Check out the overhaul/redesign of my site/critique my emotional plea

Status
Not open for further replies.
C

CLKeenan

Banned
Jun 24, 2006
2,506
14
0
Boston, MA
Hey guys,

As most of you know, I run a high school resource website. For the past year, I've been in the process of overhauling it completely and here's what I've come up with:

Course-Notes.Org - Outlines, Notes, Vocabulary, Essays, DBQs, Practice Quizzes and much more! |

Note: This is still a staging site so there is still bugs that need to be fixed, tweaks that need to be made and content that needs to be added, but the design and functionality for the most part is all there.

One of the new features of the site is a very well integrated Amazon store. In order to reduce the 'omg course-notes.org is going corporate on us' edge, I wrote out this little emotional plea to buy from the site. Its pretty funny if you ask me, but I value your feedback as well

Check it out here: Since when do we have a store?! | Course-Notes.Org - Outlines, Notes, Vocabulary, Essays, DBQs, Practice Quizzes and much more!

Thanks for your help
-Chris
 


1. Students don't know what time-shares are, drop that line and use another example.
2. Don't tell them you teamed with amazon to get a commission, tell them Amazon teamed up with you and is offering discounts and deals on select products and texts simply because they value the users of your site. Don't go into specifics and don't provide examples.
3. Don't tell them to buy from you or you'll turn off the site. Tell them that the more they utilize the store, the more they'll save on supplies/etc. Make them need you, don't make them want to help you.

Just my 2 cents. I'd rethink the entire approach.
 
I think we're just going to have to disagree on this one:

1.) I would say a lot of high school students know what time shares are. They aren't stupid. I knew what a time share was when I was in 3rd grade. Lots of families have them so they will familiar with the concept. If not, these are AP students so they can use their context clues to figure it out.

2.) I'm going to hazard a guess and say that a lot of the school supply purchases are made using mommy's and daddy's credit card so they could care less about the prices as long as they aren't grossly different in comparison because it isn't coming out of their back pocket.

3.) These students aren't dumb. They know that they can go directly to amazon.com and get the same prices as they would through using my site. If they don't know it, they'll find out accidentally. Most users are very fond of the website and I think they would be much more likely to purchase through my store than amazon directly if they knew it would benefit the site, at no increased cost to them. Back when I didn't have any ads on the site and I wasn't making money off of it, the site grew too big for me to have it hosted on a cheap hosting plan anymore. I put up a story on the frontpage saying that I'd appreciate any donations to keep the site going and within a week, I had enough money for the entire years worth of hosting. Like I said, people are fond of the site and want to help it. I'll obviously never shut it down, it was meant to be a memorable joke that would remind them in the future to buy through the site instead of amazon directly.



Thanks for the feedback none-the-less though
 
Just to be clear, I think the site is super cool and really like it, I wasn't critiquing the link you sent, just saying what I would do. I think it's a really creative and innovative idea and I just threw in my 2 cents! I don't necessarily disagree with what you wrote, just submitted my ideas. Hope you post when the site's done, am looking forward to seeing it.
 
CLKeenan said:
One of the new features of the site is a very well integrated Amazon store. In order to reduce the 'omg course-notes.org is going corporate on us' edge, I wrote out this little emotional plea to buy from the site. Its pretty funny if you ask me, but I value your feedback as well

Check it out here: Since when do we have a store?! | Course-Notes.Org - Outlines, Notes, Vocabulary, Essays, DBQs, Practice Quizzes and much more!

Thanks for your help
-Chris
Click to expand...

I wouldn't have even added the explanation of the store. Maybe it's cool that you did. I like the look of the site. So, most of the users are under 18, or is this college as well? I honestly wouldn't be turned off if you had the calculator I needed right there so I didn't have to look for it, but maybe that's just me.

Best of luck!
 
CLKeenan said:
I think we're just going to have to disagree on this one:


Thanks for the feedback none-the-less though
Click to expand...

One other comment: You can get the ROMs for most scientific calculators and embed them (java applet) in your pages. May make a nice premium feature if you can do it under the radar of Texas Instruments.

$5/month for a student to have access to a virtual TI-83 that works the exact same as a physical calculator would be pretty easy to get. I've thought of doing an entire site like this, with a few dozen calculators, etc.
 
bb_wolfe said:
One other comment: You can get the ROMs for most scientific calculators and embed them (java applet) in your pages. May make a nice premium feature if you can do it under the radar of Texas Instruments.

$5/month for a student to have access to a virtual TI-83 that works the exact same as a physical calculator would be pretty easy to get. I've thought of doing an entire site like this, with a few dozen calculators, etc.
Click to expand...

Oooh- I don't know about charging for it, but thats a pretty sweet idea. I might have to take a look into that.

Thanks for the feedback guys
 
Ok just my opinions...no sand in the vag plz.

1. I had to look for the main menu. The gray on gray made it a bitch to find.

3. I'd ditch the "Top Users" column at least until you actually have users. Right now it's the newsbot and the admin so it makes it look dead.

4. Are the grey boxes with the course and the description in them just examples or what? Why are the descriptions so long? Why aren't the other classes in there? Ignore this one if you were just using them as filler on purpose.

5. I'm assuming you're going to use that "Back to School" banner for something cool later? I wouldn't use it as an ad, because then you'd have too many.

6. There should be something somewhere that screams "WE CAN HELP YOU". If I glanced at this site It would take me a while to figure out what it's actually for.
 
ChrisS said:
Ok just my opinions...no sand in the vag plz.

1. I had to look for the main menu. The gray on gray made it a bitch to find.

3. I'd ditch the "Top Users" column at least until you actually have users. Right now it's the newsbot and the admin so it makes it look dead.

4. Are the grey boxes with the course and the description in them just examples or what? Why are the descriptions so long? Why aren't the other classes in there? Ignore this one if you were just using them as filler on purpose.

5. I'm assuming you're going to use that "Back to School" banner for something cool later? I wouldn't use it as an ad, because then you'd have too many.

6. There should be something somewhere that screams "WE CAN HELP YOU". If I glanced at this site It would take me a while to figure out what it's actually for.
Click to expand...

No sand in my (lack of a) vag. Don't worry. I appreciate the feedback. Here are my responses.

1.) Haven't heard this one from anyone else before. I even asked a peson who I know that is color blind to test the site for me. Maybe I'll try experimenting with orange or blue for the nav bar links?

3.) I actually have 75,000 users on the live version of my site, so this will field will be populated to the fullest extent once the new site goes live.

4.) Right now they just being used as filler. I'll probably have random/new articles posted to the front page on a daily/weekly basis.

5.) Back to school block will be a flash rotator display of featured articles. I just need to fill it with some actual content.

6.) Hmm... I do see what you're saying. Maybe a content piece that is always at the top of the posts that briefly describes what services we provide could do the trick.


As far as the centered/horizontal scrolling, you would only have to scroll left to view content if you have a resolution less than 1024 width, which according to GAnalytics... less than 10% of my users do which I am ok with. The skyscraper ad is to the right of the page so it doesn't take of content space. It takes a little while to get used to, but I actually like it now that I've been seeing it for so long.
 
Looking at it on my laptop with FF3 I still have to side scroll.

Side scrolling = satan's sperm = no damn good


edited to add: not sure if it's just the resolution - I can't remember the last site I had to side-scroll on, so I think it's you r site. I would highly recommend you fix that.
 
Thanks bud. Its come a LONGGGGG way from where it originally started back in December of 2002. When I first created it, I used MS FrontPage :(
 
CLKeenan said:
When you side scroll, what are you missing? If its just the 160x600 skyscraper ad, Im not worried.
Click to expand...

It's not about what you're missing, it's just annoying as hell.

I'm not trying to bag on your site - the concept and content are very good. Don't forget, I offered to buy it off you before :D

But you asked for a review of the new look, so I gave it. Sideways scrolling is a deal breaker on any site from my point of view. You should be able to get the look you want and avoid the horizontal scroll from within Drupal. Anyway, my 2 cents.
 
Eh, I guess we're just going to disagree on this one :) I do appreciate the feedback though!

I've fixed up the flash rotator block so thats working now. One of the articles (The Secrets to Having a Successful School Year | Course-Notes.Org - Outlines, Notes, Vocabulary, Essays, DBQs, Practice Quizzes and much more!) was written by one of our members here (for free) - I plan on using him for more work. Check out his services here:
http://www.wickedfire.com/sell-buy-...ecial-2-cents-per-word-samples-avialable.html
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom