Site Review Request

[Lynn Terry]

The main problem that I see with this site is that it is already outdated. Using the year in the domain name, as well as on the site, is going to pose a problem for any future sales...

[jkgourmet]

Of course, I agree with Lynn's comments.

But even during the 2009 Holiday sales period, I'd bounce away quickly, after seeing the header. The idea you used in the header was cute, but the graphics didn't come out properly - the text overlays the image, etc. If I saw that, I would look elsewhere.

[russell]

I can view the site from where im at at the moment, but even though the domain has somewhat expired, you may still be able to get away with squeezing something out of it, by giving is a new name like "Hot Online Toys" or something, and giving people what they want.

With that many visitors, they obviously werent finding what they came to the site for.

Were they looking for a link the the cheapest hot toy, and they couldnt find it? Once you can figure out what they are coming to your site for, you may be able to sell them what they want.

But, at the end of the day, do you have a long term direction. Are you just using the site to learn some stuff from? Is it worth putting more energy into something that may not come back to life? Should you decide to learn from it, fail early, and use your knowlege on your next project?

Not to discourage you, just some things to think about.

[jkgourmet]

Ellis, what keywords was it ranking for? If it was "hot Christmas Toys 2009", I'm not sure that is really representative of what you accomplished.

[cindybidar]

I looked through several posts - probably 10 in all - and only found one single link to an Amazon product. I saw a lot of videos, but didn't see any links to actually buy the stuff. Am I missing something?

[jkgourmet]

Ellis, I agree that the links are hard to see - orange is not a standard color. For that matter, I find the font a bit small (but I say this quite often when I look at other sites. Must be that I'm getting old.)

You might also add links to the images.

[cindybidar]

Yup, the orange links are difficult to see. I would also avoid using bit.ly for link cloaking for a couple of reasons: first, because it looks suspicious to surfers, and second, because if bit.ly vanishes your links will no longer work. Okay for transient stuff like Twitter, but not for a permanent page.

Also, on your top post you have a list of Webkinz. I would make each item a link to that page in Amazon.

Hope that helps!

[angienewton]

I think a bit more work on keyword research and SEO would be great and as far as banners they don't convert as well as text links so I would not recommend many of those if any. I don't think you really want to use the same keyword phrase for so many posts. Each post is a page and needs it's own main keyword phrase although you could have a secondary one if you really wanted.

And of course you want to add content on a consistent basis too!

Hope this helps!

[Lady Hawk]

I've been reading through all of the posts, here. I wanted to address one thing that ellis mentioned, text size. How does one change text size, is it easy? I have no HTML experience.

[Lynn Terry]

I've been reading through all of the posts, here. I wanted to address one thing that ellis mentioned, text size. How does one change text size, is it easy? I have no HTML experience.

On a blog, it is usually in the main CSS file. That one file contains all of the elements used throughout the blog such as colors and fonts and sizes.

You want to copy that file and keep the original code as a back-up just in case you mess something up (like me lol)... and then you can change things in that code such as sizes and see how it comes out on the screen.