'Simply Beautiful' - Site Review Please...

[TSSR]

Hi All,

I was looking for some feedback on my celebrity site 'Simply Beautiful' which can be found at:

http://www.rcscs.co.uk/simplybeautiful

(I've just registered a new domain, www.excellentpictures.com (http://www.excellentpictures.com) and will be mirroring the site their shortly).

The site uses a custom perl script to rotate the 'current image' for each celebrity and I can easily change the interval of rotation (currently 10 minutes).

I know having only one fullsize image available for each celebrity at any one time is a pain for the visitor but it does help to keep the bandwidth down (as well as hotlinking) - hopefully the quality of the images will mean that visitors are prepared to look back at another time(s) to get the other images.

The site has been up since the middle of October 2000 and currently gets about 2000 page views per day ( although I hit 4800 yesterday http://geekvillage.com/ubb/smile.gif ).

Most of the income from the site is from the searchboxes (a random one is selected each time the page loads) and allclick links on the thumbnails ( the pages does say that the thumbnails don't lead to the fullsize images but some people just don't read do they http://geekvillage.com/ubb/wink.gif )

Anyway - I be grateful for any comments, constructive critism, etc. and ideas for increasing income from such a site...

Best regards

The Stainless Steel Rat (TSSR)

[Questy]

Your remarks .....Most of the income from the site is from the searchboxes (a random one is selected each time the page loads) and allclick links on the thumbnails ( the pages does say that the thumbnails don't lead to the fullsize images but some people just don't read do they )

A) I think the allclick links are a royal pain in the posterior. They do more to offend people than to impress them. I find the multiple opening windows to be a real turn off.

B) Regardless of what you say in the fine print of your site, what is customary and expected is that when someone clicks on a thumbnail a larger picture is opened.

While you may be generating some short term cash flow from this site, I wouldn't give it much of a grade as a web site or a marketing project for the reasons I list. Then again, that's based on my biased opinions based on my many moons of sales and marketing, of course your mileage may vary.

[TSSR]

Questy, thanks for the reply.

I agree with your comments on the AllClick links but I'm assuming that visitors will soon learn that the thumbnails are only a representation of the full collection of images and do not lead to the fullsize images (although of course, as you point out, this would be their initial expection) - I figure less than 5% of visitors click through on the AllClick links.

IMHO few celebrity sites feature images of the size and quality found at my site so my theory is that visitors will return, at least until they have all the images from the collection(s) they require - time will tell.

CPM for the site is currently around $1.80 which would seem OK (what are other celebrity sites making ?)

Anyway I'm still learning...

T.S.S.R.

[sdarken]

I would echo Questy's comments:

The main thing people want in a celebrity site (especially one dedicated to women) is pictures. Having only one large pic avaialbe per celeb is a big turn off. Lots of lower quality pics would be preferable to one high quality pic for most visitors.

As a visitor I also hated the way you've used the Allclicks links. Everyone assumes that thumbnails link to big pics. On the other hand, although this will not encourage return visitors, this use of Allclicks is probably good for your revenue.

By the way, your CPM sounds very good for this type of site. If you can build your traffic and retain this sort of CPM level then you are doing very well.

- Simon

[Questy]

Originally posted by sdarken:

As a visitor I also hated the way you've used the Allclicks links. Everyone assumes that thumbnails link to big pics. On the other hand, although this will not encourage return visitors, this use of Allclicks is probably good for your revenue.
- Simon


Exactly my point!

At some point I think you need to visit your goals for this site, as I think your revenue might start to tail off.

I as a business person I think of "long haul" issues, and for that reason I start with content and quality, income is secondary,(at least in the beginning.)

Looking at a web site as a business you begin to think not about how fast you can grow, but instead of how long you can grow.

Food for thought.

[TSSR]

Hmmm,

Well OK, AllClick links are being removed even as I type..., I've added links to the Mailbits 'Tell A Friend' program and have started adding AllPosters pages for each celebrity.

Pretty sure that CPM is gonna take a dive though... http://geekvillage.com/ubb/frown.gif