconds prompt". You could probably stand to reword that too - but it would be better not to be actively giving people incorrect instructions.)
Hopefully this text is just a simple html string inside the downloads page UI code that can be edited while the demand is spiking and changed back to normal when normal functionality resumes.
If so, I'd suggest something along the lines of:
Personalisation of your file has begun. Due to our Humble Bundle promotion wildly exceeding all expectations, personalisation is taking longer than the usual 10 seconds. Please read here for updates, and click again in <frequently updated time estimate based on actual observation of personalisation times>. Thanks for your patience!
Hope this helps! If I'm right, this one UI tweak will both make the system noticeably faster and the customers more patient in dealing with the (now shorter) delays.