6 UX Requests for Vocal.Media devs

I’ve seen many articles pop up lately, critical of Vocal’s payment system and structure. As someone providing content on this site, I do feel that we are providing a service for an extremely low rate. However, I am also quite new to this writing scene, so I’m not going to delve into that. I am honestly enjoying having a place to write and publish and create a portfolio. What I would chime in on is some constructive criticism in the form of feature requests for the behind-the-curtain workings that us writers see, use and would ultimately benefit from.

Dear Vocal devs,

1. Please allow multiple ways to sort on the Stats page.

Currently, my Stats page only shows articles in order of most reads. Sometimes I want to see them in the order I published them to see effects of promotional changes I’ve made or just to gauge my audience growth. Or by the amount they’ve earned to see the true value of my Vocal+ membership over the months. Or by the number of hearts. Options to measure by more than reads would be very useful.

2. Please allow us to edit our posts.

As writers for your site, we understand there is a curation process. I believe that many of us writing and submitting to Vocal honestly appreciate that; knowing we are benign published along with other quality content. However, the lack of the ability to edit spelling errors or fix grammar after an article is publicly viewable is extremely frustrating. We want our pieces to be pristine, just as you want your content to be quality long-form posts. Please give us a little bit of that freedom. Even if it's limited to something like “only 5% of the content can be edited” to prevent someone from writing a whole new point of view after approval, we just want to be able to fix that person’s name or move that comma to the correct spot.

3. Please let us hide or delete our articles without going through a moderator.

I understand why this would be a limitation as it would take the control of the amount of content away from the site curators. But at the same time, if we need to remove articles due to agreements elsewhere, this could honestly be a point of contention. It is stated that the copyright remains with the author; as many writers are writing in many places, having control over the content that is ours might be something that gets sticky in the future if we have to wait for moderators to “approve” a takedown.

4. Please allow our images to appear in link previews!

I write in a niche category: crochet. This isn’t knitting, this isn’t weaving and it has a distinct visual pattern to it. While I really like the convenience of Unsplash, there are times when I need to use my own specific images. When I upload them into my article and when it is published, they look fine. However, when I go to my Published section, even on the Vocal site, the thumbnail preview is blank. Worse yet, when I go to promote these articles on Twitter and Facebook, the lack of an image makes it look like a broken link! Please work on linking these images properly so it can be a pleasant experience for all of us.

5. Please work on allowing comments on the articles.

I feel this must be something that is requested often. As a writer, feedback is crucial to improvement. This would drive up engagement between readers and authors. Being able to make that connection person to person is going to result in returning readers. Why did I play World of Warcraft for as many hours as I did while in grad school and keep going back to it each expansion? Because of the PEOPLE. I feel that the power of connecting with the readers is not being harnessed here and I would love to see that happen. Sure, they can create an account and heart an article. But what else does creating an account offer the reader? As far as I can tell, there is nothing more than for them to click a red symbol. Even then, you can’t go back and see the articles you’ve hearted! There is little to no benefit for readers to engage with the website other than to be a passive consumer of the media. While this has turned into more of a reader’s feature request, I know many of us authors would love to have this as well.

6. Please allow us to follow authors and see their most recent articles on a feed.

Right now, the act of author engagement and supporting other authors is happening OFF YOUR PLATFORM. In all seriousness, those words should make any website owner cringe hard. With the way Internet metrics works, site ranks increase the longer someone stays on your domain. Adding a social component such as ways to follow and see who follows and (!) maybe even author forums could make a world of difference for traffic to the site, which benefits the authors as well as the site owners. Better site rankings will benefit us all.

I do have a few more requests (like a better editor, but I feel I’ve asked for a lot here already), but I can wait with those. I am currently content with doing my writing and editing in Google Drive, but I imagine it could be a personal pain point later on. I know I've seen other complaints regarding some of the unclear features.

Many of the authors submitting to this site WANT to stay here and want it to succeed. If there are roadmaps or plans for improvements, we’d love to know what to expect regarding future developments for the website. We too, are invested into the success of this site.