Constructive criticism please!!

[bronwen]

Hi all,

Please have a look at my website www.poundpig.co.uk and let me know your thoughts!

Many thanks

[fisicx]

What exactly do you want us to review?

[tkessex]

Come on fisicx, it doesn't take a genius to work out the sort of things they might want people to comment on.

I left the site without waiting to see what it was all about as it was taking so long to load - it's far too dependent on images.

[fisicx]

Same here. I lasted about 10 seconds and had to leave without any idea as to the purpose of the site or what I was supposed to do. Which is why I asked the question; are we commenting on the usability, accessibility, the layout, the coding, the navigation and so on.

There is even a sticky at the top of the forum with some useful advice on how to get a better review...

[bronwen]

You are both right…I didn’t answer the questions before asking for a review. Sorry!

Poundpig is completed and has been live since Nov 07.The purpose of the site is to encourage people to shop with major retailers that they would shop with anyway, but through our site therefore giving them cashback on all their purchases.

I have incoming links from other websites such as other forums, social networking sites, articles and metatags. Is this enough for the SEO?

Usability is paramount on the site, as I have already found, if the site is not appealing to people straight away then they will not stay to browse the offers and discounts. The images on the site are to show people how the site works without lots of boring text but I appreciate that this is slowing down the site. I would like the site reviewed for both errors and improvements (the comments about the loading of the site has been given to the web design team!). We are happy with the design of the site but any suggestions are welcome on the design and the navigation.

The site differs from other sites in that we are brokering deals with independent retailers and also our customer service is excellent which is very important when people are opening accounts with you and claiming their cashback.

Thanks

[fisicx]

OK - now we're cooking.

If the site 'differs from other sites in that we are brokering deals with independent retailers' ten you need to say that on the homepage. There is no indexable text on the page and the dynamic URLs combined with the images mean that the search engines will index the site but not give much weight to those links. Furthermore, since I need to sign up to see any of the deals the the search engines will just give up.

However, it seems like a good idea and should work if you can get people onto the site. Social networking and articles will help your ranking, forums less so and metatags not at all. What you really need is some links from high quality, respected and popular sites, a my space link counts for almost 0 but an link on the digg homepage could net you thousands of visitors in a day. But of course you need a winning site to get those inbound links and your homepage is unfortunately not convincing. Have you done any testing? Not your family and friends (they will be too nice), you need to use strangers as they will soon pick holes in the site.

A couple of other thoughts: on the deal pages the horizontal line is under the title of the deal which links it to the preceding image. This means I look at company A but the link below is for company B. I'm also wondering why the pig is showing his genitals!

Anyway, it's the homepage that needs the most work - text is only boring if you make it boring, give me a reason to use the site and then you might pique my interest.

Hope this helps.

[marchingon]

Originally Posted by fisicx

... I'm also wondering why the pig is showing his genitals!

I think it's his/her tail but, yes easily confused for genitalia.