Interface Has Room For Improvement

Hi there,

What do you mean by spammy upgrade menus/overlays?

There is nothing spammy on my plugin. The only time there is an overlay is when you specifically roll over an option and even then this doesn’t pop up or interfere with what you are doing or the user journey.

I find this review incredibly harsh seeing as you are given over 150 options, 24 hour, 7 day a week support for free and with no obligation to upgrade.

I would love to hear your views on how to make it less spammy because as at the moment there is no spam at all.

I have also just noticed that 9/10 of your reviews are for 1 star. Would it not be nice to provide some positive feedback to help developers improve their products instead? Or ask questions in support first to see if things can be improved for you?

Especially seeing as everything provided on WordPress is given to you for free, I would consider this a lot more fair. I can’t speak on behalf of all developers but I have provided at least an hour a day, almost every day for the past 4 years for free to anyone that asks it.

Awaiting your reply.

Peter

Pretty self-explanatory… the vast majority of the interface is cluttered with pro/overlay spam. No one is denying you didn’t do a lot of work, but maybe instead of making the interface so dense in the lite/trial version, a clean approach would make it much easier to properly evaluate the core functions.

Hey there,

Can you provide me examples of these so I can improve?

There are very discreet Pro or Semi Pro labels next to those options with an overlay only when the mouse is hovered over these.

This is the opposite of spammy in my mind, spammy is when pop ups appear when you are trying to do something and interrupt your flow.

How are you to know what other options are available if they are not in the same interface? It also means a seamless migration to the Pro version if the interface is kept the same across both versions.

Maybe I could split it into Free and Pro sections, how would you feel about that?

The problem with that is you would end up with disjointed option blocks as a lot of the related functionality would be separated leading to a disjointed interface.

Please do provide me with solutions or suggestions and I will happily implement them for you rather than just a 1 star review with a comment of “too spammy” which doesn’t really help anyone.

Peter

I understand you want to showcase the advantages of upgrading to pro, and a frequent supporter of paid themes and plugins when warranted, I have no objections to the existence of a pro/paid version of most WordPress products. I guess the determination is which experience is worse… Disjointed showcasing of pro features in free version, or cluttered interface in free version. Hope that is helpful.

Hey there,

That is very helpful and it is something I will give even more thought too.

I don’t want you to think that I don’t care about my customers free or paid as I am a massive believer in Open Source software and giving as much as possible away for free but at the same time I do need to put food on the table at the end of the day so it’s about finding the right balance.

I also want you to know that I have spent many hours, days, months agonizing about how to showcase the Pro features without it being forced upon users or becoming spammy whilst at the same time having an intuitive interface.

Ok, how about this for a compromise. What if I add a checkbox to the top of the admin page that says something like “Hide Pro options” which will then ensure none of these options show in the interface and therefore do not clog it up anymore?

That actually sounds like not a bad idea but would be very interested in your thoughts on that as an idea?

I would like to do all I can to change your 1 star review to a 5 star review, to improve the product and make happy customers along the way (Free and Pro).

Please let me know your thoughts.

Peter

That sounds like an excellent compromise. Please let me know when your changes are ready for review and I’ll be happy to place the plugin on a test site. Have a good weekend.

Hey there,

I decided to stay up late and get a beta prototype for you to check out if you get a chance over the weekend or if not, next week.

It includes a checkbox as proposed earlier under the filter section saying “Hide Pro options” which you can toggle on/off dynamically and which will be saved once you hit “Update Options”.

You can find it on the development branch of this plugin repository on the below URL:

https://downloads.www.ads-software.com/plugin/responsive-menu.zip

Please let me know if this is what you had in mind and if it helps solve the issue.

Thanks again for the suggestion, I must sleep now!

Have a great weekend

Peter

Received. I may be having some issues with previous configuration. Can you advise how to fully remove previous configuration so I can cleanly install your dev version, WordPress’s de-activate and delete doesn’t seem to be catching everything. Thanks.

Also, noticing after the first multi-level menu, layout is breaking. Does the Pro version support multiple nested menus or is this a theme conflict?

https://alteraawakens.com/

Hey there,

Under the Import/Export tab there is a Reset Options button but you shouldn’t need that for testing the new feature.

Can you let me know what issues you are having with the previous configuration?

Also, can you explain what you mean by multi level nesting? That sounds like a normal feature but it looks like a plugin or your theme is overwriting the way my plugin is laying out the menu items (it is breaking them out of the container element) so they aren’t being styled correctly.

Did you get to try out the Hide Pro Options toggle button yet?

Please advise

Peter

I could not initially seem to get some setting changes to show properly (font size, spacing), but that is all good with the reset.

Mult-leveling nesting = all menu items with sub-menus after the first do not show correctly. Perhaps a theme conflict, I don’t have any other menu plugins on this site.

The ability to toggle pro options appears to work splendidly and really help to explore the free features (and incidentally helps in the attempt to debug settings issues without as much hunting as before).

Interestingly, when activated the Responsive Menu plugin also injects an unformatted list of menu items at the bottom of every page.

Hey there,

That definetely shouldn’t be happening, it sounds like there is potentially a conflict with your theme or another plugin installed.

Can we take this over to email so we can debug this and find the cause?

If so, could you email me at [email protected] and we can take it from there.

Please let me know

Peter