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Squidoo HQ is releasing their new dashboard (possibly as early as tomm morning!) and I’ve got some sneak peek pics for you guys to ogle over!
This thing is going to be awesome for lens management, with filters, labels, and lots of other goodies.
Without further adieu, here are some screenshots!
This is what a list of labeled lenses looks like:
Here’s what the Daily Digest front page looks like:
Here’s one from Megan at HQ on the page where you add labels (love the checkboxes!)
My thoughts -
The New labels function is going to go miles for me in turning lenses into manageable groups. Maybe a traffic, revenue, and lens count on each label and filter page as well as the current daily digest? That would really let you see how segments of your lenses are performing which would be huge.
A pending revenue total on the daily digest would be sweet.
The ‘Top lens of the day’ section on the Daily Digest could have Today’s traffic as well so you could see how well it was doing today.
the ‘Needs some love’ section could probably go without the lenses I have in WIP, but some lensmasters may want it to include WIP lenses …
The sorting function by traffic is a little buggy. (Disclaimer: HQ is still ironing out tons of UI stuff so that’s probably where this is coming from)
Being able to set labels or filters based on things like # of stars or LR or traffic would be sweet. For example, say I want to track the # of lenses I have between LR 20,000 and 50,000 on one list…
Overall, I think it is going to be a bajillion times better than the previous incarnation. I can’t wait to see what they do to the workshop!
What do you guys think?
Memorial Weekend was very ‘Dip’ like for me. I kept having things break, publishers discontinue their affiliate programs, lenses fall out of google like a rock, etc.
While frustrating, it’s certainly not the first time I’ve had a few days like that and it wont be the last. It did get me to thinking on the varying ‘barriers’ to Squidoo Lensmasters and what causes them.
So, in increasing order and thanks to the ‘The Dip
‘ , here are the Dips that I’ve seen happen in Squidoo.
Dip 1 : 0-2 lenses - Getting Started (Just Build One!)
Considering how easy it is to do nothing, it can be considered almost a herculean effort to start a new lens. Sure it’s not hard and maybe even a little fun. Sure, your first lens may stink (mine did). When I look at the 10 or so people that have been referred to Squidoo from me, I think 2 people have made a lens, and each has only one at that.
If you view Squidoo as a ‘drive-by’ link drop for your other sites, you are not going to move past this Dip.
Note: Do you use other social sites as a ‘drive-by’ link drop for your lenses? The same principle applies…
Dip 2 : 30-75 lenses (The Aversion to Scale / Quality Check)
Once you figure out how to make a few lenses you really start getting rolling, pushing out lenses. It seems like you have enough ideas for an infinite amount of lenses. Giant Squid? No Problem! I’ll be there by the end of the week. Of course, now is where quality comes into play. If you are unable to provide even a basic level of quality content on your lenses, you will have a nice dashboard full of a lot of lenses with zero traffic.
Conversely, this is the number of lenses that some of the highest quality lensmasters on Squidoo have. They produce insanely good content, beautifully formatted lenses, epic squidbooks and more. For them, this may be their sweet spot. These lensmasters may only make 2 lenses a month, but if both of those lenses are going to consistently rank on the top of the pile, that may be worth it.
Oh yea, and a lot of that second group (and most of the Lensmasters beyond this Dip) put in an insane amount of work to help other lensmasters. Why? Because they enjoy helping people.. *gasp*.
The big reason this is a dip is two-fold:
- If your lenses are junk, you have to learn to make them better before you can really move to the next level.
- Learning how to scale Squidoo is hard. Very hard. Changing your mindset from building a lens a week to one a day is too much for some people. Going from one a day to 4 a day? Ouch. It Stings and it’s a Dip to overcome.
Dip 3 : 200 - ??? Squidoo Lenses (The Technical Dip)
Is this a Dip? I’m not sure. I think there is one right around here though and I think there are a lot of lensmasters pushing against it right now. When I started Squidoo a Year Ago the very tippy top lensmasters in terms of lenses that I knew had between 300-600 lenses (JeffyV and Glen and Relache and some of you other old timers, please correct me if I’m off). Now, it doesn’t seem like there are ANY lensmasters with several thousand lenses (well, maybe there’s a spam account running around somewhere, but I doubt it).
It’s certainly not for lack of trying by lensmasters to build more lenses, and Squidoo HQ definitely wants their best lensmasters to make more lenses (duh) so what’s the problem? Why is it increasingly difficult to scale squidoo lenses at higher volumes?
Going from lens 1 - 10 was challenging. Going from lens 10-100 took marginally more time but was less technically challenging as you pretty much know the ropes. Going from lens 100-1,000 has been all but insurmountable for virtually all the Lensmasters so far…
I’ve heard some rumors that a new dashboard may be in the works, that would help. I think part of the problem is the infrastructure squidoo has started with (Although HQ has really been pushing to stay way ahead of 99.9% of their users which I soundly applaud). You have to take a whole new look at usability when you have folks that need to look at 1,000 lenses and know which ones are making money, getting traffic, ranking well, have new traffic sources, or broken links and videos when compared to someone who has 5.
The time spent actually building lenses instead of loading dashboards and workshops, copy / pasting, and other tedious time sinks will have to increase in some way.(It takes approximately 30-90 seconds to load a dashboard with 400 lenses over a cable internet connection, and longer to go to a lens workshop)
Why can’t HQ instantly let people copy modules to other lenses, edit multiple lenses at once, or give them more powerful analytical tools? Because creating tools that power users (i.e. trusted users) find useful but potentially malicious users can’t find ways to exploit is a tough cookie.
I’m not sure how to climb out of this Dip, but when I figure it out it’s going to be awesome..
By the way, if you haven’t read Seth’s book: The Dip you are probably a bit confused about what a ‘Dip’ is. Buy it. Read it.
Well, as Squidoo HQ has mentioned several times, they continue to adjust and update their templates for lenses and how users interact with them.
If you haven’t had a chance to go look at a lens in the last few days, go take a peek. It’ okay… I’ll wait.
…
Okay, so it looks a little bit different. And Squid U certainly noticed. I left my two cents on the update, but I’ll re-cap here.
Personally, I think they are pretty good.
1) I don’t like the ‘Loyalis Recommends’ in my sidebar. If you are going to have a lensroll function, I would prefer that it didn’t look like I was explicitly endorsing lenses that I’ve never seen before. Also, when you use Primary Tag Domination, it results in having your sidebar lensroll and the orange explore box with the exact same links… that’s kinda boring IMHO.
2) umm…. I see the sidebar image issues were fixed in my sleep! Nice work.
As HQ is progressing and working on their layouts and designs, I have been impressed with the way they have handled the criticism, etc. They have been exceptionally patient in explaining their motivations for changes and improvements to Squidoo and this patience is often overlooked.
I think there may be some argument to directing some of the redesign efforts to improved things like tag pages, the workshop (which is becoming a little divorced from the reality of what’s presented), as well as some re-designed ‘central navigation’ areas that make it easy to find some super cool lenses…oh and a pony for Gil..
Great work Guys, keep it up.
Thoughts or comments?
