Minor improvements on the UI and minor bug
complete
contact@pausanchez.com
First time user from today. Really nice project. I have some feedback. Minor things, but I think would make the website slightly more appealing. You won't even need to spend more than 15 min to address several of these things if you feel they make sense.
I know what I'm about to share is kind of personal, though, but anyway I thought it might be interesting to share anyway. Take my feedback with a grain of salt. Feel free to disregard if you don't find it useful anyway.
Footer bg color
The bg color of the footer makes me think something is disabled. Every time I switch there (in the last couple of hours), I cannot "unsee it", is just like if there was a popup and the page was disabled. I know is a silly thing, but somehow, since I joined today I kind of feel that way because of the bg color of the footer (and body).
Using "#eee" instead of "#b1aaa0" would make it feel better. The bg color on "Documentation" and "Support" buttons might be too prominent, I would change to #ddd or other gray variant or remove them altogether.
Footer eating too much space
If you don't have many alerts, footer is eating a lot of space that would be better off empty in white. Footer could still be visible. I know this would require come CSS trickery, so if bg is changed it might not be as annoying (to me, at least; again, this is personal so it might just be me).
Buy Credits "hard" to find
I think it will also be interesting to add a "Buy Credits" or similar button at the top of the page, since it will be a 1-click thing for people to add more credit. Haven't been long enough to know if you send emails after some sort of threshold is crossed (e.g less than 10k credits, or things like you'll run out of credits in less than 2 weeks, you can buy more credit anytime...). I guess that's there already, but I still think a button like that is good to be present and easy to find in 1 click.
I mean, you can find it in 2 clicks, but 1 click is better for what gives you money :)
Minor bug on header's time remaining
If you update any of the monitors check (e.g from 10 min to 30 seconds), the computed time at the top does not get updated immediately, you need to refresh the page.
Send Test Notification
I had my first time user experience today. I missed to "Send Test Notification" functionality (that uptimerobot has) in order to assess I could somehow trust this page and that notifications were getting through on what I configured.
I ended up forcing my website to fail just to see that notifications were working, but it took more work on my end. It might be handy to have this when somebody just sets up the account the first time, or when it creates a new alert. Just a thought.
Other than those details, really cool project. Really well executed.
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Adrien Rey-Jarthon
complete
I've just added the new link for sending tests and buying credits following your suggestions.
contact@pausanchez.com
Cool! I think people newly joining will find it easier to send a test notification.
Regarding the add more credits, your design is clean and does not add more clutter, but is still somewhat hidden.
I still think it might be better to make it more visible once the user is running out of credits (again, maybe it's already there).
Another way of showing it somewhat in a less cluttered way than I proposed before would be as I show below. Nonetheless these are just ideas, the plus sign is already signaling adding more :)
By the way, I'm just sharing because I find fun and interesting learning experience discussing these tradeoffs.
Adrien Rey-Jarthon
Thanks for this detailed feedback Pau !
You are correct that some of this might be personal but still I agree it's a good idea to share it with me because even if I don't act on some of those now it may help future decisions, or it may confirm doubts.
Let me bring a couple answers already:
Buy Credits "hard" to find
As you guessed there are reminder emails of course (10 days & 2 days before running out + when you run out and optionally an SMS reminder a couple days later).
Also the top banner where you suggested to place the button: it's actually there sometimes :) but only when you're running out of credits, in this position there can also be other buttons depending on context (for example when you have ssl certificates about to expire soon, there's a button to filter them only). So I don't really want to make it too prominent when it's not needed because I don't want to draw my users attention when it's not necessary (unlike many websites, I do respect my users xD). Maybe I should add a small "buy" link near the credits/time remaining instead.
Minor bug on header's time remaining
Indeed that could be considered a "known corner cut" because I didn't deem important enough to update this though javascript when updating checks in place. The UI is not an SPA, I use as little javascript as required to make it nice so there's only a few actions that won't reload the page. If I end up making the front-end more real-time at some point, I'll probably address this too.
Send Test Notification
I guess it's not visible enough then ^^ but we do have that feature too. You can find the link in your settings page where you configure the alert recipients. The direct link to the test page is: https://updown.io/recipients/test. Maybe I should make this one a big button instead :)
contact@pausanchez.com
Thanks for the detalied reply.
Buy Credits
This was my "product-oriented self" speaking, hehe. If alerts are there & Buy is visible after you are running out of credit, then perfect. There are pros and cons of having it, indeed.
Header
I imagined it works like you described. I mentioned because I saw it was updated when a new alert is added, but not when it was edited. Minor thing anyway, but it is good to see nonetheless. I think you paid a lot of attention to detail and that's also why I mentioned.
Send Test Notification
Actually I did not notice. I've just seen. However I must say is not present where I was expecting. Settings page condenses a lot of info, and probably that's why I skimmed through it and did not see it. It has pros/cons, but overall is simple, and that's also something I like about your web.
Adding a screenshot to show where I was looking for this. I was clicking Edit, and in the Notifications dropdown I expected to see some sort of "Send test notification" there. That was my instinct as a user, to find it close to where notifications are in the main dashboard. Again, probably other users find it quickly, but this one I somehow find it important for your first-time user experience, because as a user that just joins your site I want to know I can trust your site and I can trust notifications will arrive, that's kind of why instinctively I was searching to send a test notification right after I setup my site.
Maybe the message can be changed as "Manage and _test_ notifications in _settings_" or similar, with 2 links, but that's just up to you :)
Adrien Rey-Jarthon
contact@pausanchez.com That is a good suggestion as well. I'll add a link to the test page from here. Thanks!