Why is this site a flop?

Murray R. Van Luyn wrote:

Hi,

Since I have made changes to my website it's been a complete flop. According
to the logs, as soon as visitors have downloaded the index page they are
off. I can't figure out why?

http://www.review-a-gadget.com/

Is there anything obvious that I am missing? Are there problems with some
browsers? Please let me know if you notice anything.

Thanks very much for any help you might be able to offer.

Regards,
Murray R. Van Luyn.

It's not really attractive.

* Your title "Review A Gadget" is easily overlooked because it is not a
header (e.g., <h1>) with a enlarged font. No, don't make the font
larger. Instead, use the <h1> tag.

* Your navigation box overlays part of the Airsoft list of links.

* In the lists of links, the links are just strung together. They
should be regularly spaced in borderless tables with 4-5 columns, with
the same number of columns for each table. This would be a tabular
presentation, which is the proper purpose of tables.

* Each acronym should be capitalized. Each list item should begin with
a capital. "gas rc car" should be "Gas RC car".

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

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

* 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.)

--

David E. Ross
<http://www.rossde.com/>

I use SeaMonkey as my Web browser because I want
a browser that complies with Web standards. See
<http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey/>.

Murray R. Van Luyn wrote:

Since I have made changes to my website it's been a complete flop.
According to the logs, as soon as visitors have downloaded the
index page they are off. I can't figure out why?

What did it look like before?

--
K A Nuttall
www.yammer.co.uk
Re-type the e-mail address how it sounds, remove .invalid

"Murray R. Van Luyn" <vanluynm (AT) NOSPAM (DOT) iinet.net.au> writes:

"David E. Ross" <nobody (AT) nowhere (DOT) not> wrote in message
news:cbCdnWhhuZhL5TfYnZ2dnUVZ_q-vnZ2d (AT) iswest (DOT) net...

* 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.

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

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

Hmm, yeah I read that page counters were a waste of time as far as website
visitors are concerned.

They're a waste of time for visitors because:

1. They don't really care how many other visitors you've had.
2. Even if they *did* care, they'd have no way of verifying the accuracy
of the numbers they see.

They're also a waste of time for authors because:

1. They make your page look amateurish.
2. They won't tell you anything your web server logs aren't already
telling you.

bottom of each page. Maybe I should just log the data and not actually
display it.

Web servers keep logs already - why reinvent that wheel?

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.

Why suspect when you can know? Configure your web server to log user-agent
strings.

Gee, I though running a website was going to be easy.

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

sherm--

--
Web Hosting by West Virginians, for West Virginians: http://wv-www.net
Cocoa programming in Perl: http://camelbones.sourceforge.net

Murray R. Van Luyn wrote:

Even worse.
http://members.iinet.net.au/~vanluynm/Reviews/index_old.php But
it went flatout over the new year.

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.

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

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

Also, that table stuffed with links looks like a real amateur job (no
offence) with the tabule layout and basic links - I'd suggest coming up
with a much more stylish and less fussy layout than you currently have.
Why not split the categories over separate pages? Illustrate the main
categories with suitable clipart.

The page needs breaking up into sections. Think up a groovy colour
scheme, and play around with the layout.

--
K A Nuttall
www.yammer.co.uk
Re-type the e-mail address how it sounds, remove .invalid

On Mon, 15 Jan 2007 05:55:59 -0800, "Murray R. Van Luyn"
<vanluynm (AT) NOSPAM (DOT) iinet.net.au> wrote:

Subject: Re: Why is this site a flop?

What did it look like before?

Even worse. http://members.iinet.net.au/~vanluynm/Reviews/index_old.php But

The old site looks *much* *much* better! You know what the page is
about and what you can do there as soon as you load it.

The new page is just a mess with no real clue as to what it is for or
how one should use it.

Your page has about three seconds to let the user know what it's for and
what they can get there. Your new page fails utterly at this, and
that's why your visits are way down.

The first site looks kind of interesting, I might linger there and click
on a few links. Nice big print. Big bold headline that tells me what
it's for.

Your second site is just a blur so far as first impressions are
concerned. No reason to stick around that I can see. And as you are
finding out.

"Murray R. Van Luyn" <vanluynm (AT) NOSPAM (DOT) iinet.net.au> writes:

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.

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.

sherm--

--
Web Hosting by West Virginians, for West Virginians: http://wv-www.net
Cocoa programming in Perl: http://camelbones.sourceforge.net

Murray R. Van Luyn wrote:

Hi Sherm,

"Sherm Pendley" <spamtrap (AT) dot-app (DOT) org> wrote in message
news:m2irf99u3u.fsf (AT) Sherm-Pendleys-Computer (DOT) local...

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.

Create a Web page with content people want to see. Then you don't have
to bother with PageRank.

My commentary criticizing United Parcel gets about 40 hits per day. (A
Google English-only search on "United Parcel Service" shows my page at
12th place.) My page about my hobby of gardening gets over 12 hits per
day. Yes, these counts might be puny for a commercial page; but these
are non-commercial pages that I did little or nothing to promote (other
than sometimes mentioning them in the signature of my E-mail and
newsgroup messages).

Note: My "hit" counter records the time and source (IP address) of each
access. If the next access is from the same source and the time is
within five minutes of the previous access, the counter is not
incremented. Approximately one-third of the hits are from search engine
bots and crawlers.

You might want to read all of my
<http://www.rossde.com/internet/web_design.html>, not just the part
about "Counters and Other Scripts". Although the focus is on the design
of personal, non-commercial Web pages, some of the information might
also be appropriate for commercial pages.

--

David E. Ross
<http://www.rossde.com/>

I use SeaMonkey as my Web browser because I want
a browser that complies with Web standards. See
<http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey/>.

Hi,

Since I have made changes to my website it's been a complete flop. According
to the logs, as soon as visitors have downloaded the index page they are
off. I can't figure out why?

http://www.review-a-gadget.com/

Is there anything obvious that I am missing? Are there problems with some
browsers? Please let me know if you notice anything.

Thanks very much for any help you might be able to offer.

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

Ed Seedhouse wrote...

On Mon, 15 Jan 2007 05:55:59 -0800, "Murray R. Van Luyn"
vanluynm (AT) NOSPAM (DOT) iinet.net.au> wrote:

Subject: Re: Why is this site a flop?

What did it look like before?

Even worse. http://members.iinet.net.au/~vanluynm/Reviews/index_old.php But

The old site looks *much* *much* better! You know what the page is
about and what you can do there as soon as you load it.

The new page is just a mess with no real clue as to what it is for or
how one should use it.

I agree with what others have said - that the old site makes a better

impression than the new one.

Three further comments on the new site:

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.

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.

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.
--
Martin Clark

Hi K A,

----- Original Message -----
From: "K A Nuttall" <keith (AT) yammer (DOT) coedotyoukay.invalid>
Newsgroups:
comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html,comp.infosystems.www.authoring. site-design
Sent: Sunday, January 14, 2007 11:16 AM
Subject: Re: Why is this site a flop?

What did it look like before?

Even worse. http://members.iinet.net.au/~vanluynm/Reviews/index_old.php But
it went flatout over the new year.

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