The ‘integrate’ page is either very badly designed, deliberately obtuse or something got lost in the English translation.

‘You find the code for both buttons on the Flattr page for the thing. The code is also displayed directly after submitting the thing.’

Only you don’t, There is no block including the required JS code.

Either that or the magic, hidden Easter Egg is only be made visible once you have activated your account by loading it with €€€.

http://iwanttoflattrthis.net/

The tweet’s are there, if you Flattr things, or your content is submitted. It’s under your settings and “Twitter”.

The big orange box says “What’s next?” and describes to you how to put money into the system. As some people might just register to look into it, somehow forcing them to put money into the system if they just want to browes around can be disasterous.

Input is always loved and welcome by Flattr, I know that since I come with a lot of it myself, and thy are constantly working to meet peoples want’s and needs.

There’s also a Wishlist that is being built on for people to say “Hey we want to Flattr this!” and what features it is supposed to carry.

There’s also loads of suggestions and discussions ongoing on the Flattr-forum for how to improve! :)

Not sure if any of this made things clearer, but I hope so. :)

You said “About focusing on producers: As is mentioned in the base article you can only flattr registered things. So the main ‘problem’ we have is to get the content flattrble. Hence we choose to focus on the content creators.”

So, you created a problem with your current design (content can only be flattrable when registered by the webmaster/owner), and then you’re trying to solve it with more design. You could simply take a step back and allow people to flattr content that’s not registered. Let people email flattrs to other people. I know it’s not an easy problem as you’re trying to prevent fraudsters claiming flattrs for content that’s not theirs, but there must be a better solution.

Top sites on homepage:
Publish in order of the number of flattrs

Flattering without money:
Send a message sharing user details
“Hey @Linus, @Craig loves your work, but hasn’t committed funds to Flattr yet. Why don;t you get in touch!”

About focusing on producers:
“I haz internetz” A button up front? Two sign-up pathways? Surely its not too hard.

Social Media strategy
How many hours to build a “tweet each flattr?” One? Two? For what benefit? Maybe huge?

As a site owner I tried to sign up last month but gave up as it was too complicated. The potential micropayments for me are small enough for me to not want to try hard.

Your model relies upon huge amounts of small transactions, right? Every blogger and site owner should have flattr, right? It should almost be a once click exercise.

I’ll come back if you get better.

Anyway – good luck with it. Great idea.

We love the feedback, give us the hard times as we now it kind of suxx ;)

Some “answers” to why it’s like it is that might explain why we did the choices we did. Not to say it’s the best choices just to clarify why we did what we did.

About focusing on producers: As is mentioned in the base article you can only flattr registered things. So the main “problem” we have is to get the content flattrble. Hence we choose to focus on the content creators.

Submit your first thing: Is not mandatory, it says “please go here so you know where you do it” basically, might not be a good call, but for the 1% that has content it’s important to show them how it’s done. And we also want to promote adding your blog even though the main reason for joining is to give.

The lag of social media strategy: This is just plainly due to lack of time, it’s awful that we don’t have any of those stuff. Ideas and stuff in this area are VERY welcome.

Flattering without money: As a flattr is a monetary thing, you can not flattr before you added money. If we could do anything good about that, would be great. I don’t see how though. (Except a bookmark system of some kind, but will complicate things even more.)

About consumer/producer: We are planning a wizard for users with separated paths for consumer/producer, but we also want users to do both and know they can, so it’s a bit complicated to do good. Progressive disclosure would be a good thing to use as a result of that kind of wizard.

Top sites on homepage: We don’t like the idea of editorial content on flattr.com as we want to treat all users in the same way. But we know it probably is a bad decision for growth.

Recommended package: As you can change your monthly spend any time and also do direct donations to flattr users now, a “package” can’t really be made, sure you can say “10 euros, will work for 5 months of 2 euro flattrings” but then you kind of say that is the way the system works too.

I’ve added a link to it on our forms advice web site on the page about ‘Relationship’ – thinking about users and their goals, and what your organization is trying to achieve as a business.
http://www.formsthatwork.com/Relationship

Reduce the range of options to three items, like 37 signals do for basecamp:

http://basecamphq.com/signup

Maybe the recommended package should be 10 euros of credit, covering you for 4 months of donations. Something like that.

–when I get to the end of the wizard I want to be set up – not ready to get set up.

–I’m still confused by who is following the wizard as described. Is it only content creators, or do I use this wizard if I want to grab some content and tip the person? Please make it easier, as I am an idiot (jokes aside – you ignore this at your peril).

Love the idea.

What struck me in the process was that I was unable to Flattr anyone before having registered a credit card – even though I was registered as a user already.

This might seem to make sense, encouraging people to commit early. In the end, allowing users the workflow they prefer – trusting the service when they choose to – might be likely to help users feel the service is trustworthy in the first place.

That is, the needs of the following scenario are not met: you are a skeptical user and don’t want to commit just yet, but are keen to keep track of content that you like – in order to perhaps actually pay them later. One might want to pay once one has found enough content to make actually using the service worthwhile/personally meaningful.

I also think the processes for consumers and producers should probably clearly compartmentalized: the choice of whether one wants to consume or produce should be made more explicit so that everyone is aware that they are making the choice.

It should also be made clear that you can later become a producer if you want to, but the unnecessary details should be hidden from consumers by means of progressive disclosure (http://www.useit.com/alertbox/progressive-disclosure.html ). Producers can perhaps be expected to be committed enough to learn the added conceptual complexity: after all, there is money in it for them.

Also, why aren’t they visibly promoting the top sites that can be Flattr’d on the front page? Unless you’re a visionary that really wants this to happen, there is little to motivate the ordinary user to sign up for yet another online site. Seeing some content they love and can support is what could to that.

Olli

From what you’ve described above, and the screenshots, it occurred to me that the whole process is really highly skewed towards the people who aspire to become content creators (and get Flattred as a result).
Now we know there’s this 1% rule, also known as participation inequality, based on which vast majority of people are not interested in creating original online content.
The process 1) makes it looks like you need to be an active content creator to be able to participate, and 2) does not really persuade you to make the first, and most important, leap of faith and register your payment card. Or direct debit, or whatever the payment method. The interstitial instructions screen explains that money is then to be taken each month regardless of whether you spend it or not. And that is quite a big psychological commitment, even though the actual amount might be a just few pounds.
The Dashboard also makes it look like ‘Submit your first thing’ is part of the ramp-up phase and is a mandatory step. Again, since most people who might be potential givers of Flattr don’t aspire be Flattr receivers as well – this might put off many.
All in all, I think the designs make some assumptions about people’s motivations for participation that might not be accurate, and target mainly potential user groups that are not essential for the service’s take off.

The lack of a social media strategy is then almost a suicide today.

Sign-up processes are such a messy thing, I’d love to hear other people’s opinions.

If I worked for them I’d mock up some different designs in photoshop and run them through http://fivesecondtest.com/ or something like that.