Thunderbirds Are Go
posted October 15th 2009Well folks, after the last few weeks of promising an update the day is finally upon us. Today sees a pretty significant update to Five Second Test both in terms of functionality and aesthetics. While there is a great deal of new stuff going on under the hood (almost a month’s worth of full-time work) I’ll go over some of the more exciting features that will benefit our users.
First and foremost, the site has undergone as significant visual overhaul. What started out as a redesign of the manage page to make it more useful turned into a site wide redesign. We have tried really hard to try and make creating and doing tests more intuitive and effortless than before. Most noticeably the test manage page now offers a great deal more in terms of actually managing tests, offering the ability to share your test links, delete tests and even toggling whether it’s public or private after you have created it.
The biggest new addition is the introduction of premium test upgrades. Test creators are now able to upgrade a test with purchasable tokens to increase the rate and quantity of responses from random testers. We know give a sumary of site wide test stats for the week right on the manage page. This allows people to see at a glance how many responses they can expect to get based on site activity and how quickly they will be getting them. We wanted to ensure that while creating and running tests always remains free, people who are willing to support us get that something extra.
Additionally the test results page now has an extra little bonus. When a registered Five Second Test member helps you out by doing your test, you will be able to return the favour and do one of their tests by clicking on their name. This is the first step towards what we’re calling our karma system where users will be able to reward each other when they do each other’s tests. Be sure to watch this space as there is still more to come.
So far I’ve only mentioned a few of the new and exciting additions to the site but I don’t want to spoil the fun by going over every detail. Instead we encourage you to explore and rediscover the site on your own. As always we appreciate your feedback and look forward to hearing what you have to say.
Happy testing!
fivesecondtest.com update coming soon…very soon!
posted October 13th 2009We’ve been working hard on the latest update to fivesecondtest.com. We’ve made a lot of changes, many of which won’t be visible in the update, but there are some fairly notable changes that WILL be visible in the next few days.
The first major change is the addition of Premium tests. Yes, we all knew it was coming eventually!
The first thing I have to mention is that our free tests will remain free in exactly the same state that they are now, and will forever remain free! Premium tests, however, give you three benefits (with more to come!).
1. You will receive double the number of responses given to free tests.
2. You will receive your results much quicker than free tests.
3. You get to feel good about supporting fivesecondtest.com!
One thing, that hasn’t been terribly clear in the past is that tests don’t keep getting results forever. Whilst it may seem a little unfair, currently most tests will receive about 12 results. We don’t decide this, it is a factor of how many tests are created versus how many responses are given. At the moment, that ratio is 12 to 1. That means for every test that is created today, 12 tests are viewed. The upshot of this is that we spread the love evenly, ensuring that all users get roughly the same number of results.
For some people, 12 results isn’t enough, whilst for others 12 is plenty. So we’re giving you the choice. Upgrade if you wan’t, but don’t feel obligated! Keep in mind this also about the speed in which you get your results, not just the quanitity!
The astute among you may realise that if premium test are getting MORE results, then everyone else must be getting less! You’d be correct. Partially. Another thing we’re trying to do in this release, and more so in the future, is promoting the idea of Karma. We’re letting you see who is doing your test, to give you an opportunity to do theirs in return. At the moment this is purely to help you help those that helped you. In the future, their will be benefits to your kindness…and yes we ARE watching who is being naughty and nice.
Another feature we’re adding is the non-repetition of tests. Once you’ve done a test, you should never see it again. If you do, one of two things has happened… someone has created multiple tests that LOOK the same, or my code is broken…in which case, let me know!!
We’ve now added a really nice manage page. This is a central location for managing your tests. Here you can enable, disable, upgrade, share and delete all your tests. In the future we’ll be adding more features here, for example, the ability to get results in your inbox, or subscribe to an RSS feed for a test’s results.
We haven’t changed the actual test process too much, although we’ve made it a little quicker for people who’ve seen the instructions before, you won’t have to sit through them again. The upload process has been revamped to clean up our front page, and we’ve changed how we show site activity on the front page. There have been a lot of other little changes here and there, and a lot of changes in the background that will enable us to release some much requested features in the near future.
Anyway… this is just a heads up! Matt will be giving another update when we go live, which should be in the next few days!
Cheers and thanks for your awesome support to date!
Angry Monkeys
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