quizking wrote:Currently have a movie poll running, trying to engage with the customer
Hi Steve,
I'm a rare visitor to this forum and unfortunately missed this thread until now. I both design and develop websites by hand, so don't have much experience with the WYSIWYG website builders, but I can give you some general advice that may help when you decide to give the site a refresh.
The first tip is to ask yourself 'who is the website aimed at?'. Is it aimed at random people who like quizzes, people looking for a quiz local to them, people who have taken part in your quizzes or is it aimed at people who want to hire you to run a quiz? From looking at your site, it could be all of those things. That's not a bad thing, necessarily, but your site will be more successful if you can present it in a way that each of those groups of visitors can find the information they need quickly and easily. Grouping things into sections might help, with the homepage presenting the most important part of that section in a box or under a heading.
An example is that you have a page called "News & Quizzes". To me, the two are different topics and as such deserve their own separate pages. Sectionalising content is not just about giving something it's own page or it's own little box, it's about making something well ordered and neatly packaged. The structure of your site should make it fairly obvious where to find something, whereas at the moment it's a bit hap-hazard.
The second tip is all about 'the message'. The homepage needs to leave the visitor with a clear idea of what the site is about (which yours does, but could be better), but more importantly it needs to present that message in a clear and easy to interpret way. Your homepage isn't bad, but it could be a lot easier for different users to find the information that they have come to the site for. For example, you could start off the homepage by giving a clear statement of what the site contains, perhaps using bullet points, something like:
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Are you a quiz fan?
We run regular quizzes for pubs in the Central London area. These include:
- Sundays: The Lyttleton Arms, Mornington Crescent (click here for more details)
- Mondays: The North Pole... (more details)
- Tuesdays: Boadicea... (more details)
- Wednesdays (1st and 3rd of every month): Theodore Bullfrog... (more details)
Are you looking for a quiz provider?
We also provide quizzes for:
- Pubs and Bars
- Corporate Events
- Parties
- Charity Nights
Click here for more details of all of the quiz services we can offer.
Looking for the quiz results?
We publish the latest scores from all of our quizzes to allow those taking part to keep track of their progress. Click here for the scoreboards.
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You might find that by thinking of who the site is aimed at and the message you want to convey, that certain parts of the site are far less important than others. For example the scoreboards may be important to you, but if they are only important to two or three of your regular quiz players, perhaps it doesn't need to be so prominent on the homepage and something like the forum or the polls need to be given that prominence instead?
Anyway, basically the key is to be clear of who the website is for and what message you want to tell them.
I'm sure I can think of some more tips but I'll leave you to ponder on those for the time being!