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New zoom layout has destroyed measures!


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Just to add my observations, my zooms have all but vanished - just a couple in the last two months or so. Now views are on a dramatic decline and are around 25 per cent of what I would normally expect. Not good.

 

Jim. :(

Ditto.

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Views and zooms both down for me since the change.  The former is actually the most worrying as it may mean buyers are going elsewhere.  I can't believe Alamy has made this change as it is very inconvenient all round.

 

Pearl

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The change was probably made for Google.

 

When I used Alamy for searches, I would swipe the pop-up windows to my right hand monitor and view them side by side. With a little care I could have 12 images open as a bigger lightbox. The only thing missing was an instruction how to (or better a button to) allow pop-ups for Alamy.

That may even have been there of course, I am not a client.

Now there is no possibility any more to easily view images side by side.

 

II wish there was a lightbox column or bar to the right side of the window. Where a client could swipe an image to. It would work on a phone too.

Swiping to the right of course, meaning yes; keep. To the left means no.

Such a lightbox would fill the screen on demand and show images side by side or an image full screen or anything in between. Hovering over an image would reveal the caption, description and the photographer with a link to more by this photographer.

There would be a button buy everything in my lightbox now. And an automatic counter that would calculate a discount for larger quantities.

 

Ah such dreams.

 

Yes almost no zooms this week, but views seem to be normal or only slightly down.

 

wim

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The change was probably made for Google.

 

When I used Alamy for searches, I would swipe the pop-up windows to my right hand monitor and view them side by side. With a little care I could have 12 images open as a bigger lightbox. The only thing missing was an instruction how to (or better a button to) allow pop-ups for Alamy.

That may even have been there of course, I am not a client.

Now there is no possibility any more to easily view images side by side.

 

II wish there was a lightbox column or bar to the right side of the window. Where a client could swipe an image to. It would work on a phone too.

Swiping to the right of course, meaning yes; keep. To the left means no.

Such a lightbox would fill the screen on demand and show images side by side or an image full screen or anything in between. Hovering over an image would reveal the caption, description and the photographer with a link to more by this photographer.

There would be a button buy everything in my lightbox now. And an automatic counter that would calculate a discount for larger quantities.

 

Ah such dreams.

 

Yes almost no zooms this week, but views seem to be normal or only slightly down.

 

wim

If the change was made for Google and it ends up alienating existing customers, it will be a net negative.

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Views and zooms both down for me since the change.  The former is actually the most worrying as it may mean buyers are going elsewhere.  I can't believe Alamy has made this change as it is very inconvenient all round.

 

Pearl

 

 

Totally agree, Pearl. If there's a change in the number of zooms then it will affect all contributors equally - although with fewer zooms, sales will probably become even more important for ranking than previously (meaning lower ranked contributors will have a harder time climbing the greasy pole!). The more worrying aspect is the reduction in searches and views, which points to a more malign problem.

 

Wim's point about Google makes sense but, as I recall, individual images were coming up in Google searches even before the new layout?

 

Ian D

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Not sure if I have noticed a reduction in views - maybe too early to tell; but certainly zooms down on average.

 

Would be nice to hear from Alamy (Please)

 

Kumar

 

 

Kumar, I think it can be quite difficult to tell from one's own figures, as there's obviously more daily variation in views on a small sample. That's why I used the All of Alamy figures in my analysis which, if accurate, shows a very substantial drop.

 

Ian D

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The change was probably made for Google.

 

When I used Alamy for searches, I would swipe the pop-up windows to my right hand monitor and view them side by side. With a little care I could have 12 images open as a bigger lightbox. The only thing missing was an instruction how to (or better a button to) allow pop-ups for Alamy.

That may even have been there of course, I am not a client.

Now there is no possibility any more to easily view images side by side.

 

II wish there was a lightbox column or bar to the right side of the window. Where a client could swipe an image to. It would work on a phone too.

Swiping to the right of course, meaning yes; keep. To the left means no.

Such a lightbox would fill the screen on demand and show images side by side or an image full screen or anything in between. Hovering over an image would reveal the caption, description and the photographer with a link to more by this photographer.

There would be a button buy everything in my lightbox now. And an automatic counter that would calculate a discount for larger quantities.

 

Ah such dreams.

 

Yes almost no zooms this week, but views seem to be normal or only slightly down.

 

wim

 

The posts that people have made in the Alamy section of the forum have been answered. Perhaps a good place to put suggestions...

 

Paulette

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We've made changes to the comp based on, how can we put this, ABSOLUTELY LOADS of testing and performance analysis.

 

We use both internal and external testing resources and monitor a huge amount of data. We know what users click on, what they ignore and if anything confuses them. We can't list everything we do to inform our decisions because there is simply far too much of it.

 

Any changes on the site are made based on solid evidence that it will have a positive effect on sales.

 

If there was ever a change we made that had a negative effect we would be aware very quickly and we would make the changes to fix that very quickly.

 

Please trust us to do what is best for your images in this very competitive market. 

 

Alamy

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Thank you Alamy!

 

Extensive testing is expected and the norm of course. However it is easy to overlook something in the course of software development. Or even monitoring.

Clients may use a site totally different from the intentions of the developer.

They may put up with slight inconveniences because the quality of what's on offer; because it's cheap, or just out of habit. It's always possible that there's a tipping point change.

- Unless you're Amazon.

Clients very seldom do comparative usability tests with competitor sites.

Are you a customer or a contributor with your main competitors?

(please don't answer, at least not in public ;-)

 

Contributors see or monitor just a tiny fraction of management data, which is exactly why signals may be useful.

 

wim

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I have discovered something else that is affecting our views. I wanted to be sure the caption was still searchable so I tested it with my bhz image. I put bhz only in the Caption and it was searchable and showed up 8 pages down from when bhz was only in the Essential field. That was about what I expected but I also tested Comprehensive and Main. Each time was almost the same. All of them 8 pages down and only a change in the position on the page. That is not what used to happen. I don't remember the exact figures but I tested years ago and there was a definite difference between Caption, Comprehensive and Main. Now they are more or less the same and ALL are significantly less important than Essential. Some images probably are almost completely described in Essential but I use a whole lot of words for animals and their behavior. I can't think they really want what is happening now. I certainly don't.

 

Paulette

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I have discovered something else that is affecting our views. I wanted to be sure the caption was still searchable so I tested it with my bhz image. I put bhz only in the Caption and it was searchable and showed up 8 pages down from when bhz was only in the Essential field. That was about what I expected but I also tested Comprehensive and Main. Each time was almost the same. All of them 8 pages down and only a change in the position on the page. That is not what used to happen. I don't remember the exact figures but I tested years ago and there was a definite difference between Caption, Comprehensive and Main. Now they are more or less the same and ALL are significantly less important than Essential. Some images probably are almost completely described in Essential but I use a whole lot of words for animals and their behavior. I can't think they really want what is happening now. I certainly don't.

 

Paulette

 

If true, Paulette, that could well affect an individual contributor's number of views - however it shouldn't have any effect on the total number of views in All of Alamy.

 

Ian D

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Yes, and I'm sure it affects me more than the folks that have heeded Alamy's advice to only use a few words. I check to see what the "Big Guys" do with their wildlife keywording and they do lots and lots. I am fortunate in not needing to make a living from this. I just need to keep things in perspective and continue to have FUN with my amazing trips.

 

Paulette

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Thank you Alamy!

 

Extensive testing is expected and the norm of course. However it is easy to overlook something in the course of software development. Or even monitoring.

Given the mistakes in the handling of quotation marks in contributor keywords (splitting into phrases at the wrong positions) on the new pages demonstrates your point admirably.

 

I've had no zooms since the changes, but that could be just bad luck!  :(

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Thank you Alamy!

 

Extensive testing is expected and the norm of course. However it is easy to overlook something in the course of software development. Or even monitoring.

Given the mistakes in the handling of quotation marks in contributor keywords (splitting into phrases at the wrong positions) on the new pages demonstrates your point admirably.

 

I've had no zooms since the changes, but that could be just bad luck!  :(

 

 

Yeah, I must be having the same bad luck. As you say, it wouldn't be the first time their Extensive Data has let them down. I'm on the same number of zooms per month when I had 1500 images.... zooms seem to be disappearing. There are some prominent contributors saying the same thing here so surely Alamy must look into this, something isn't right somewhere. Whether it is measures reporting or, customers walking but something has changed.

 

I wonder if they used Champion Challenger analysis when implementing these changes and compared the results against a control group. Standard practice when altering scorecards or algorithms to see how small changes alter the results. A "Deepdive" or "Vertical Slice" analysis is also a good way to make sure the changes you make only affect the parts you want them to effect. We used to do this all the time when I worked in Banking.... they wouldn't sanction a change without it.

 

Hopefully though, they didn't just apply the wet finger tip in the air to determine which way the wind was coming from  :P

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We've made a lot of changes recently and we're looking at the effect on activity etc but the good news is the activity that directly correlates with sales, e.g downloads and purchases, are up.  

 

So, no need to panic but we are doing further investigations. 

 

Alamy

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