I've found that the supporter upgrades page violates a lot of design principles and is overly confusing. I feel that this may be contributing to a lower conversion rate, and ultimately less income for the empire. Please take a look at the page and consider the following principles: 1) Number of unique features and content areas on each page should be limited to reduce clutter and make it clear where the visitor should go. If there are more than 3 individual main features on a page, they should be organized into sub-pages or a decision tree of some kind. 2) Benefits to end users should be listed before costs in all cases. Visitors are more concerned with what they get out of something. In sales, one always builds value before attempting to make the sale. If you start with a price, you may lose the reader before you get to mention the benefits. 3) Information should be presented in the order visitors need it. Legal and technical information such as who processes payments, Starlis, etc... will not be needed until after the visitor has decided they are interested in making the purchase. It doesn't make sense to open with it. 4) Play with the layout and work on the contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity of elements to make something that looks more visually appealing. Attempt to align different parts of the page, and ensure that elements related are near each other. Hopefully based on these principles that page can be improved and more revenue will be generated.
Appreciate the feedback, but we do have to remember our audience is mostly teenagers, who view web design very differently. I feel as the new supporter page has had a major improvement over the original, but of course could use more work. Problem is managing it is a pain with xenforo templates, I need to move it to plain html/php code so I can work on it locally with a real editor then push up changes. Not a good time for improving this page anytime soon though. Major project at work is going to have me working on day job stuff at home a bit until the project is done, and also the fact its tax time... Got to immediately start working on that. Some responses to points 1) dynamic page content could work based on workflow, but that relies on me improving how that page is rendered and also relies on me knocking out the major things im working on before I can get to small improvements like that. 2) What are you seeing? The cost is listed at the bottom of the chart, not the top. Thats already done... Unless your saying dont list a price until they click the button entirely. Maybe.. 3) The next page is Paypal, cant control that legal stuff on that page, and that stuff is required by Mojang/our own legal needs. 4) Sure it could be improved, just no time currently as said above.
So it sounds like you agree with most of it. The point with #2 is your focus on what you want first. You open with paragraphs about who you are and how much your server bills are. Perhaps someone can connect the dots that it's a benefit to the visitor in having EMC remain online, though really there's 4 or 5 sentences all about that, when the basic benefit and how it relates to the user could be communicated in a fraction of a sentence. There are definitely a lot of core users who really care about EMC and would be motivated to support you for the heck of supporting you, though you have to remember to the average Joe you're just another server and they're going to care about themselves first and foremost. I don't know about dynamic content and things like that. It sounds like you're making the solution more complicated than it needs to be. All you need is 3-4 pages. One for supporter/memberships. One for buying rupees. One for other perks that you can buy. And maybe a separate one that can be a main menu or have additional information. Split the information to these pages in a logical manner, move information about your company and disclaimers to the bottom or to another page, and add a menu to navigate between them.
That page is long due for an upgrade and we have discussed changes needed, but as Aikar said ^ not at this time.
