Website Review?

[Misterhippo]

New member here, been lurking for about a year. Thought I'd join finally and maybe become part of the community :P

I have a new website I am starting and was wondering if it would be okay to post a link and ask what you guys thought and how you think I could improve it? I didnt want to just blatantly post it and wanted to make sure this is an okay place to do it?

Thanks everyone!

[jgbama]

Hi Misterhippo
Go ahead and post it everyone here tries to help each other.They just took a look at mine for me.
Nice to meet you
Jerry

[Misterhippo]

Well awesome, its at http://www.misterhippo.com

Its an internet marketing review community. One day it will hopefully be big enough to provide a lot of good honest reviews and save people money. I think the site is going to look a lot like it does now except I want to have a video review for every product as well. Also Registered users are allowed to add their own listings so its going to be kinda dynamic and grow with what people want, we will review only what people put up to review. Right now I just kinda populated it with some listings for testing.

Thanks for the welcome, hope you like the site. Any suggestions are VERY welcome, also looking for suggestions on how you may go about getting members and getting them involved in reviewing things. Thanks again!

[AlexNewell]

Well, my mind just went blank when I landed on the home page...you have to figure out what the page is about.

So...

You may want to think of having a landing page where people find a "sales letter" to sell them on the benefits of joining and what the purpose is of the site.

How do you monetise it? Are the products there on your affiliate link?

I think video reviews are a great idea BTW

Gaining members - reviews of products in article directories where readers can click through to your site for the details or the second half of the review.

And

Building a Facebook presence would be a good way of pre selling potential members on the benefits of the site.

All The Best

Alex

[Misterhippo]

Well I wanted to keep the home page ultra simple and to the point, the reviews and just the reviews nothing else to distract anyone. Too simple do you think?

I was thinkin maybe have a "announcement" section and maybe give top reviewers some sort of prize/link/featured listing

cool on the article directory, Ill have to get started on that

and already started on face book :P kinda.... haha thank you!

[jgbama]

You have a nice looking site but someone with more knowledge than me should give you their review.

[christianwins]

The 'All Reviews' part might look better on the side instead of top. Something explaining the site, Alex's suggestion of a sales letter may get a lot more people to join, with less one-time visits. It sort of looks like a directory more then a review site, but maybe that's just me. In the review section, such as hostgator, a personal experience you've had would look like you have used them and can be trusted more. Hope this is what you are looking for.

P.S. I like the user rating system, that is cool.

[Henrik Flensborg]

I felt just like Alex did when I went to check it out - blank.

There's no clue about what the site is about.

If your intention with the site is to have a place with honest reviews then put that USP prominently at the top of the page.

I would probably drop the logo at the top since it says nothing about the site - other than repeating the url.

If the site encourages visitor reviews then make that so obvious that it can't be missed.

I also find it confusing with so many options on the frontpage - I don't know if you want to draw my attention to the 3 thingies at the top, what the signup form is for, if you want me to first look at the directory widget, if it's the list going towards the bottom of the page or if the meat of the site is behind the menu on the left.

Mostly I think that I'm missing the Radio WIIFM - What's In It For Me.

How were you thinking about monetizing that site? - buying all those products to review them can get quite expensive I guess, so you need to think about the money aspect of the site.

Next thing that comes to mind is how will you bring traffic to the site - since the overall theme of the site at the moment seems to be IM related I think there's a slim to none chance of organic search engine traffic.

[Misterhippo]

Thank you Henrik, I kinda know what you mean about the whole blank thing. I was relying kinda on just people knowing thats what the site is and not needing an explanation, but it may be smarter to write an "about this site" article to explain everything. I was thinking about adding some text saying something about "Honest reviews" into the logo, but maybe i will completely drop it in place of a more valuable piece of info?

the WIIFM is what I'm working on I dont know how i want to incentivize reviews, but I had it in my mind contests or prizes for top reviewers may be good.

I actually was going to buy every product as I have money, but was hoping reviewers that already own products would start the ball rolling on things I haven't been able to buy. Monetization was probably going to be in affiliate links from reviews, but I have been iffy about that too, without any affiliate links I'd really be able to prove honest reviews. But then I don't really know how monetization would work, maybe selling ads when I have the traffic? Maybe something will come up.

Traffic is probably going to be gained through article marketing and video marketing not really relying on any organic traffic

I will probably start work on a welcome/about the site article and maybe tinker with the logo, and also take the 3 review thing off the top and maybe label it and move it or just ditch it all together

Thanks Guys I REALLY appreciate it!

[Misterhippo]

okay, kinda have a rough draft thrown up there just to have something, kinda cleaned up some things so it makes a little more sense. but I did have a question.

Do you think maybe restricting the majority/all of the site to registered members would help? maybe If i had a better worded welcome letter? I don't know if that would put most people off or would help get them registered then reviewing something isnt such a chore? Any thoughts?

[AlexNewell]

It is a great idea to have reviews with no affiliate links so you can be more impartial - that might be a solid USP you can trumpet.

So then you'd have to monetise it with Adsense and or CPA offers

A registered membership would be much smaller and harder to earn clicks from.

On the other hand a paid membership may be the best for you - you'd have to get a juicy enough offer together to tempt people - mostly beginners to subscribe.

Not easy!

[Misterhippo]

yea i actually dabbled with the paid membership for a little bit, something super small like $1-5 a month. I'm not a huge fan of adsense but it could help. Maybe ill just use adsense while I grow and when I hit a more respectable amount of reviews/members i can really focus on monetization. maybe even adding affiliate links back to the site? I don't know if people would be put off by that but maybe if i have their trust so far they wont really care? I couldn't charge a subscription now anyway so maybe I should just focus on traffic and not really money

[AlexNewell]

"so maybe I should just focus on traffic and not really money "

I reckon there's one thing to get right first. Even before focusing on traffic- and that's the basic concept of the site.

You need a workable design before you put in all the work to drive traffic, because traffic is easy - it is getting the basics right that is a whole load of trouble. But throwing a shed load of traffic at a site that does not quite work is a huge waste of effort and time and money.

Maybe give some thought to joining us in the Elite section of the forum and get loads more help - including direct help from Lynn.

Have a good read of her blog at http://www.clicknewz.com/ too!

- there's a huge amount of help there.

See if you can get to the free webinars held at noon eastern nearly every Tuesday.

So yeah I think you are right not to focus on monetisation. You have to do the hard work of working out what you offer, how it is different from what other people offer and how to make that stand out in some way.

Try looking at other people's sites - here at the forum. Explore the signature files and you may get some ideas for improvements.

This is not easy stuff and many don't do it. But the people who do it are the ones that make it.

Just keep trucking!

:-)

[retta719]

Also getting the blank feeling on the home page over here. Also, everything is centered and I'm not sure why. I'd go with left or right standard justification for your text. I like the review system idea, very cool.