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September 17, 2008 | mtg, humor
New Website Design a 'Great Success'
by xepel
The Customer Satisfaction Division of the Web Development group at Wizards of the Coast has released their latest poll on the reactions to the new website design. A whopping 100% of all visitors to the site concluded that it was easily navigable and not confusing at all.
Development Team Leader Samantha Higgens was interviewed on the thought processes that went into creating such a well-crafted website. "We first concerned ourselves with the front page. Marketing tells us that first impressions are extremely important, so we wanted to make sure people's first thought upon encountering Magic� was something on the order of 'Those are some pretty amazing balls it has there.'" Spinning colored balls really represent what Magic� is all about. We had some conflicts in-group about the download time of the opening page - it takes about three hours for people on dialup just to hear the low moaning in the background! Jeff wisely pointed out that if you could afford Magic�, you could afford some broadband, so we threw as much pointless but pretty Flash there as possible."
"From there on, we had to work on how people would then get to the relevant pages on our website. Research tells us that a lot of Magic� players like puzzles, so we tried to make things as tricky as possible. You can't even get to the 'real' main page until you find out where the small, out-of-sight button is! From there, we ambush you with about twenty different categories, many of which are fairly ambiguous and possibly overlapping. Any important content, such as finding recent banned and restricted lists, are at least ten clicks in. All this is carefully crafted to give the visitor a feeling of adventure as they journey through the many lands of Magic�."
"We are also very interested in 'acquisition' - that's getting new players/cash sources to those who don't know Marketing-speak - so we made sure to put the information on the basics of the game behind a few levels of menus, as opposed to on the front page where it might make sense."
"As some of these decisions are somewhat counterintuitive, we commissioned a poll to see if the site was easily navigable. We put the poll on display in what you might call the cellar of the site, on the bottom of an encrypted page stuck behind a link saying "Beware of the Leopard." If people could figure that out, they could figure out anything!"
Ms. Higgens then fainted with joy over the success of her product.
Long-time Magic the Gathering� fan and general computer nerd Eugene Mills added his view on the new site. "I can't even get past the balls. What the hell is this anyway, a videogame?"
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