Pop Calendar / Date Selector - "Complicated" & "Off Putting" feedback

We have just launched our new Dolphin based website and the first few negative feedbacks we have had from the site's members relate to the the Popup Calendar / Date Selector.

Our site is intended to be very Events intensive where members would be posting their events themselves and as such user friendly date entry is  paramount and a critical success factor for our site.

Some members noted that they tried adding their Events on the site but did not bother completing their posts when they got to the point of entering the dates as they found it "Too Complicated", "Cumbersome" and "Off Putting".

Members would have been very much used to posting their events on other websites such as meetup.com where it takes just a few keystrokes to enter an event's date and time without the need to manoeuvre through a popup date selector calendar nor the need to get the date entry down to the last second.

So as not too lose their custom we have had to step in and add the events ourselves on behalf of the members complaining about the calendar.

However, this would not a be sustainable approach for us in resolving this issue as the site's membership grows and also such customer experiences would only dissuade members from recommending our site for others to post their events which will most definitely have negative impact on our referral rates.

Questions:

To Everyone:

• Are you having similar experiences / complaints / feedbacks regarding the date selector popup calendar in your Dolphin based site?

To Mods Developers

• Are there any mods available which would allow us to replace the date selector popup calendar such that members can easily type in dates rather than use the date selector?

To Boonex Development Team:

• Are there plans by Boonex to address this date selector popup calendar issue in future releases of Dolphin by replacing its use or at least allow the option for users to type in the dates on Dolphin based sites?

We use ue30 events (although mine has developed DB error that i am waiting to be fixed). This was caused by a crash, not by the module. Our members all post events. At one point before the crash we had several hundred events posted and non one had ever complained about the date entry system.

An alternative is to use something like the module in the market that checks your customers facebook for events every 3 hours and then auto imports the events for them.... That would save you and your users a great deal of time. I believe webby makes the module and i know someone wioth it on their site that is very happy with it.

Hope it helps,

Nathan : )

Thanks Nathan for replying. The mod which imports members' events from facebook sounds really cool and we would surely lookout for it as our site's membership grows.

We checked the ue30 events mod and followed through to the mod's demo page on their site. However, we noticed that that mod also uses the popup calendar date selector as illustrated in the attached print screen from the mod's demo site.

We are also using a 3rd party events mod which works perfectly OK for our needs except that  it inherently uses the standard Dolphin popup calendar date selector same as ue30's events mod.

We are finding entry of dates and time using the popup calendar date selector is very daunting and to an extent annoying especially when compared to entering dates and times on other social media which our members are already used to and this leaves our site in a less favourable light comparatively.

If there is a way of doing away with the popup calendar for date and time entry across the site at least as an option that will bore very well.

I am quite sure that you will find that this is part of the dolphin base code and not in each of the modules. If this can be changed then you will need someone that knows the dolphin code very well such as Anton Lv or esases. I do not know if they would have time or how much it would cost though. your best bet is to try to contact them and ask the question.

Nathan : )

Geezus....Aside from the 24 hour time format selector, which can be easily changed to 12hr format, I really don't see what is so confusing to your members.  Seriously.... how hard can it be to select a date and time? You can even click on the question mark in the upper left corner for a help menu that tells you exactly how to use the thing.  What..... they can't spare 10 seconds to enter a date/time. 

The date/time entered into the input field has to correctly formatted, and the date picker ensures this.  If you allow members to just type in dates and times, the problems will be a lot worse when the form won't validate.

Nevertheless, there is always room for improvement.  I think this jQuery addon makes things about as simple as possible.  If enough people think this is better, perhaps Boonex will make the change.  As an added bonus, the date/time picker will be consistent sitewide.

http://trentrichardson.com/examples/timepicker/

I went ahead and made an executive decision, and entered a ticket to update this.

http://www.boonex.com/trac/dolphin/ticket/2840

I also suggested displaying the date/time picker inline, instead of a popup.  This would make start and end times instantly readable.  In other words, you'd always see the calendar as shown above, as opposed to only seeing it as a popup when you clicked the input field.

If anybody has a gripe about my suggested change, now's the time.

Thanks Nathan and houstonlively for your responses. We'll follow through the points you noted and the lead to the timepicker. 

Houstonlively,

Very apt comments you made on the enhancement request (http://www.boonex.com/trac/dolphin/ticket/2840):

"...we don't need Date/Time? entry to the nearest second. Hours and minutes are good enough."

This hits the nail on the head.

Thanks for the follow through on this.