wharfedalemediagroup wrote:
the reason why the basic adverts cost so little is because the phrase goes what you pay for is what you gey im afraid if hrm plasterers want to pay a bit more they will get an d like d.cavanagh plasterers which is the difference between a good and bad ad!
I understand why you say that but you need to also see that, from a visitors point of view, ugly little ads like that make your site look bad and so ultimately it reflects badly on you.
I offer you the following suggestions to help improve the site, take them or leave them!
- Replace your current Wordpress theme with one that has a two column format as the current three column format leaves too much on the page making it too busy. Have a look at
www.studiopress.com, www.ithemes.com and
www.woothemes.com for decent premium themes at competitive prices (some are even free). Some of those themes are geared up to video based sites, some aren't - but WP gives you a lot of flexibility in this regard.
- When someone clicks on an advert, they should be taken to either the advertiser's website (in a new window perhaps) or to a page on your website telling us more about the advertiser. Not the same photo that they've clicked on. You've got 3rd party ads for PayPal and Virgin Media but you're not going to earn a bean off them unless you send the visitor to the right website when they click on them!
- Don't bother with a forum just yet, you need to build up your traffic levels before you even try with a forum. And when you do, host the forum on your own site and brand it accordingly rather than relying on a 3rd party cheapo/free one!
- Instead of having fixed advertising spots and leaving them blank or repeating the same advert, just have one or two spaces and rotate the adverts with each page refresh. Then everytime someone clicks on a page it doesn't look the same and it keeps it interesting. You can get Wordpress plugins to do this on a basic level and in the future if it gets big you can use something like OpenX.
- Add in a few photos of the area around the site to brighten it up a bit.
- Slim down your top menu structure a bit until you've got more content worth reading.
- Employ a bit of "design" on your adverts. The one for MB Decor looks terrible because you've just put a white box with some black text in it over the picture. An alternative would have been to introduce a 50% transparent grey box along the bottom and to then write over that with the name/phone number. Also there's no description of what MB Decor do. Are they decorators? Interior designers? A furniture shop? I've no idea. I suppose this links in with my comment about about clicking on the adverts.
- The moving adverts are very distracting, I'd stick with static for now if I were you.
- You have a big news bulletin on the front page, it would be good if there was a little bit of text above or below the video telling me when it was last updated and what the main stories are. Teasers to make me click the video.
- As already suggested, perhaps consider a pictorial backdrop for the videos. As cheesy as it is, a Cow and Calf pic would be lovely.
- Video is nice and modern but you do need a lot of regularly updated and unique content to get Google Love (!). So do work on that.
- Put the adverts in widget boxes just like the stuff in the right hand column, this will make them look better.
- Promote your site in local publications like On Your Doorstep. If not get some leaflets/flyers printed and distribute them around shops/houses in the area.
I'm trying to be constructive to help you improve the site in my eyes because I think it's a good idea, I hope you can take it as such - ultimately it's your site so you can take them or leave them.
As before, best of luck
Forum
