Need constructive criticism on my new website!! <<

[cdhart2]

I am launching my new website in August of this year. Of course it is under construction and will upgraded and updated until the launch.

I just wanted to get criticism for general layout, color, and even the business model itself.

The website is essentially a business presentation. Please visit it and play around, and leave me your thought as to if the website is 1)functional 2)effective, and if you think my business has a chance!

Thanks to all and GOD BLESS
I cant link you because I'm a newb on this website so heres the address:

dragonflyadvertising.com



(GO USA!)

[cortesfelipe]

well, i personally dont like flash websites, but it seems to be very usable.

just wondering here, how are u planning to work this business?

[cdhart2]

Well, being a student myself, i thought it would be a great idea if small businesses could advertise on multiple campuses concurrently. The whole concept is that I would manage the small advertising campaigns for these businesses, and be a one-stop-shop for them if they wanted to advertise to students.

I think apartment complexes, bars, restaurants, ect. would find this useful. What do you guys think?

[cortesfelipe]

if u can reach a lot of people, no doubt it is a good business.

im planning to start almost the same think here in my area.. The difference is that im younger and im still on HS.
if u could leave me a contact information that we could talk about it will be great.

[cdhart2]

if u ever need anything, just go to my website and go to the contact page! it sends directly to my email!

thanks for your input!

[KyleXY]

Hi cdhart2,

Just curious on the concept. How do you plan on attracting students to the ads? Every business have a core product that bring users to their business and then target advertising to those users. This is similar to how Google runs a search engine and then allow advertising to display ads towards their users from advertisers. In this case, your users would be the students, your advertisers would be the local businesses, but your core product seems to be missing out of this picture? I get the concept of reaching students with local advertising from local businesses but what or how are you planning to bring the students to the ads? I presume you're talking about an online website of some sort? What value-add do students have in going to this site versus finding what they need through other existing solutions such as local advertising on campus physically, in the campus newspaper, or on sites such as yelp and many others? In theory, it sounds great for the businesses but it doesn't sound like there's anything for the actual users which is where your value proposition lies.

A few things to think about while you're planning this. I hope this helps. A few years back, a friend of a friend of mine ran a site for college apartment rentals. It was started in 2006 (I think). The site premise was built to attract college students who were looking for apartments nearby campus. It provided a forum, chatrooms, and of course apartment searches. It got several colleges interested in striking contracts and I think at the time it had maybe 6 colleges across the US the site was developed out for, custom tailored to each college. The entire project was self funded. It had a section for local businesses to advertise to those students on and off campus with services the students might be interested in, in their local city. The business even striked deals with the apartment complexes for referrals of anyone who found the apartment through the site. There was a yelp style review section (before yelp was around or famous) and students could comment and write reviews of the place on the site itself. Unfortunately the business never could catch traction and the advertising didn't work out, across multiple campuses too, and thus eventually the service shut down for several of the universities. From my understanding, they didn't spread themselves too thin either and have a decent growth on their site to start with. In theory the idea wasn't bad but in practice it didn't turn out so well. The idea was the college rental site was their core product and the advertising was 100% targeted to all the users who frequent the site. For whatever reason, it couldn't make any money. With all things, I wish you the best of luck.

[cdhart2]

The website is primarily for the business owners, not the students.

The website is just an information tool about what we do. It allows the businesses to see what we offer and how we operate.

The businesses then contact us and setup ad concurrent campus campaigns, and we advertise those businesses on the campuses they chose.

Our job is to manage their campaigns, by designing their ads, scheduling it with campus publications, distributing literature, posting their advertisements on the campus (physically), ect.

Does this make any sense? Thanks for your input!

[rogercbryan]

Get rid of the hit counter.. people stopped using those in the 90's. I like the design but I'm worried that because your entire page is flash that you are going to have major optimization problems.

[cdhart2]

ill get rid of the hit counter .

the entire site is flash, but it is because it is supposed to be more of a presentation-of-services more than anything.

[KyleXY]

Ah okay. That makes more sense now.

[nquinlan]

Hi--
I just glanced at your site, however I found a few more glaring issues that I would recommend changing. Granted you can weight my suggestions however you want.

The first and most noticeable thing is the ads by Wix all over the site. I recommend getting rid of Wix, finding a template (hopefully HTML) or hiring a designer. There are a number of pros and cons. Some of the pros include, a better site that is search engine optimized, less loss of potential customers due to exiting the site to Wix's, and ease of installing 'widgets'. The cons include: cost (of a designer) or looking similar to other websites (from a template).

However if you insist on using Wix:

Another negative is it is in Flash and Flash is a dying platform. Yes, it works great on personal computers (a couple years back it was like 95% of machines had it), but I can't load it on my iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch in addition to the loads of other mobile devises that are coming out, and although that may seem like a thing to poo-poo there is a general trend towards those so it might be worth worrying about.

It is also a very busy site, with the clouds always moving and the movement in the more info section (with the scrolling services). I might try to reduce that as it distracts.

Also, if I were to advertise using your service I would want to know more, and the site although it provides a lot of little tag lines, sentences, and phrases about it, it never tells me how you do it, how well it works, ect.



I do like your logo though and you seem to have a solid brand which is good for an advertising agency.
Again I highly recommend making an HTML page, you could have a very similar site, but optimized, that runs on multiple platforms, without any ads and a better user experience.

Sorry for the bunch of criticism. I hope it helps a little.
--
Nick

[cdhart2]

whats the easiest way to convert html. i can do simple html stuff, but nothing fancy. i really like your personal website. ide be happy if mine could look similar. thanks for the criticisms. im going to refine my website.

[cdhart2]

also, once i upgrade the wix it removes their logo from the site (im going to upgrade prior to launch of site)

[rosevette]

I may not be a pro at flash, but as a regular visitor, here are some comments.

The background is a little too distracting, I think either make it one color or the clouds drift slower. Also, you may want to change the font.

[sitesbyv]

It seems that you used a flash website generator which is highly unprofessional. Moreover, your website's content isn't picked up by search engines because it's flash.