What can we do to improve our site

[ClaireH-184886]

Hi. I am hoping that some of you can help me with the in2town site www.in2town.co.uk

The site is a news/lifestyle magazine site. The site is a cross between, huffington post, digital spy, female first and the sun newspaper. Basically the site is a news site as well as covering showbiz news, travel news, health news and advice etc

What i would like is for people to look at the site and let me know what they feel i should do to improve the site to make it better for our readers and to gain more readership.

I would also like to hear from people on how they find moving around the site as well as the speed of the site.

At the moment the site is with an american hosting company and i am in the process of talking to UK hosting companies to move the site. The site is currently on a dedicated server.

It would mean a lot if people could give me their advice on how to improve the site and make it a beter experience for our readers while at the same time being able to generate income with the site.

Just a quick note, all content is original and we have a number of people who write for the site.

many thanks

[LighthouseC]

To my mind you already have "sponsored" articles, they are just for one of your owner/contributors

e.g. http://www.in2town.co.uk/news/gastric-hypno-band/the-secret-to-weight-loss-is-inside-you-says-gastric-hypno-band-expert#.UEd-5cHN9X8

Adding other sponsored links would only diversify the content, potentially get more quality content on the site and make it a better user experience.

To me you could manage the relationship with the readers and outside businesses your team are involve with in ways that visitors will gell with more.  This covers the top banner (which looks like an external paid banner when someone is on the home page rather than something a regular contributor is involved with.  There are loads of spammy looking gastric band promotions out there and you have real potential to both improve this site and generate more trust with potential gastric band purchasers by showing the relationship differently so they see the person behind the product and banner.  Also I see it is a Liverpool number that is given, I do not know whether Gastric band some of the other services that those involved in the site provide are local and the extent that they are fine to be purchased by people across the UK and beyond - If services are localised around Liverpool then having the ads in such a dominant place may not be optimising your ad revenue (which could always be put on Adwords Display Network and optimised around Liverpool if that is the case.  I tried to click on the banner too for more information and it did not lead to more information.  I wanted to know enough in answering this question to click on in and not being able to annoyed me (only a tiny bit) but would add to user experience and improve conversions.

Also whether you think you do or not, you do sponsored posting and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that from a user experience perspective as long as you convey it in a way that meets both the needs of advertisers AND viewers.

I think you have been given the right advice in terms of optimising conversion from an individual visit but the wrong advice more generally.  As well as a new visitors clicks you also want to engage with them so they dont hit the back button, facilitate social sharing and provide a quality user experience so that they are going to engage more with the site then you want to have less banners in different places than you do currently.  You want to make it easy for people to share the articles with others and enable your readership to grow which can make all your advertising perform better.

Others have mentioned that there was some slightly dated content that was still high profile, this is obviously bad for the type of site you are doing.  You also mentioned in a positive sounding way that it was all your own group of people that were writing content which is actually a bad thing  and the two points are connected.  Would I keep coming back to reading posts at SEOmoz (before I became pro and come to use the tools) if it was just Rand and other staff posting?  Perhaps but no where near as often.  I have welcomed the whiteboard fridays with different perspectives and different expertise, I like the fact that I get access to hundreds of experts here with different perspectives and this would not happen without guest contributions.  Also it means you can have much more content without having to write it all.  Ok you might give a link away but as long as you ensure that the articles are of high quality and only a minor proportion are clearly sponsored (and do not make this too deceptive) then all you are doing is making your site better with more varied content and sponsored posts are less damaging to user experiences than big banners.

I will stress that I am completely not the demographic for your site.  If I had my way google would give out moderate penalties for articles less than 1500 words and bigger penalties for articles less than 1000 words and gossipy type topics would also get google penalties unless searched for explicitly so "news" would not give xfactor or celeb stories in the SERP results.

Also the most relevant people for you to get views from is your users and it does not look like you have all that many links to your site at present which will be harming your SEO.  You may want to look at getting some sponsored articles and enhancing SEO as well as addressing some of the user experience issues.

But it is a pretty good site considering it is no-ones main concern.

[ClaireH-184886]

I understand what you are saying but once you get a reputation for accepting paid articles then you never get away from it. We do not want to go down that road. We want our readers to know that what they read is news and not advertising.

would love to know what this 5star review section is

[TinaGammon]

"We worked out last week after a meeting, if we accepted all the paid articles we are offered each week then we would make around £2500 per week"

I would take the 2500.00 for one weeks worth of articles as long as they had unique content. Then invest that money into a new logo, crisper images, have a programmer plug in a 5star review section, and do an all around clean up of the site.

[ClaireH-184886]

i paid a consultant to look at my site on the advertising side as i wanted to make the site a nice experience and gain advertising revenue.

He told me to put the advert right at the top and to put on some pages a google adsense advert on the left. He also told me to put adverts under the menu such as the tesco advert.

what you see on the site is what an add guy has told me to do but it does not look right but he then shown me lots of sites like that. i think one sitre was the guardian.

I would love to hear from people who could recommend some news sites to look at ref advertising.

Also i got a graphic designer in who spent a few hours as a consultant and he told me to do that layout on the home page as it was easy to read. He said it was based on the huffington post layout.

I am very critical so what i want is people on here to try and give me feedback on how to turn the site around and make it look good and keep people coming back.

[ClaireH-184886]

thanks keri. one thing we will not allow on the site is paid articles. Each week and i am sure this happens to many other people on here, but we get loads of companies asking if they can pay to have an article on the site.

We worked out last week after a meeting, if we accepted all the paid articles we are offered each week then we would make around £2500 per week, but we are not into that. We are trying to build something and trying to get things right.

The site started off as a hobby as i do other work besides this but now it has become a learning curve and trying to turn it into a business.

[ClaireH-184886]

this is all good thank you. can you tell me more about the google reviews please. I use joomla for the site. The plan is, in two years time to have the site  built by a professional web designer, at the moment we do not have the budget and this is one of our down falls

[KeriMorgret]

Hi Diane,

I'd make sure all of your articles are timely and not expired. I looked at the Featured Lifestyle Stories (are these paid somehow? They seem more spammy than some of the other articles, and are featuring insurance, bingo, weight loss, etc) have articles that talk about deals that expire in July, or of events that happened in July.

[TinaGammon]

Hi here are my observations, please don't be offended just my opinion on things I noticed.

Your celebrity pictures seem distorted to me (32in monitor) this would be a big turn off. For example  Richard Branson looks squished, Russell Brands photo looks stretched, Kristen Stewart squished, Celebrity Big Brother squished,

David Beckham pixelated,  your photos are what the user sees first they need to be as crisp as possible, it could be my monitor however CNN, or any other news source does not have this problem on my monitor.

Speaking of first, the weight loss ad at the top should go. I would place the ads on the inside of the site in less obvious places. They should not be the first thing someone sees.

The footer section "N2TOWN ONLINE MAGAZINE BRINGING YOU THE LATEST LIFESTYLE NEWS"

I would reformat this into 2 columns and not use as much spacing.

Your copyright still shows 2011, and you could get a much better logo on fiverr for $5.00

When I click on a story the first thing I see is the top banner link, then the header and now another large affiliate link right under it. I have to scroll down to even find the story.

I think the stories should be your main focus not the ads. If you focus on the stories then you will get more readers, and ultimately those will convert into ad clicks.

http://www.in2town.co.uk/Claire-Hegarty-Alternative-Health  The authors pic looks distorted on my pc very pixelated.

http://www.in2town.co.uk/Louise-Parker-Beauty-Blog  this one looks great!

Benidorm Hotel Reviews by In2town. I am not sure why you placed the opening text in a photo the text that says " WE WANT YOUR **Benidorm Hotel Reviews"  **

That needs to be on the site, not in an image, and then I would install a Google reviews plugin this will allow you and your readers to place a 5 star review that will show up in Googles search which will bring you more readers.

They will not have to email you the review they can post it right to your site, then Word Press will notify you someone has written a review and you can approve, or deny it.

Everything loaded very quickly I had no trouble with that or the navigation.

I like everything else I hope this helps.

[NaHoku]

A few suggestions - considering the size of the homepage, it loaded fine in my Chrome browser.  If I was browsing the web, I would probably bounce from this site if I was looking at design alone.  Perhaps spend a little bit of money and time coming up with a professionally designed logo?  I don't understand the color scheme - bright colored line breaks with gray borders? If you're trying to generate income and interest readers, maybe create an oDesk job and see what you get?  Good luck!

[danatanseo]

We have used a site called http://www.usertesting.com to help us identify usability and navigation problems in need of improvement. Their testers are excellent and the fee is extremely reasonable. You will be amazed at the information you get from just 3-4 tests. This might be more meaningful than any usability comments you receive here. I am thinking that your site and content are more targeted for the general public than the SEO community. Just a thought!