Business networking site - review request

[Elisor]

Hi All,

We're looking for feedback on http://www.m4gnet.com. It is a business networking website. As mentioned in the stickied post at the top of the page here's the main info:

General - the site is effectively in beta. It's fully running and working, however we're still building new modules (business networks is being added at the moment) and are looking for feedback from members. We have three more modules slated for implementation over the next 3 months. The modules are:

1. Web directory - opt-in option for users to show their details on the front end of the site in a web directory.
2. Products/services matchup - will replace the system we have now in the forum (that's temporary)
3. Recommendations - ability to recommend companies and write up good/bad experiences with them.

To see the site you have to be logged in. If you do join up to test and later want to be deleted please email me at admin AT m4gnet.com and I'll be happy to remove you.

The site is free to use at the moment. We do plan to move to a pay-usage model, proabably based on paid access to certain parts of the site, with the main/basic parts being free to use. We're still evaluating this though based on how the site's used and how we can improve it.

As a company we're based in Dubai, UAE. The site is hosted in the UK and we're targeting a worldwide audience.

We would really like feedback on the following areas:

1. Would you join this website? Why? What influenced the decision?
2. How easy and intuitive is it to use? Do you have suggestions on how to make it better?
3. Which section of the site would you use the most? Why?
4. What features do you think should be added to the site (keeping in mind what's slated to be added in the next few months)? Why?
5. Is there anything you think is useless and can be removed? Why?
6. Do you have any SEO feedback?
7. Is the "Invite your friend" section easy to use? Would you use it? How can we encourage members to invite their own friends into the site?

If completed:
How long has the site been up? - It's been active about 6 weeks with 412 members as of the time of posting.

Optimisation
Do you have incoming links? - Yes. We have links from some of our own sites plus a link exchange. The URL has also been mentioned in several forums.
What keywords are you targeting? - business networking, online networking, online business, business website. The optimisation has not been done thoroughly, we're currently looking at ways to improve it.

Do you want your code reviewed for errors or improvements?
- Yes, provided it's constructive criticism The site is coded in .NET 2.0 with SQL 2005 as its DB. The forum is VB 3.6 which uses php + mysql. It's hosted on a UK-based dedicated server which has 10 other sites on it.
Marketing
Who is your target audience? Think about:
Gender - Both sexes.
Nationality - International, predominantly English-speaking. However we do have a number of Chinese on the site as well as other nationalities whose principal language is not English.
Age Range - 25-65.
Income/Education level - N/A provided they're active in business.
Likes/Dislikes - N/A

Why is your site different from sites selling/offering similar info/goods/services? Why will someone want to do business you?
- We are one of the few sites who offer pure business networking, as opposed to other business networking sites who also offer social networking.

What is the purpose of the site? (inform, sell, online community, support B&M business, contact info only, etc) - allow business people to network together to increase their contacts and increase business.

Design
Do you want design suggestions? - Yes. The current design is not SEO-friendly however I personally like it very much as it's fairly unique.

The site is http://www.m4gnet.com. Any and all constructive feedback is warmly welcomed. If you do test the site, thanks in advance

Paul.

[Ian J]

Originally Posted by Elisor

To see the site you have to be logged in. If you do join up to test and later want to be deleted please email me at admin AT m4gnet.com and I'll be happy to remove you.

In order to make life easier I have registered the name Teneric with the password Teneric so anyone wishing to have a look and review the site needs not join

[peterjhale]

Welcome to the forum

There doesn't seem to be enough "what's in it for me" stuff to entice me to join. Is it free? Is there ever a cost? How many people are online -- if you look at eacademy it's obvious there are a lot of folks online at any one time.

Additionally, what's the difference between your site and an open free forum like this ?

[fisicx]

Hi Elisor and welcome to the forums.

Having a logon as your welcome message will no doubt turn away many potential visitors, it ewould be far better to allow access to the public areas so visitors can see what is on offer. And if you want to get listed on the search engines you need to allow the robots to index the site -which means getting rid of the login.

I can't actually see the point of the site. If I need to find a business I use a search engine. If I want to do business with them I talk to them and their clients. I am sure that many people do 'networking' but it's not for me.

Anyway, after a few minutes experimenting I gave up. I couldn't find anything useful and became very confused by the navigation.

I was most concerned about you link exchanging - you need to cease and desist immediately or the will be penalised (read the google guidelines).

You are going to have to do a huge amount of work if you want to get indexed and ranked. The site has almost no indexable contnet. The anchor text and URLs will put the brakes on the robots as will the lack of unique titles, descroptions and main header.

And finally, who is vetting the member's details. Is there any validation? At the moment it looks like a bunch of opportunists looking to feather their own nests - I looked the top network and saw a huge list of unrelated members (what's the connection between software development and ceramic tiles?). You can invite who you like to join a network but if the network is just a list of members then all the incentives to join 'like minded people' will dissapear.

It is the credibility of the networks that will make the site viable. I wish you lots of luck but it's not for me (don't really need an accountant in Doha).

[Elisor]

Thanks for the feedback guys. It's constructive and that's what I'm looking for, even though it's painful

We identified the whole "what is this" as an issue, which is why there's three seperate pages to cover what the site is, how to use it and an FAQ (the links are on the top right). The fact both of you are coming back with the same questions means that's not working.

To cover your comments/questions:

1. We do a lot of networking out here; business group meetings, offline networking etc. m4gNET.com was conceived as an online version of that. In this day and age why should you spend hours travelling to and from a networking meeting, plus only be able to network 1-2 times a month, when you should be able to do it online? That's the theory - I need to make sure it's explained better tho.

2. Number of ppl online - I've held off on doing this because it's still a new site, so to be blunt there's never going to be a lot of people on it at one time. If a counter shows no-one on, or just 2 ppl on, IMHO it's going to be a turn-off. Do you guys agree with that?

3. Difference between it and a forum - Amount of info on an individual who's part of your network, can message individuals or networks, can post your own news or events, can now form business networks a la Orkut, plus we're going to be adding the other modules I mentioned. The business networks I think are going to be a main driver. For example, you could have a network of web developers, of one for Scottish business, or one for car repairers. This is like-minded people given a space to discuss topics they want to discuss.

4. Link exchanging - will look at this.

5. Opening public areas - again, thought about doing this but was not convinced. However it's clear we're going to have to have much more indexable content if we're going to increase SE ratings, and there's no better way of doing that than opening up more of the site to spiders.

6. Login page as a homepage - I felt this would be better to allow members to be able to immediately login without having to do an extra click + it fits in nicely with the design. In hindsight it may not have been a good move, and the design of the home page has severely limited the opportunities to add extra content describing the site and adding content to it.

7. Member validation - to be a part of someone's network you need to ask to join, and they need to approve.

Again, thanks for the feedback. I look forward to receiving comments from other ppl as well. My aim is to make m4gNET.com a great business networking site and any constructive feedback helps in this.

Cheers,

Paul.

[Elisor]

Just to follow up on this, we did take a lot of the feeback from this site (and many other sources) and re-designed and re-branded the site. It's now at: http://www.GlobalBusinessNetworking.com. If you visit http://www.m4gNET.com you'll be re-directed to the new site (your logins will work there as well)

We're still tinkering with this new site, as far as we're concerned it's by no means finished, however we do believe it's a significant improvement on the original site. When it's fully finished I'll submit it for re-assessment (if you guys would be kind enough to look at it again).

Got to go....one of our kittens is trying to crawl up my right leg. Ouch!

[sayhi]

pretty clean design. i might lighten some of the colors up though. just an idea you might try..

[wecando.biz]

How is this site getting on? It seems to be a competitor to our website at http://www.wecando.biz. How many users has it got and what is being done to promote the site?

Best regards

IH