SB5 User experience compared to SB4.5

[StefaanT]

Hi,

Did anyone test SB5 against SB4.5 with endusers? Because I suspected SB5 was no improvement for the non-tech enduser I did test with 5 people who did not know SB5 or SB4.5 and the result was as I predicted: SB4.5 is intuitive to use and SB5 was a disaster for them.

SB5 has some technical features that look cool to us, technical people, but that is not what a sitebuilder should be about. It should be easy to understand and intuitive to use. SB4.5 is way better on both points.

 

[Scy]

I have to disagree. IMHO Sitebuilder 4.5 was horrible, clumsy, heavy and very complicated with full-screen menus and many phased site creating process.

SB 5 is a great improvement over that being simpler (one phase site creation process by selecting site template from 65 pre-created ones) and being generally much lighter, simpler, and working more intuitive way. Especially SB5.1 fixes a lot of lacking features.

This is just my opinion.

 

[Alejandrod]

Hi, I'm Spanish and i don't speak English well, sorry
I really like SB 5, but in SB 4 you have moor modules, and i don't found in SB5, someone can help me?
I hope the new SB5 maintain some of this modules

Shop
Image Gallery
Blog
Download Documents

 

[custer]

Hi Alejandrod,

E-shop and Image Gallery are available in SiteBuilder 10.3.

Blog and document download/management are top-priority features for us and will be available in the upcoming releases.

 

[custer]

Hi StefaanT,


We did in-house usability testing for SiteBuilder 5.x / 10.x and fixed a lot of found issues. However, we understand that our product and its usability can be improved further, and we'll be focusing on this as soon as we finish adding mission-critical features like Blog.

As a sidenote, the problem is that usability testing needs to be done very carefully, and it can be a double-edged sword. Just an example: SB 4.5 might probably be easier to start working with for people who don't know what they want, but it's harder to manage once you understand your needs. SB 10.x, on the other hand, might be a bit harder to start working with for a clueless user after you create your website, because you have more choice with no hints of what to do next (we'll be addressing this in our next releases), but is much easier to manage your website once you understand how it works and what you need, and the feeling that you can actually change everything you see is very liberating after the restrictions of SB 4.5. In other words, SB 10.x has better "long-term", "sustained" usability from our POV.

Anyway, if you can tell us about any particular, specific usability problems you've encountered, we'll take a look into it. Thanks!