Feedback on the AFF website & brand refresh

[ausfox]

Forced back to classic style to allow faster reading. Too much emphasis on colour rather than communication. A bit of movement and we would have the wiggles.

 

[DC3]

AFF Classic style is good.

 

[DC3]

Purple? Seriously? Of all the colours in the universe?

An almost fluorescent aubergine

 

[Cruiser Elite]

OMG - focus groups? Must have been a big night out for the 'wet behind the ears IT kids' before getting down to actually reviewing

 

[kookaburra75]

Like many others I found the typeface, size and colour too hard to read and have switched back to the Classic view. I'm not quite sure what you were trying to achieve with the changes. Change, just for changes sake is not always a good thing to do.

 

[Blackadder]

Bonza Purple lives on.
Seriously , not sure why the refresh was needed, the main difference I can see is a higher emphasis on Credit Cards and points transfers. I guess good for those that want to do that.
Additionally on the home page , it prompts you to log in (even if already logged in) , then when you click login you get hit with the screen below.

 

[Melburnian1]

When one opens the site, it looks terrible.

A pointless (apologies for the poor pun) change.

 

[AV8]

If it ain't broke, don't fix it!

 

[Mr_Orange]

Overall feeling about the main home page (which I never use) is that it looks like the new(ish) Bankwest web site and a number of other web sites whereby it has been designed by and for 5 year olds with oversized, bubbly fonts, far too much white space and no thought to useability.

The forum is still fine though .

 

[Supersonic Swinger]

In my experience, rebrands are usually done for two reasons:

1. The marketing department have run out of ideas and want to be let loose on a new big project; or
2. There's a bigger corporate objective at play for which a rebrand provides good cover for.

It could be both here, but AFF has been slowly shifting from a user generated content focus to one where the owners are trying to relentlessly monetise loyal eyeballs e.g the incessant referral links ads which you cannot disable with ad blockers, the new home page which no longer features interesting aviation news but only sign up and referral links.

I have seen these shifts happen time and again, which inevitably result in two outcomes:

1. The website becomes unusable (hello, Pointhacks)
2. As the "user generated content" becomes harder to find amongst the corporate articles / messaging / advertising, the community dribbles away and the forums die (anyone remember the old inthemix site?)

It feels like AFF is well down this path. Thankfully, sites like FlyerTalk and airliners.net still focus on member content. I hope the AFF owners realise that the only reason you can post referral links is because they are set amongst the primary reason for this site, which is user generated content by a large engaged community who can easily contribute without feeling they are constanty being sold to.

I have gone back to the old style, and hope the forums continue in their current form regardless of the Point Hacks-ification of the rest of the site.

 

[Mr_Orange]

The forum is still fine though

When I said this, I didn't realise that I was still on an old style. Having checked out the new style, I'm switching back.

The contrast is bad - why don't UI designers understand the importance of contrast - the font is bad and the letter spacing is bad.

Overall, it's bad.

Interesting to note that the responses posted by AFF to date make no comment on anything other than bugs and gloss over the actual feedback. Threads like this are designed to placate users but are essentially ignored.

 

[flyguy77]

In my experience, rebrands are usually done for two reasons:

1. The marketing department have run out of ideas and want to be let loose on a new big project; or
2. There's a bigger corporate objective at play for which a rebrand provides good cover for.

It could be both here, but AFF has been slowly shifting from a user generated content focus to one where the owners are trying to relentlessly monetise loyal eyeballs e.g the incessant referral links ads which you cannot disable with ad blockers, the new home page which no longer features interesting aviation news but only sign up and referral links.

Bingo to #2

I wonder how the AFF staff truly feels about this 're-brand'. Anyone with half-a-brain can see exactly what is happening here. The changes are terrible and 95% of the replies in this thread back that up.

Greedy owners that already make a fortune from pay.com.au and other referrals should just leave AFF as is. Users don't want or need another Point Hacks trying to extract every dollar possible.

Keep it unique & people will support.

 

[alexczarn]

Logo cool, font colour not.

My take.

 

[Denali]

OMG - focus groups? Must have been a big night out for the 'wet behind the ears IT kids' before getting down to actually reviewing

Kind of how I do my projects and eventually I yell this at the IT geeks and thats what they do to make the loud Australian woman stop bothering them

 

[Human]

Jumping in late after using this new site for a few days. I've read many of the above comments but not every comment on all 9 (so far) pages so forgive me if I'm repeating what others have said.

To me it's a negative and retrograde step to have to click on "Latest News" to find the latest articles, rather than having them somewhere on the homepage. Even Point Hacks has kept its articles on the homepage if you scroll down.

My prediction is that you'll put the latest article/s back on the homepage sooner rather than later. Apart from that the other changes are innocuous.

 

[Supersonic Swinger]

Bingo to #2

I wonder how the AFF staff truly feels about this 're-brand'. Anyone with half-a-brain can see exactly what is happening here. The changes are terrible and 95% of the replies in this thread back that up.

Greedy owners that already make a fortune from pay.com.au and other referrals should just leave AFF as is. Users don't want or need another Point Hacks trying to extract every dollar possible.

Keep it unique & people will support.

My spidey senses tell me that the owners of this site are doing everything they can to push up the the revenue and other user metrics short term so that they can flog the whole thing off to someone like Red Ventures. They own sites like Cnet and The Points Guy where they have driven a decline in editorial content and increased reviews and sponsored content to benefit advertising partners.

 

[DejaBrew]

Another colour/contrast issue -:

When looking at the reactions on a given post, the cross icon to close the pop-up is almost impossible to spot…



Still can’t spot it? Allow me to zoom and highlight…

 

[MEL_Traveller]

In my experience, rebrands are usually done for two reasons:

1. The marketing department have run out of ideas and want to be let loose on a new big project; or
2. There's a bigger corporate objective at play for which a rebrand provides good cover for.

It could be both here, but AFF has been slowly shifting from a user generated content focus to one where the owners are trying to relentlessly monetise loyal eyeballs e.g the incessant referral links ads which you cannot disable with ad blockers, the new home page which no longer features interesting aviation news but only sign up and referral links.

I have seen these shifts happen time and again, which inevitably result in two outcomes:

1. The website becomes unusable (hello, Pointhacks)
2. As the "user generated content" becomes harder to find amongst the corporate articles / messaging / advertising, the community dribbles away and the forums die (anyone remember the old inthemix site?)

It feels like AFF is well down this path. Thankfully, sites like FlyerTalk and airliners.net still focus on member content. I hope the AFF owners realise that the only reason you can post referral links is because they are set amongst the primary reason for this site, which is user generated content by a large engaged community who can easily contribute without feeling they are constanty being sold to.

I have gone back to the old style, and hope the forums continue in their current form regardless of the Point Hacks-ification of the rest of the site.

Wasn’t there a thread recently, started by admin, asking why all the ‘lurkers’ didn’t join/become a member?

Maybe there’s a whole lot more people who don’t post, aren’t interested in posting, and just come to get the credit card bonuses and tips on how to book?

 

[DejaBrew]

Wasn’t there a thread recently, started by admin, asking why all the ‘lurkers’ didn’t join/become a member?

Maybe there’s a whole lot more people who don’t post, aren’t interested in posting, and just come to get the credit card bonuses and tips on how to book?

Funnily enough, this thread seems to have brought a bunch of lurkers out of the woodwork.

(For the avoidance of confusion, that’s an observation rather than criticism)

 

[Supersonic Swinger]

Wasn’t there a thread recently, started by admin, asking why all the ‘lurkers’ didn’t join/become a member?

Maybe there’s a whole lot more people who don’t post, aren’t interested in posting, and just come to get the credit card bonuses and tips on how to book?

You may be right. And if that works for their business, good luck to them. Given the ownership of the site, they are probably crawling over user activity for any insights to maximise their revenue as hard as Qantas Loyalty. Any changes to the site are going to be driven by that, especially given that since December 2022, the site has to carry this advice: Credit Guide – Point Hacks Australia Pty Ltd - Australian Frequent Flyer

For those who have been using the site for many years as it was originally established, the Points-Hackification is sad but probably inevitable.