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RMW - Rate my website

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Shaggy365
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RMW - Rate my website

Post by Shaggy365 »

Greetings fellow FISO-type people. Not been around much lately, but the reason is I've been putting together a web-site. Some of you may know that I produce choir music for people to practice with while at home, in the car, on the bus, walking the dog, or whatever.

The reason for me posting this here is I would like some constructive (obviously) criticism, and thoughts/ideas that I can use. I've previously listed all the mp3 songs on bandcamp.com but all that used to happen was people would listen all the way through, and not actually buy anything. Now I've got my own web-site, I've put on a 15-second sample so the listener can hear what it sounds like, and then decide if they wish to purchase.

I'm in the process of putting in an opening-sale, so down to 50p per track which will last for a couple of weeks, but it's taken me most of the day going through all 300+ tracks. Already looked at using wowcher, but not sure if it'll really work.

Anyway, here's the website and just in case anyone wants to order anything, I've put in a coupon called FISO20 which gives 20% off.

Thanks in anticipation,
Shaggy

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WilBert
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Re: RMW - Rate my website

Post by WilBert »

I love the look and feel of your website, the font, the ease of transition and the colours etc. The concept is good too, excellent job bud.

That said I think your front page could be much better. On my screen it looks like this when I land on your homepage
cats-crop.jpg
This is where I think your site needs serious work. The landing page is so important and must burst information into the viewer's brain in seconds. There are a number of theories around article and website design. Here are some links that might help you

Lazy z - an old fashion one these days but for the traditional audience you're aiming for it may be something to consider.
http://webdesign.tutsplus.com/articles/ ... bdesign-28" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

There are others around like the classic inverted L - some info here
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=pTc5 ... gn&f=false" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

A popular one at the moment is the F pattern
http://www.vanseodesign.com/web-design/ ... n-layouts/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://limecuda.com/f-or-z-pattern-in-web-design/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Some additional thoughts, maximising your revenue by having more than one income stream - advertising, selling a pdf of the arrangement, getting a person to sing the bats individually etc.

I'd also think about gift vouchers linked in with charity gift-aiding. Need to think this through a little but something like - if someone makes a gift-aid to a church through you by voucher you would sort the gift-aid and give them a discount. So, for example, a £10 gift voucher would be worth £15 to the church.

Is there an angle you could consider with the Welsh male voice choirs? If you need any contacts or translations let me know. Good luck.
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Mo Bot
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Re: RMW - Rate my website

Post by Mo Bot »

I struggled to actually get on your website. My work's laptop is still on windows XP so that might have something to do with it.

I assume that when it loads up, you have a list of singers with values assigned. You then pick five within budget and you get points for the number of times they are played on the radio? :wink:

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crispybits
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Re: RMW - Rate my website

Post by crispybits »

I echo the comments about the front page already made. If I was just going by the impression I got from that then I wouldn't rate the website highly (which is a shame because clicking around the rest of it is smooth and easy to navigate.)

A few other constructive points:

Blog - tear down the one about being a newbie website builder and remove it from sight asap. I don't know if this is something that you do as part of the tutorials to make the website using the wordpress site creator or if it's created automatically when the website is built but the last thing you want is something anywhere on your site that says "Hi, I'm an amateur!". You want it to have a much more professional feel (or at least if it was my website I'd want that). Try writing a press release talking about the business launch, your 50% off sale and anything current (as in don't just replicate the "About" section either)

Contact - You can normally buy an email address that will match your domain name, if that's not prohibitively expensive do it. Hotmail email addresses are great for personal stuff from friends or subscribing to mailing lists, but they're not great for giving off a polished business frontage. This might be worth a read: http://en.support.wordpress.com/domains/add-email/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I'd also build a page that explains how the recordings are delivered. I clicked around and got right to the point where it was about to ask me for payment, and I had no idea if I was about to receive an email of the files, or if they would be burned onto a CD and posted to me or what. (common sense says I'm going to get an email, but it never hurts to make sure this information is prominent)

Finally, have you got any satisfied customers who have written back to you to say how helpful the product is, or any comments from choirs or choirmasters you used during product testing that speak positively of the product and how it helped them? I think a testimonials page with just 2-3 good reviews of your product would be valuable to people coming to your website for the first time and thinking "yeah OK this sounds like a good idea, but does it really work?"

To finish on a positive, as I said in my first paragraph the site itself is very smooth and easy to navigate and I do like the simple design and lack of clutter.

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Shaggy365
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Re: RMW - Rate my website

Post by Shaggy365 »

Greetings y'all,

Well the 3 years on my web-site has come to an end. I didn't make any money from it, but I'm glad I did it, otherwise I'd have always been wondering. I say I lost money, but if you include one-off special orders, I made money, not a lot but still ended up slightly ahead.

I've decided that since there are lots of web-sites out there that I've been trying to compete with, the only thing I can do is give my files away and have a donate button, just in case anyone feels the urge. I've changed all the links on my youtube site and changed my listing on all the choir sites I could get on to.

If anyone could suggest some-where else that I could promote my site (or the sister-site), I would be most grateful.

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