Website review please

[Melter]

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So I read the post about Revealing My Sites and have been of the general opinion that I don't want lurkers here stealing my sites. Then I read the posts about what you guys are treating yourselves to with your well-earned profits and I think my sites aren't all that and I need help.

I've been at this a couple of years now and I have three sites under my belt and just about cover my hosting costs which aren't excessive. Admittedly the first site (which is in my sig) is not really geared towards affiliate earnings as I'm more interested in developing this one as a community site. It brings in a little but it's the other two which need to develop affiliate-wise.

Therefore can I get you guys and gals to take a look at my latest site, check out a few pages and maybe give me some advice on what I'm doing right and what I'm doing wrong. As this is a fairly new site it seems appropriate to let y'all rip into it so I can change things if necessary without too much pain.

The site is called Nevergrownup and is basically aimed at big kids who still like gadgets, games, etc. I have a news section where I find fun stuff to tell people about and a forum where members can talk about stuff they liked as a kid and other things. There's also plenty of shopping pages which are getting a few clicks but no sales as yet. So the site is part retro, part community, part future. This is making link exchange a bit tricky as I'm not sure how to best sell it and which sites to aim it at.

I don't expect anyone to pass on their best stuff but if anyone wants to pm me with advice or link swap that would be great.

Thanks.

NeverGrownUp

[Freebie]

I took a look, and quickly found myself asking what i needed this site for - and had a problem answering the question.

After a couple of minutes (exagerated a little) i came to the decision that it was a gadget review/news site. I think it needs to be made more obvious what i'm there for.

I didn't like the navigation as it confused me. I noticed there were 2 links called radio controlled on the page, the top one was obviously for shopping, but the bottom??? OK, as soon as i took a look i saw what was going on, but i should have been abe to tell the bottom section was review/news submissions before i clicked. The 2 menus need some work IMO. I would put them both at the top of the page, or make one left hand menu as the one on the bottom is gonna get missed big time.

You should also try to intice some others in to adding submissions to the site (bribe/reward/beg etc). If some other names were visible (all the ones i saw said marcus), you might be more likely to get others interacting too.

This is a purely personal thing, and probably not worth mentioning, but i don't like the looks of the site. It's very square, and feels like one of those sites that might have been written by a robot, not a person. I think it needs less black lines.

These are just my opinions - others may not agree at all, but it was opinions you asked for. I could have written several good things too, but decided to concentrate on things I thought could be improved. Hope it helps.

[eskimo]

The tokyoflash site was of intrest to me, but all the prices are in yen. Try adding this to the end of the link, and the prices should appear as GBP's

cur=UK&id=&pg=1

[Simon]

The best advice i can give is to first idnetify your market! basically aiming will not get the visitors you need to purchase from the site.

Who do you need to attract to purchase from the site?

Where are these people?

And why should they use your site?

My point is, you can make the site look the best in the world, but if you do not design it for your needed target audience you are simply wasting you time.


Good luck

[Lea]

google on there 2 x on one page - not allowed matey

if they suss you they will turn it off - they did it to me

Lx

[KieronD]

Originally posted by Lea
google on there 2 x on one page - not allowed matey

That used to be the case but they've changed the rules now. See below taken from their program guidelines...

"Up to three ad units may be displayed on each Web site page, but no ad unit shall contain any advertisement in common with any other ad unit. Serving two or more identical ads on a single page constitutes double-serving, which Google does not support."


Cheers!

Kieron

[Melter]

google on there 2 x on one page - not allowed matey

Well this was in an Adsense newsletter from September so I thought it was okay.

Multiple ad units<br>To provide even more value to your users, and to help you further monetize your web pages, we're allowing publishers to place up to three ad units on every web page. Our system will automatically recognize the additional ad units, and will serve unique ads to each. Your ad units can each have different color palettes, formats, and alternate ad URLs, providing you with the flexibility you need to incorporate Google ads into your site design.

Whoops beaten to it by the above post.
Thanks for the comments so far. I'll wait to see if a couple more ppl post before responding to comments. Threads tend to go off-track when you reply to posts.

[Mogga]

You can have two (or is it 3?) sets of google ads. Not sure its as simple as that but you're allowed now...

[Keith]

here are the rules

Ad Placement
Up to three ad units may be displayed on each Web site page, but no ad unit shall contain any advertisement in common with any other ad unit. Serving two or more identical ads on a single page constitutes double-serving, which Google does not support.
A maximum of two Google AdSense for search boxes may be placed on a page.
No Google ad may be placed on any non-content-based pages. This includes error, login, registration, "thank you" or welcome pages.
No Google ad or Google search box may be displayed on any domain parking websites, pop-ups, pop-unders, or in any email.
No Google ad may be placed on pages published specifically for the purpose of showing ads, whether or not the page content is relevant.
Elements on a page must not obscure any portion of the ads, and the ad colours must be such that any ad elements, including text and URL, are visible.

[lowndsy]

Your tagline is exclusive - just for big kids - Taglines are there for first impressions and aren't always seen from your site - they might be picked up by a search engine, link partner etc, so you don't want to only appeal to one market segment. The best way to avoid doing this is to describe the products you list rather than the audience you are aiming at - for example boystoys.co.uk say "boys toys and unusual gifts for men" rather than "A site for yuppies with too much time on their hands (usually single)".

I love the eighties wallpaper and the faded red thing you've got going on - the whole retro thing you're doing lends itself very well to tight colour schemes, but I think you need to either tweak the yellow and brown areas to find better shades, or scrap them and do more red.

[Melter]

Freebie: It's not just a gadget review/news site as I have sections for games, magic, etc., and a forum for retro discussion. It isn't just a site for gadgeteers and technoheads it's more about bringing fun stuff to people who just like indulging themselves and remembering what it's like to be a kid. I'm finding it really hard to pin down an exact description of the site so any suggestions would be welcome.

My initial thought was not to just put up a shopping directory for gadgets and games because there's just too much competition out there so I made it more community-based by adding the forum and letting people join to add their own news and reviews. Hopefully these are things that would encourage them to come back to the site.

The look of the site was very intentional as the version I first did was fairly criticised for looking like a generic cms site. So this was an attempt at having a less obvious cms-looking site.

Anyway I've altered the news links so it's now clear they go to news sections.

You should also try to intice some others in to adding submissions to the site (bribe/reward/beg etc).

Okay I'll try the begging bit. If anyone has any news/reviews they could add to the site please please please let me know.

Eskimo: Thanks for the pointer, sorted that one.

Lowndsy: Excellent point which has had my head spinning trying to think of a new tagline.

Does anyone think this site has the potential to make money or am I barking up the wrong tree?

[stevey]

The design made my eyes strain, not sure why.

I think the idea is good but needs to be repackaged in a better website. Have you took a look at templatemonster.com? There are some real cutting edge designs there which will make you stand out from the crowd and increase your stickiness.

[CompareStore]

There's no focus. Your home page looks like a page from a magazine and you have to read it all before you can find out what it's all about. You need to mix different text sizes and use some headings.

It's very neat in that everything fits perfectly but you need to reduce the number of boxes and make it a lot simpler.

You also need some content! At the moment all I could find was pages and pages of products taken directly from feeds. Why don't you start reviewing products yourself or at least writing about gadget trends. This should be at the top of each section and then you can talk about particular products and people will be more interested.

[Freebie]

Does anyone think this site has the potential to make money or am I barking up the wrong tree?

Stick to it and i've no doubt you can make money. Saying that though, you'd be wise to put as many eggs in as many baskets as possible. Continue with this, and do other stuff too.

I think you need to make a decision between money maker and community - because i don't feel they go hand in hand until you have a member list in the tens or hundreds of thousands.

If you want a community, don't worry about money for now (build other sites to do that) and concentrate on your visitors, and the conversion into members. At the same time think about how your going to keep those members while you add more. When you have a community, you can then think about how to monetise it.

If you want a money maker, you need to think about where your visitor lands, where you want them to go, and any presell you need to get done between. You then build your site so it channels the visitors it receives in to doing exactly that - but without them feeling pressured. The problem with this is that you need to know whos landing at A before you can be expected to build a site that converts customers efficiently at point C - which is just a reword of what Simon is saying.

Simon says LOL. Sorry, i have a small mind to entertain!

[Melter]

Freebie: Thanks. All three of my sites are different and I have others I want to make but I don't think there's any point making new sites until I can learn to monetize the ones I have.

This also makes me seriously think I should drop the community aspect as I already have a community site and I know how hard it is to build one of those up, and work towards a new focus.

I've already started shifting some things around in a test version of the site so I might come back with a revised site in a while.