Website Update — Adding easy to read option on our website, swipe left and right to read articles.
Under the Hood
We at iHateReading have the mission to make reading as easy as possible without any distractions. Providing effortless reads and easy to remember stories is our ultimate goal.
Every contentful website is full of distractions either they ask you to subscribe, or the like and share popup, or recommendations and many more. I am not against it neither I am bashing them, I just saw these features as more distracting rather than helpful.
Compare kindle/paperback vs Online content, what do you think is more distracting?
We often get more involved while reading a paperback or on kindle because as compared to websites and more, if you ask me, YES I still love reading from paperback, I mean phones, ebooks and digital options are not my types, neither it will be future.
And one main reason is distractions, most of the content websites are having ads or recommendations stories, which often tend to deviate my mind from the current story.
User Experience
It feels good that the medium doesn’t show any ads on the stories or in between the stories. Imagine your response when you watch the youtube video and witness the sudden advertisement, it just blows your mind, isn’t it?
Similarly, if I show you an advertisement or a popup in the middle of your reading, you often end up losing the context and more importantly your interests decline.
Myth
As an entrepreneur we often think that collecting data is the ultimate goal and it's true to some extent but what about user experience. I truly believe why the medium is growing so rapidly rather than substack, vocal and many more competitors, simply because the user experience is amazing.
While writing this story, I feel good writing, I feel encouraged to write more because the experience of jotting down the points is so, so good.
User experience is the key and providing the best user experience is our ultimate goal, even if takes us more than the expected time. It doesn’t matter, we at iHateReading exist to serve not to earn, we will make money surely and certainly in future but we will know for the best user experience and content.
We haven’t reached the expected destination but we are on the right path and providing easy to read mode on our website will certainly dictate everything to you.
What is easy to read option?
We have 3 major questions in front of us —
- What is the one thing that hinders the user to read more on the website?
- What are the factors that affect user experience and
- What are the factors that will help users to stay longer on the website?
After digging deeper, we have decided that the following factors are the answer to the above question -
- More than expected mouse activities — If the user has to use the mouse more than required he will not spend too much time reading, it's not an effortless reading.
- Segmented stories — If stories on the websites are not segmented then the user will not find the story he/she wants to read, so give easy to search option instead.
- Distractions while reading stories — Recommended stories, like, share and other navigations buttons on the website might distract the user so remove then while the user is reading the story. These 3 factors just blow our mind, what if we provide all the above options to the user. No ads, fewer mouse activities, and effortless and distraction less reading, this might give the best user experience to the user.
What did we do?
So we end up giving all the options on our website and here’s how we did it.
No advertisements
No ads will be shown, this will stay forever on our website, no ads, neither today nor tomorrow, doesn't matter if we earn or not, we will not show any ads.
Use the keyboard to read all the stories -
On tinder you only swipe left and right to navigate to the next profile, similarly, we have added keyboard events in the easy to read mode. Pressing the left-right arrow keys and Enter key will show the previous and next story respectively. And pressing Enter will help you to read the current story in detail on the new tab.
Easy to navigate and search
Click CMD/CTRL + Enter and you will see the modal will open showing the list of stories on our website. Enter the title or required story in the search input to get the exact story you want to read.
No distractions while reading or looking
Click CMD/CTRL + b to close the sidebar and remove the distractions.
Easy to read story option
You can read the only story without any distractions of navigation buttons and navbar and more. Just read, that’s it.
Conclusion
We truly believe that this will help users to have a good experience in reading stories. We are paying attention to content also while paying attention to it we are also giving a world-class user experience.
In future, we will bring more changes such as good recommendations based on your reading history, notification features and many more. Until next time, have a good day, People.
Our website - iHateReading[https://www.ihatereading.in]
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