CCL Messageboard

Hey guys. Lately i've been designing pages for a prototype of the web version of the CCL Software. One page I keep coming back to is the user Dashboard. This area acts as a central hub with links and information about the user's collection and account. I want this page to be populated with the most important information to you. Here's the information currently displayed, store specific info is orange.

• Search (Search All of CCL, Owned, Gap, Wishlist or My Store titles)
• Number of Owned, Gap, Wishlist and My Store titles (with links)
• Total items collected
• Collection value (Cover Value, Price Paid Value, Sell Value)
• My Reports
• My Subscription (expiration date, renewal button)
• Total items for sale
• Total Lots for sale
• Items sold
• Account links (all the links under "My Stuff" currently)
• Account info (name, join date, points, buyer rating, seller rating)

What other information would you like to see included? Let's keep the focus towards collection info, but if any stores want to chime in with QoL additions feel free. Thanks!

Hey Chance -

First - thanks for asking the membership for input! Great to have the opportunity to provide some feedback to help develop the next version of CCL. I'm also going to bet that not everything submitted will be able to be added (always good to set expectations .)

I'll think on it some more but here is the first thing to pop into my head -
How do you plan on displaying the various categories of items (Comic books, Trades, HC, action figures, etc.)? Will the web version keep the separate categories via a picklist like the software OR will there be a way to see everything together in an online collection? I'd like to see both ways for your #2 and 3 bullet points - both by category and overall. Maybe start with overall and drill down to categories?

Thanks!

I'm not encouraging stealing another site's layout, but I do like this one - https://leagueofcomicgeeks.com/profile/swiftmann/collection

and their Stats page is error filled, but fun - https://leagueofcomicgeeks.com/profile/swiftmann/collection-stats

Their Read/Not Read lists are extremely helpful and their Wish List is WAAAAY more functional than here.

I think a "Read/Not Read" feature would be absolutely amazing! That would help me sooooo much!

What's up Scott. The user's dashboard will have links to the various categories of items in their collection (Comic Books, Trades, etc.) After clicking through and viewing a list of items/titles, the user can filter that list by All, Owned, Gaps, Wishlist and My Store to easily see necessary information about the items they own.

We're also implementing a filter specific search. So for example, if you're viewing a list of all of your Owned titles, you can search that specific list. Or you can quickly change your filter to "All" and search every title in the database. Or change it to "My Store" and search all of your store titles. This applies to any category on CCL and you can quickly change search category via dropdown.

In this example image the dark cards indicate a fully completed/collected run... just to clear up any confusion.


When viewing a list of items you will be presented with options and information about each specific item without having to click through. This lets the user add to collection, add to wishlist, buy and list items for sale without having to navigate through tons of pages.





That stats page is pretty cool.

Read/Not Read is a great idea but we're focused on bringing the current functionality of the software onto web, and then we can tweak accordingly. Also before adding in new features we'd like to bring the rest of the site up to date to match this update. There's a lot of redundancy and weird navigation on CCL at the moment.

Thanks for the suggestions guys, keep em coming.

As a collector I literally use nothing but the functions of adding issues and noting if they are signed. I don't know when it all became worthless but at some point my collection simply got too big for any of the other stuff to be helpful.

I get that there's tons to port over for stores and maybe that's mostly what this is about.

The Not Read list completely changed my collecting, buying, and reading habits.

The purpose of this thread is to get a good idea of the most important information about your collection that we can present at a glance on your dashboard. The stats page you linked is a good example. Read/Not Read would be a really nice addition to the site though... it is just a separate list like Owned, Wishlist, etc. I'll see what we can do.

Information doesn't have to be collection specific. We were thinking it would be cool to have the user's favorited stores listed somewhere on their dashboard for easy access. Or possibly a short list of a few items on their wishlist that just went up for sale.

There's definitely a lot to port over for stores, but creating a system for uploading user collection, managing that collection and integrating it properly with the site is quite the task.

I do think stores will benefit the most from the update, but there will be nice QoL improvements for the average user as well. The search will get a nice overhaul and the ability to view/manage your collection from anywhere should be helpful.

all this sounds great, but I'd like to be able to pick & choose, or "opt in/opt out" of what we share

Since a new search feature was mentioned, I'll give my two cents. How about the ability to search the caption to find specific books? For example, someone might be looking for 30-cent price variants, or DC Universe UPC variants, or certain Dell'Otto covers. Usually this info is found in the caption, so searching through the caption would be helpful. It would help the casual buyer find books without having to take the time to build a wishlist.

Thanks for the screenshot examples - really helps me understand what you were describing. I think it looks pretty good.
Some thoughts I had:
1) That could get to be a very, very long page for someone with a large number of titles. Will it be a single page and user just has to scroll down OR will there be a set number of titles per page with a picklist that will allow the user able to select # of titles to display?

2) One of the complaints / issues I've seen mentioned a number of times is the Gaps section of the current software. Members have stated that they may not care about 2nd print or signed variants or other variants. To that member, they only care they have 1 of that numbered issue. Currently, the Gaps view would show them all of the variants as gaps. Some type of setting to control what the Gaps count actually means would be useful - example: option 1 would be count all variants and option 2 would be count single issue numbers without an issue in collection. Let me know if you would like me to clarify.

3) I'd like a single place - doesn't need title lists, images, etc. - to show me the total # of titles in my collection (across all categories), the total # of issues in my collection (across all categories) and then have the ability to drill down.

Example:
Total # of titles in collection: 574
--> Comic Book Titles: 257
-->Trades and Hard covers: 53
-->Magazines: 23
-->Action Figures: 78
-->Trading Cards: 163

... And then be able to click into each category to get to a clear title list (no images) with counts. As well as the ability to export said list - maybe this could be a report and wouldn't need to be a page.

Sure. All of this information is specific to you and is completely hidden from other users. Only you can see your personal dashboard.


Good suggestion. I'll see if we can include the caption in search.


Right now we're debating on paging the results or including a "Load More" button at the bottom. The number of results displayed isn't determined yet. We could also do an infinite scroll that would populate as you reach the bottom of the results. Issue lists will also have an Issue Jump option.

I know CCL works with paging right now. Would you guys rather have an infinite scroll / load more?


This is a great suggestion. Just talked to Joe about how we could implement this. We think it would be cool to have a rocker switch called "Essentials" that's displayed on any issue list. When toggled on it would only show the A issues. This would apply to All, Owned, Gaps, Wishlist and My Store issues.


We will definitely show the total # of items for each category. You'll be able to click into each category and see those titles and items. You'll also be able to create an "All Items" report that you can export, it will include every category.

I hate having to flip through pages of books in a title, and also having to change the "item per page" setting. "Load More" setting while keeping the "issue jump" for larger titles would be a good combo.

Maybe it's just me (or people my age), but please don't do Load More or Infinite Scroll. Load More is the worst. Infinite Scroll is moderately better. Paging lets you have a sense of what you are dealing with.


Yes please!

Even though I'm a variant buyer and it does matter which I'm ordering from a store (looking at you stores!), I also don't want anything to do with the Canadian or UK Cover Price variants that are in here for the handful of people it affects (and yet, still no same price newsstands).

Opposite sides of the coin!

I work off my wishlists exclusively, so I don't even look at stores' titles, just the single issues from my lists, which usually run no more than 5 pages. And I don't use anything but issue jump if I'm just browsing a random title.

OMG, DO IT!
Like, yesterday....
It's a huge pain going through my wishlist in a store that's in a dead spot or that's a concrete bunker (Mile High).
If I could load my entire wishlist all at once before heading in, I would love that.

Alright, a new week of design and development. Your suggestions have definitely helped us think through some things. We're going to add:
- NTR (Need To Read) list
- Essentials toggle (only show A issues)
- List view

We've got a pretty cool functioning user Dashboard. The title lists are significantly improved. The issue lists have way more functionality (buy, sell, own, wishlist without having to click through). We have the ability to filter lists of items/titles by All, Owned, Gaps, Wishlist, My Store. This is all functioning HTML.

This week i'm going to redesign/update the item details page to better match the incoming update. I'm also going to create the NTR page.

Awesome!!! Keep up the hard work!

Meant to post out here yesterday.

New week, more design work. Tweaked some of the existing pages and threw together Need to Read. This week i'm gonna create a list view option for Title and Issue lists. That should finish up all of the design work. After that i'll be diving into html and css while Joe works on the backend.

Thanks for keeping us in the loop, Chance!

Looking forward to the improvements.