Suggested improvements: icon.foundation is below industry standard and requires improvement

[Ali]

To not start on a negative note, there have been positive changes to the website and I understand that it is a work in progress.
However, the site seems to be designed without research on the crypto industry standards, and many people have pointed this out, but it feels like it falls on deaf ears.

Before I start, it would be positive to look through content and information-rich sites: https://www.avax.network/ and https://solana.com/

The starting point would be the ICON graphics, which do not suit a developer/tech site, but more of a social media site.

Compare the three first reading points of each site.

Already you can compare, ICONs site is propagating something abstract ‘unlock value’?? whereas others are promoting how scalable/fast/environmentally &developer friendly their blockchain is.

My proposed temporary change:

Secondly, moving on to

I understand the play on words, ‘network of all networks’ but to me it doesn’t resonate the power of BTP.
Suggested example

Again lack of industry standard ‘buzzwords’ such as DeFi

Some other non-priority suggestions:

Some sections that I would like for ICON website to adopt - comments are in red:

An infographic chart either comparing icon 2.0 or BTP to competition:

Similar concept for ICE showcasing eWASM and Solidity.

From the start a welcome to the community

I would just like to end this, there has been a positive change, but there is still a huge gap for improvement to resonate with the current climate for a modern blockchain website.
I have also given simple proposed changes that can be done for the current site without much work - only editing text and additional changes that can be worked on for a far better overall website.

[maxicongrowth]

Well thought out, constructive criticism. I think the Foundation should definitely adopt these changes. Similarly, adding quick facts about the rewritten ICON 2.0 and BTP specs can show off the devs hard work.

Example from Solana website:

[DaanBlue]

Yeah changing the wording would be a quick and easy fix. I agree the wording that you propose fits ICON and blockchain better.

I’m liking myself the avalanche website a lot, it triggers to start building and points you quickly in the right direction.

[hyper_connect]

This is excellent feedback Ali.

I’d personally like to see 2 distinct websites. One for the Foundation that talks about all of their development work, the team, the mission, careers and latest news and one for the ICON network itself. A structure akin to:

• cardano foundation + cardano
• solana foundation + solana
• avalabs + avax network

For ICON this could be icon.foundation and icon.network or simply icon.com for example. These last 2 domains are not currently available so would need to be bought.

For the network website, I agree that a “Build Now” and a “Read Documentation” button should be right at the top. ICON has an excellent platform to build on. It needs to showcase this to developers.

The CPS should also be there, highlighting in bold the amount of available funding per month for developers to build dApps on ICON.

The website needs clear and bold wording pointing you straight to the blockchain metrics, smart contract capability, speed and interoperability.

Agree also on changing the abstract and vague wording of “unlocking value” to more pertinent words such as “invest”, “earn”, “staking” and “DeFi”.

Who would be in charge of funding such a website? The Foundation? The CPS? What about working with the team that designed this website? https://iconrepublic.org/

[Ali]

People in discord have expressed that the graphics at the start of the site, crashes their web browser, this is not great at all and needs to be resolved asap.

Secondly, Dan from Project Nebula has noted many people approach him expressing that is not known that ICON is an NFT chain and there is no information to suggest such.
This goes back to the buzzwords of ‘DeFi’ - and now noted the terminology ‘NFT’ is not being used.

[ElKiwi]

https://forum2.icon.community/t/has-the-icon-logo-changed/2318?u=elkiwi

I mentioned that the home page animation is 20mb here but didn’t get any response.

It’s fairly easy to serve 2 different animations with media queries in the CSS.

20mb seems a bit heavy for what it is anyway…

[YAS0]

I personally think this is phenomenal as the wording is a lot more catchy to the eye.

[Ali]

A discord member, timmytrades#5437:

I would like to give my 2 cents on the Icon foundation website if thats ok.

My overall feeling is that its way too abstract and not engaging enough.

Currently all the sections are a white background with very little graphics, imagery or information to inform and draw in the user.

There is no mention of Icon 2.0 and ICE and BTP are pretty much inconspicuous. These need to be highlighted more.

Nearly all the links are taking the user to different sites and for me it is a very disjointed and poor experience.

I know the team is currently busy developing BTP and getting that up and running but they urgently need to invest in a descent website that better illustrates what icon is about and trying to achieve.

[TIMMY]

I feel once ICE and BTP are up an running the most important thing will be attracting and encouraging developers to jump on board and I would rather have the website be more developer focused and friendly than the way it is right now.

@Ali and @DaanBlue above mentioned the Avalanche website as an example and I couldn’t agree more. Its actually really clever and refreshing the way its primarily focused on the developer side and thats exactly the template that Icon should follow.

[Ali]

https://fantom.foundation/ is also another great website, I will highlight key features that we can learn from:

[bwhli]

Agreed with everything mentioned in this topic. With regard to copy/branding, I think the old website was much better than the new one.

[Ali]

Personally, I didn’t like the old website, I found it a bit childish and cringy. The new one has a modern body, just a lack of content.

[Conners]

Ali this is a well thought out post, which I agree with everything. The website looks good, but lacks targeting, which you obviously really understand. I hope your changes are considered.

[ElKiwi]

Here are some issues I’ve added (some) to the #feedback on Discord and some other points:

…To be fair the Icon Republic on-page SEO is good. The foundation not so much. Unfortunately, Icon competes with the word icon which as you can imagine is impossible to rank for, so having the tag <title>ICON</title> on that page (which is a one-page design) is useless, to put it bluntly. The title tag should be “Icon Blockchain Foundation” or similar.

I think the video on the Icon Foundation website (and every Icon video) should be uploaded to an Icon Foundation YouTube account and embedded in the site. This allows all video content to be found via YouTube. As it is, this video will never be found by someone searching YouTube. Having a Vimeo account would be another asset as you can allow embedding into websites and replace videos that have been updated, which updates any embedded videos across the internet.

Side note:
This video also needs to be updated with the new logo and (possibly) ICE content. I can do this if I’m given the original assets.

The News section points to a subdomain Cross-Chain with ICON | ICON Community I assume because it uses another installation of Wordpress. Putting it on a subdomain is also not great SEO in my opinion. The 2nd Wordpress installation could have just gone on the main domain in the /news directory and it would have gained more seo value. Again the home page of Icon’s news is title tag is “News”. This is literally the most important tag on the page and what google shows in its results, so if this page did ever show in Google, it would simply say “News” as the title of the result. The title should be “News - Icon Blockchain Foundation” or similar.

To clarify the subdomain point from SemRush,

This debate is sparked by the fact that Google treats subdomains as separate entities to your main domain, largely because some websites place different content on subdomains that shouldn’t really be associated with the main site. Or in some instances, those subdomains of the main domain are controlled by different people.

So,

yourdomain.com/blog/ is treated as part of yourdomain.com by Google’s algorithm
blog.yourdomain.com is not treated as part of yourdomain.com, but as a separate entity

This means that the content (and its valuable assets, such as backlinks) hosted on a subdomain isn’t being taken into account by Google’s algorithm when ranking the main domain.

There is no reason to use a subdomain for news in my opinion.

When you click on a news article the structure then breaks out of the /news directory eg:

Cross-Chain with ICON

This is also not great SEO but I assume from not knowing how to set up these 2 WP installations side by side.

If you do a

site:icx.icon.foundation

in google search, the first result that appears is:

Cross-Chain with ICON

This is a left-over page from the theme which has been allowed to be indexed by Google. Not great.

There are very few news pages indexed by Google this should be addressed by linking to pages from other sites and socials.

The CSS hover color of article links at the bottom of news articles is white so when you mouse over them they disappear on the white background (this is really nitpicking now)

There’s no News home page link on articles:

Cross-Chain with ICON

If I click the home icon I get taken back to the icon.foundation home page (again just a small niggle but if you annoy people with silly things it’s off-putting)

That’s it for now.

…

[Ali]

Those are great points @ElKiwi. Thank you for also highlighting another aspect to why buzzwords are important

[jmcclaning]

Hello everyone! Thank you so much for all of your feedback. The website will forever be transforming so your input is greatly appreciated & will be used to continue to shape the site.

[Ali]

Hi Jen!

Much appreciated your work coming into ICON and the fact you made an account to communicate and reassure us that progressive updates will occur on the site!

Thank you for paying attention to our concerns, and hope to cooperate with you again!

[icxTOP20coin]

Totally agree. No colour, dull, not exciting. No compelling info on landing page to proceed to stay on to explore.

[icxTOP20coin]

Hi Jen
Someone suggested ICON marketing team shld try working with K-pop bands to mint NFTs on our platform. K-pops are so popular worldwide. Its win win for them K-pop bands too. This will surely price pop and will definitely help make up for last few years and get the attention that we badly need. Once that happens, more developers might come forward. Maybe now most developers already busy working on many other coins projects that are in the limelight.

Another suggestion he mentioned was maybe founder Min can reach out to Zuck to explore how ICX’s unique interoperable solution benefits Meta and the whole metaverse. This is be a long term price flag pole for sure.
Sorry for long post.
ICX to the Moooon !