To become better, change is necessary. It isn’t always easy, but neither was the process of evolution. Now look at you, with your neurological capabilities and opposable thumbs. You’re a biological marvel.
And so, in the interest of progress, last week we launched a brand new Flicks.
What Flicks does is help you find movies to watch, and show you where you can watch them. All of the changes we’ve made are in service of this.
Here, we’ll briefly take you through our thinking…
A new look
A colour shift here, a font change there, plus a herculean effort on the designer’s part equates to an overhaul of Flicks’ look and feel.
We’ve gone for a simpler, cleaner approach. In taking away the old site’s clutter, we’ve managed to get more information on each page but make it feel lighter. This also allows images (now larger on all pages) and trailers (also larger and higher res) to come to the fore.
Plus, as you can see, we have implemented the most forward-thinking design change in the history of the printed word. It’s one that improves readability and we are sure will catch on among all imitators—black text on a white background. The revolution is real.
Usability
With design solutions and location tools we’ve streamlined your user experience.
There are lots of improvements here. For example, the movies and cinemas we show are now more relevant to where you are, we’ve got a new carousel-style approach to finding what’s on in cinemas (though if you still prefer the old way just select ‘List’), and trailers pop up to play in front of where you are on Flicks rather than taking you away to a separate section.
Streaming
It’s a whole new movie-watching world and streaming services are a natural part of them. The amount of content can overwhelm, but with our streaming pages we’re making it easier to navigate the many options available to Kiwis. Our focus, for now, is on highlighting what’s new.
If you’d rather just browse one platform, we’ve given providers like NEON and Netflix their own pages too.
Discover
You also may have noticed that ‘Discover’ tab in the top menu. Here we have brought together trailers, news, features and reviews into a single section, all designed to keep you in the know about the latest and potentially greatest films coming to cinemas and streaming services.
It’s where you can continue finding content from our awesome regular contributors, who we humbly opine are some of the best people writing about film in Aotearoa, as well as an increasing number of guests weighing in on areas of expertise.
Why “discover”? I mean, you could look that word up in the dictionary, or we could explain that this is how you can find out about new things to watch, learn new things about what you already want to watch, and so on.
The Ads
Flicks is fully funded by advertising. So it’s important to make our environment work for both our lovely readers – hey, that’s you! – and our advertisers. Nobody wants intrusive ads, we’ve avoided those. We’ve also reduced the number of ads per page. But, our ad positions—on the whole—are larger and more impactful.
What else?
In the coming days, we will also re-launch our membership sign-ins, which most notably includes watchlist and notifications we’re sure you are going to grow to love. More on this soon.
But you’re best to “discover” all those choice little nooks and crannies for yourself. Give it a whirl. Appreciate all feedback—such as what you’re finding easy to use, or tricky to use—just give us an email at team@flicks.co.nz.
