Hey! my peeps. How una dey oh. Happy new year to everyone!

Here's my website( http://www.jacetcards.com ) that Ive been working on for a while now. I know if there is any place to get the "BEAT DOWN" on this site, then its has to be Nairaland. Any Objections?


Shout out to Yawa, dhtml, logik and all my other fellow Oga's (GURU's), make una no vex if i no mention una name oh . I proceed to leave the stage while you hammer the site inside out.

I'll be waiting on the wings though, to answer some likely questions that will pop up. Much appreciation to all constructive critics.

P.S I would also like to know how it appears on your mobile devices (blackberry, iphone, HTC ipads etc)

Aww c'mon guys, help me out here, will you?

Site looks busy as content is everywhere, with no clear demarcation. Also, you need to learn to indent your code, for better readability. Color scheme is fine though.

yawa-ti-de:

Site looks busy as content is everywhere, with no clear demarcation. Also, you need to learn to indent your code, for better readability. Color scheme is fine though.

I guess that's the characteristics of an internet marketing website.

yawa-ti-de:

Site looks busy as content is everywhere, with no clear demarcation. Also, you need to learn to indent your code, for better readability. Color scheme is fine though.

Thank you for taking time out to look at the site.

Quickly, i'd like to understand what you mean by " no clear demarcation" and on what browser you are viewing the site.

As for the code indenting, I know my coding's a lill bit rusty but will work on that. ( purposely stripped of the comments so as to reduce the page size).

afam4eva:

I guess that's the characteristics of an internet marketing website.

GBAM! Thanks a lot!

Its look exactly like a blog.
Is it a blog?, if not, the scroll is too much, page height with of "700px" will do.

Cool, Nice concept

Jangoreal:

Its look exactly like a blog.
Is it a blog?, if not, the scroll is too much, page height with of "700px" will do.

No, it's not a blog. The home page is just my sales letter and i had to adjust the page width so that it can comfortably appear on
any screen resolution without distortion. Still working on other browsers though and Thank you so much for the insight.

dexed:

Cool, Nice concept

Thanks , i appreciate.

It means I can't tell the intro from the body. I also can't make out what the site is about, again, because of no clear demarcation. Maybe a few photos would have helped. As per "that is what a blog is about", I respectfully disagree as I have seen better.

Comments are not the only thing that add to page weight. Besides, if you are that concerned, you should use PHP (or backend language of your choice) comments and not html comments. Also, in the name of readability and maintainability, I don't mind have a large page. Trust me, it will help with reducing your blood pressure in the future.

Happy coding!

find this internet marketing company that is offering free site review and complete market analysis for your site
the good thing is this facility is totally free so if you are new website or small business website owner i highly recommend you to have a free site review by these guys and see by yourself  awesome results

http://www.the-internet-marketing-company.com/
hope this will also work for you
good luck

yawa-ti-de:

It means I can't tell the intro from the body. I also can't make out what the site is about, again, because of no clear demarcation. Maybe a few photos would have helped. As per "that is what a blog is about", I respectfully disagree as I have seen better.

Comments are not the only thing that add to page weight. Besides, if you are that concerned, you should use PHP (or backend language of your choice) comments and not html comments. Also, in the name of readability and maintainability, I don't mind have a large page. Trust me, it will help with reducing your blood pressure in the future.

Happy coding!

Once again, thanks for the comments!

Quickly if you land on the home page and look at the title, it tells you what the site is about and the heading tag is the first part of the page which clearly has a "question type headline "asking the customer if this is what they are looking for, before they proceed.

The other pages as well have title tags related to what the site is about as well as appearing in the search engines based on the keyword i used "buying of recharge cards'

I know internet readers' are in various groups from Casual to Scanners, Professionals, Novices , Inquistive and a few others and with that in mind, i had to make sure that i got my ''Target Markets"' attention (even though I could not manage to get yours) by following up with a referral and quickly going into the hard sell of '3 simple steps to buy the product'

Pls note that i do very much appreciate your feedback, but i just wanted to highlight, from my own standpoint why I designed the site in this manner. I believe this is an interesting case of exchanging" Positive views"

Once again, i must clarify that http://www.jacetcards.com is not a blog. It's a site for selling recharge cards, pretty straight-forward. the blog is on this url http://www.jacetcards.com/onlinebizblog and Im yet to properly work on it.

As per the coding, Im a pure html and css coder, but my php's coming up pretty fine.

Thanks a lot and I hope to take a lot of positives from your feedback.

gia9211:

find this internet marketing company that is offering free site review and complete market analysis for your site
the good thing is this facility is totally free so if you are new website or small business website owner i highly recommend you to have a free site review by these guys and see by yourself  awesome results

http://www.the-internet-marketing-company.com/
hope this will also work for you
good luck

Thanks for the info, appreciate. Will check it out ASAP.

No problem.

I am a scanner and a site turns me on or off in a few seconds. As a scanner, when I landed on the home page, I didn't see titles, I just saw a lot of text and I couldn't figure it out.

I will cut you some slack and assume you did your research and decided to target the non-scanners. Other than that, there is a good book on usability that I highly recommend you read, "Don't Make Me Think! A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability" by Steve Krug, 2ed. This book is so good that I recommend you borrow money to buy it, if you can't find a free one.

Good luck!

yawa-ti-de:

No problem.

I am a scanner and a site turns me on or off in a few seconds. As a scanner, when I landed on the home page, I didn't see titles, I just saw a lot of text and I couldn't figure it out.

I will cut you some slack and assume you did your research and decided to target the non-scanners. Other than that, there is a good book on usability that I highly recommend you read, "Don't Make Me Think! A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability" by Steve Krug, 2ed. This book is so good that I recommend you borrow money to buy it, if you can't find a free one.

Good luck!

The bolded green words are right on point.

Hahhaha , Ill try and borrow a few bucks like you advised Lol!

I just knew you had to bring it on, and I'm sure glad you did. guess its back to more research for me.

Couldn't appreciate your feedback more, Cheers!

Let's drag this out a little longer since you want to be technical

Based on your research, what percentage of your potential customers are non-scanners? If it's anything over 10%, I think you need to consider them. Besides, even if it is less, have you don enough research to know if the scanners have the most or the least cash to spend? Remember, you want to reach as many people as possible.

Another good book:
"Long Tail, The, Revised and Updated Edition: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More" by Chris Anderson

yawa-ti-de:

Let's drag this out a little longer since you want to be technical

Based on your research, what percentage of your potential customers are non-scanners? If it's anything over 10%, I think you need to consider them. Besides, even if it is less, have you don enough research to know if the scanners have the most or the least cash to spend? Remember, you want to reach as many people as possible.

Another good book:
"Long Tail, The, Revised and Updated Edition: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More" by Chris Anderson

Well said!

Okay, so technical it is. Firstly, I've actually read "Long Tail", amazing book i must confess and its an essential part of my Library.

My research actually took 3 months and the major guiding principle i live by is "Removing Self Doubts" I beilive we all have one valid point or the other, but we also need to give our plans and ideas an oppurtunity to mature. Working with the End in mind is very crucial and the minute you start waiving from side to side based on other opinions without being able to defend your original thought is Suicidal.

I believe you quite frankly agree with me on that. But nevertheles without going into to much details (For NOW), What i simply did was to make sure that my Target customers would have to read the First couple of lines to take advantage of the resources on the website. This method does not hold true for many a websites, but it all depends on your marketing strategy Online(social networks, referrals etc and offline(business cards, posters, word of mouth, text messages, blackberry groups and chats,

In essence im trying to build more of a customer relationship that will lead to return visits and customer loyalty. Not just the flashy splash pages and compelling sign ups . Eventually ill still offer newsletters and updates to my customers but i need to first build loyalty and intergrity which takes time. It doent mean there arent any other freebies or things of interest, it just means you have to make an effort to look around,

Even sites that offer free downloads at times request that you fill a survey or take part in one thing or the other, some even ask for an upload in exchnage, though not all.

The are also my competitors for me to have one eye on, as i have to be different in order to stand out. Believe me, I've studied the process on other websites that sell recharge cards and found out that their process are rather similar, (obviously, i need to be more creative so that my style does not look like a copycat thing and knowing my resources, i also have to be realistic in my approach) procedures of signing up and obtaining the pins by adding to carts an all that.

"Purple Cow" by Seth Godin (my personal favorite internet marketer of this present age) was one of the key influences on my overall plan for the website. Amongst many other things, But in the end i beleive there is need for an idea to be stable and mature, if that does not happen in a couple of months, then its time to start turning things around.

At the end of it all, the percentage of non-scanners that constitute my target market is well above 35%, i may be wrong but from the things I mentioned earlier, thats my estimate.

Phew!!!

Over to you!

yawa-ti-de:

Let's drag this out a little longer since you want to be technical

Based on your research, what percentage of your potential customers are non-scanners? If it's anything over 10%, I think you need to consider them. Besides, even if it is less, have you don enough research to know if the scanners have the most or the least cash to spend? Remember, you want to reach as many people as possible.

Another good book:
"Long Tail, The, Revised and Updated Edition: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More" by Chris Anderson

Well said

I wont be able to say everything on one page but at last i get achance to get itno technicalities with Yawa, what a priviledge?

I made a post earlier and was banned by the spambots, anyway i have sent a reply to the bots to please unban me oh, Please oh!

my research was quite extensive and took about 3 months, at this point the principle on which i thrived was "Erasing all self doubts"

"Purple Cow" by Seth Godin(one of the best marketers of our time in my own opinion) was an insrtumental in my choice of Site Architecture, Offline and Online Marketing amongst many other factors.

A neccesary eye on my competitors also showed that most were requiring people to sign up with logins and passwords before they can start taking advantageof their services, Going that same line would be adding to the total sum of look-alike sites in that niche, without being able to allow my own idea to mature and grow into the end result i had in mind,

The customer loyalty gain through hard selling by putting up splash screens and quickly offering free ebooks for patronage after signing up was also very much around and i just had to createawork around the norm by making sure that my target customers actually have to read a copule of lines before decidng if this is what they are looking for or not,

Again this was at tough decision and goes contrary to status quo, but ive backed it up by also promoting the site offline so that potential customers can really understand what the site is all about, You will agree with me that "Return Customers" are the best but the hardest to get, You simply need to build a relationship with them,

All in all with the basic research all factors considered.(even though i may have missed some valuable criterias) i would say the percentage of my potential clients that are non scanners are over 35%,

Phew!

Over to you, Cheers!