Why is this site a flop?

Hi David,

"David E. Ross" <nobody (AT) nowhere (DOT) not> wrote

It's not really attractive.

I agree. Maybe this is why people are bailing at first sight. I should work
on this and other things such as list of link spacing etc.

* While the link appears okay, the text for your Contact has two
periods between gadget and com: feedback (AT) review-a-gadget (DOT) .com

How on earth did you spot that? Yes its deliberate. I'm trying to cut down
on spam.

* Your page has 8 HTML errors that might adversely impact how some
browsers display the page.

That's a worry. I'll have to find a HTML checker webpage and go through the
whole site.

* You have a counter. For a commercial page, only 558 visits in over a
month might be embarrassing. If you want to know the number of hits,
use a silent counter (a counter that you can observe without it
appearing on the page). I use a silent counter until the count reaches
1000. Also, you need a better counter; yours increments even when you
get multiple hits from the same user within a few seconds. (Go to my
http://www.rossde.com/internet/web_design.html>, scroll down to
"Counters and Other Scripts", and read the first paragraph.)

Hmm, yeah I read that page counters were a waste of time as far as website
visitors are concerned. I've tried to hide it in the small print at the
bottom of each page. Maybe I should just log the data and not actually
display it. The old site went gang-busters and got 3500 hits in 2 weeks. I
suspect that most of the 558 visitors to this site have just been search
engines.

Thanks very much for the objective opinion. It seems that I still have a lot
of work to do. Gee, I though running a website was going to be easy. I
hadn't counted on what you have to do to both get visitors, and then to keep
them.

Regards,
Murray R. Van Luyn.

Hi Beauregard,

"Beauregard T. Shagnasty" <a.nony.mous (AT) example (DOT) invalid> wrote

In comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html, Murray R. Van Luyn wrote:

Probably because it looks like an amateur site, rather than a
professional store one could trust.

Yeah, that seems to be the consensus. If there isn't any major technical
hangup, then I guess that's why people are bailing out at first sight. I'll
have to do more her I think.

This on the main page doesn't inspire confidence:
"This page visited 559 times since December 10th, 2006."

Yep. Old site went okay. This one has only been going for 4 or 5 days, but
gosh it's slooooow.

The link layout is terrible.

That's also one of the things that has been pointed out. I'll have to even
up the spacing of those a bit. Now that somebody has pointed it out, then It
does look pretty amatuerish I agree. I'm not sure what's going on with those
link colours? Maybe it's something to do with the HTML errors. I'll have to
give it some though.

http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/

quote
URL: http://www.review-a-gadget.com/Airsoft_Gun.php
Title: The size of this web page (1019705 bytes) has exceeded the
maximum size of 1000000 bytes.

Not too sure what's going on there, but the optimization link looks
interesting. I'll have to give it a shot in a minute.

Thanks Beauregard. I really appreciate the opinion and tips. Seems I've got
some work to do yet. Especially on the openning page I guess.

Regards,
Murray R. Van Luyn.

--
http://www.review-a-gadget.com/
http://members.iinet.net.au/~vanluynm/

Hi Sherm,

"Sherm Pendley" <spamtrap (AT) dot-app (DOT) org> wrote

I use W3C's validators, for both HTML and CSS:

http://www.w3.org/QA/Tools/#validators

That's the one I was trying to remember the name of. Thanks for that Sherm.

Why on Earth would you think that??? HTML is easy, but there's a lot more
to
running a web site than just HTML.

Your not wrong there. I thought I could just jam up a few disparate pages
and have lots of visitor from search engines. I had no idea that I would
have to delve so deeply into PageRank just to get a few pages listed with
any sort of priority. I think I can ultimately get the visitors as soon as
the search engines pick it all up, but now no one wants to stay. Crumbs, I'm
only half way there!

Regards,
Murray R. Van Luyn.
--
http://www.review-a-gadget.com/
http://members.iinet.net.au/~vanluynm/

Hi Beauregard,

"Beauregard T. Shagnasty" <a.nony.mous (AT) example (DOT) invalid> wrote

In comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html, Murray R. Van Luyn wrote:

No, it isn't the HTML errors; it is that you have six links all pointing
to the same sub-page. Why is that? For example:

It looks as if you are trying to stuff the search engines. That'll get
you .. not far.

Yes, you are absolutely right. An unethical search engine stuffer am I.
Thanks for the warning about it not getting me very far. You're right. I've
gone backwards a few times with the search engines trying a few different
things over the past 5 weeks. It seems I've gotten away with this one
though, as the index relisted with the one domain that has been picked up by
Google so far.

Regards,
Murray R. Van Luyn.
--
http://www.review-a-gadget.com/
http://members.iinet.net.au/~vanluynm/

Hi K A,

"K A Nuttall" <keith (AT) yammer (DOT) coedotyoukay.invalid> wrote

Okay, I can see one reason why it may have done worse: no graphics.

Both layouts are too heavy on the links, but at least the old site had
a friendly face.

Mmm. Some of the sites I like best have photos of peoples faces on them.
It's funny how a little image can make so much difference to the impression
you get from a site. Here's one I really like that seems to do this for me.
http://www.searchenginesubmission.biz/freesearchenginesubmission.html

Was the old site at the same URL as the new?

No. I now have 2 new domains. Three separate sites at 3 different domains.
1400 pages bleeding PageRank into the 200 page main site. I'm going to get
banned by all the search engines for sure. Hey, you can't bake a cake
without cracking a few eggs.

I'd suggest adding some stock clipart and/or images to the design, to
make it a bit friendlier.

Yeah, you're right. That's exactly what it needs. EXACTLY! Some nice artwork
or a friendly face or 2 to greet people. As it is it's cold and sterile
text. No wonder people are bailing the second they see it. I just got
finished with a book that says that the text on a site is everything. I'm
starting to think that friendly faces are really important too.

Also, that table stuffed with links looks like a real amateur job (no
offence)

None taken I can assure you. I really appreciate getting the honest feedback
I need so I can find out what's going wrong here. I really wish I didn't
need the 'sitemap' and 'popular pages' tables. They're just to help serach
engines distribute PageRank around the site to where it needs to be. I'll
have to have a bit of a surf and see if I can't find something a little bit
nicer to try to emulate.

Regards,
Murray R. Van Luyn.
--
http://www.review-a-gadget.com/
http://members.iinet.net.au/~vanluynm/

Hi Ed,

"Ed Seedhouse" <eseedhouse (AT) shaw (DOT) ca> wrote

Your page has about three seconds to let the user know what it's for and
what they can get there.

That's very true. I probably stay at some sites for only about 3 seconds
before choofing-off if it doesn't look useful to me. I never imagined how
important those first 3 seconds might be. Yep, I'm really going to have to
put some effort into that first page that springs up.

Regards,
Murray R. Van Luyn.
--
http://www.review-a-gadget.com/
http://members.iinet.net.au/~vanluynm/

Hi Sherm,

"Sherm Pendley" <spamtrap (AT) dot-app (DOT) org> wrote

You don't have to do that. You don't have to know *anything* about
PageRank.
Just write meaningful content, and PageRank will take care of itself.

Yep. I've been spending way too much time trying to please the search
engines. I think I'll let that go for a bit (there's nothing else I can do
with them anyway). It's time to start improving the site for visitors now.

I've heard a couple of times that all this search engine optimisation might
be a bit of an excercise in chasing one's own tail. The book I just finished
said to focus on delivering useful website content, and forget about all the
rest. I guess there's not much point to having hundreds of visitors, if they
can't find anything meaningful, and just scoot off after a 3 second visit.

Yep, I'm through with SEO for the moment. It's time to make it a really nice
site to visit.

Thanks everyone.

Regards,
Murray R. Van Luyn.
--
http://www.review-a-gadget.com/
http://members.iinet.net.au/~vanluynm/

Murray R. Van Luyn wrote...

Hi Martin,
There is a lot of white space after "Our reputation depends upon it." I
thought that this was the end of the page. It was only because you had
asked for opinions that I bothered to hang about and noticed that there
was more if I scrolled down. A casual visitor might not notice that the
page continues after the white space.

Yeah, that only happened later last night. I'm trying to hide that awful
sitemap for the moment.

I see you have added some pretty pictures before the white space now,

which at least makes the page seem more inviting!

I tried viewing the page in a 800px wide browser window, and the
navigation panel on the left overlapped the text on the right. This
starts to happen at around 900px width. Not everyone has their browser
occupying the whole screen. Some people still have 800 x 600 screens.

Oh dear. I setup the page to work with a maximised browser on an 800 x 600
screen. Obviously what works for me doesn't work for everyone else. Thanks
for pointing that out. I wouldn't have known this otherwise.

See http://www.auluk.freeserve.co.uk/pictures/reviewagadget.jpg to see

what I see at 800px width.

Why is the javascript navigation box not further to the left?
I see it is given a fixed position on the screen:
"menus[0] = new menu(150, "vertical", 160, 190, -2, -2, etc..."
I don't know about javascript menus as I have never used one, but would
the positioning work better if you changed the horizontal position to a
% of the screen width?
Something like "vertical", 10%, 190, -2, -2, ?

The text seems to put an emphasis on buying online rather that the site
offering reviews. I thought the text on the old site did better with
"find out about..." Okay, your interest is in people buying online
through the links on your site, but you have to give them a reason to
venture that far into the site.

Hmm. The stuff I've been reading since doing the first site said focus on
text not graphics, and to specifically focus on the one goal of the site,
which is to sell. I'm starting to think I've misunderstood all of that. My
interpretation just doesn't interest anyone. I'm starting to get an idea of
what I have to do on the opening page. It should be a 'Magazine Cover', and
use visually interesting content to do just that - interest people. Text and
cheesy sales pitches can wait.

The text is what is important to the search engines - the text together

with the visual appearance is what is important to the visitor. If the
text is too much aimed at search engines it will not be very friendly
for the human reader! You only have a few seconds to make a good
impression and make people feel they want to explore the site.
--
Martin Clark

Murray R. Van Luyn wrote...

"Martin Clark" <martin (AT) spl (DOT) at> wrote in message
See http://www.auluk.freeserve.co.uk/pictures/reviewagadget.jpg to see
what I see at 800px width.

Why is the javascript navigation box not further to the left?
I see it is given a fixed position on the screen:
"menus[0] = new menu(150, "vertical", 160, 190, -2, -2, etc..."
I don't know about javascript menus as I have never used one, but would
the positioning work better if you changed the horizontal position to a
% of the screen width?
Something like "vertical", 10%, 190, -2, -2, ?

Gosh, thanks so much for going to all that trouble of uploading the
screenshot for me. I can see that there is definitely a problem. What
browser does this affect? Is it very popular?

Firefox, which is fairly popular. The same problem does not seem to

happen when I looked in IE6.

Someone sent me a super-duper link to a page that shows you how to do menus
in CSS. Here it is http://css.maxdesign.com.au/listamatic/ If I can't get
this JavaScript menu to work right, then I'll take everybody's good advice
and get rid of the JavaScript in favour of some CSS. I might be able to lose
the amateurish site look, especially in the tables, if I can manage to pick
up a bit of this style sheet stuff as well.

Well, I didn't like to say it before, but javascript menus are not

usually considered to be good things. You can probably create something
very similar to what you have got using CSS. Then you can place it
inside the empty <td> that you have and it will always appear to the
left of the other text.
--
Martin Clark

Murray R. Van Luyn wrote:

Hmm. The stuff I've been reading since doing the first site said focus on
text not graphics, and to specifically focus on the one goal of the site,
which is to sell. I'm starting to think I've misunderstood all of that.

Stuff you read (whether online, in books, or anywhere else) needs to be
taken with a large grain of salt. Usually it will focus exclusively on
whatever the author happened to be obsessed with at the moment, and
following it in an overly literal way will cause a lack of balanced
priorities in what you do.

--
Dan