Making the site more useful for power users
I have noticed that people seem to come back regularly to update runs they’ve logged with the Nike+ app but want to see in RunKeeper (or whatever other site they’re using). This was not my original idea about how the site would be used, I figured it would mostly be a one-off for people switching over completely.
In response to that, I’m trying to make the site more efficient to use for repeat users. One thing I just implemented is that the site will now remember your user ID for 90 days. This happens entirely on the client side, by setting a cookie in your browser. The advantage is that you now only need to hit the Submit button, and no longer have to paste in your user ID or URL (as long as you return at least every three months).
The next feature will be to remember the last run a user has seen and only request the data for more recent ones. This will make loading much faster, especially for people with lots of runs, because a lot less data will need to be requested from Nike. Since it makes little sense to export the same runs over and over, this should address a common use case. It will of course be possible to request data for older runs, and first-time users will get all their runs returned right away.
Just as with the user ID, this will be done in a cookie, so no clear-text user ID or run ID will be stored on the server.
I hope that these small changes will be useful to repeat users. More advanced features are also planned, but more on those later. Let me know if there’s anything else that would improve the service.
