Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

My wife and I just started a business selling a home poker accessory.  Please check out the website, product, price, and everything else.  All feedback is welcome.  We are trying to reach the worldwide poker home game market (basically the same people who buy chip sets, cards, tables).

www.ultimatedealerbutton.com

Do you have any connections or advice in reaching this market?

Thanks!!!

-------------------------

Grant S. Cooper
President
UltimateDealerButton.com
grant.cooper@ultimatedealerbutton.com
877-332-5858 work
972-423-5450 fax

Grant,

To help with Site Design: http://www.Elance.com -- You should be able to find someone to clean up the site for a $100 or so (probably from India but that`s OK)

Figure out something to give them for free, like an e-book (that you can write) or something.  The idea here is to get their email address so you can follow up with them.  This is really really important.

Recruit affiliates at http://www.clickbank.com (free).  People will promote the product for you, but you`ll have to give them a chunck of the $$.

Finally buy some traffic from http://adwords.google.com.  Then you can test your conversion rates until you get them where you want.  At that point you can turn up the heat with the marketing.

 

-------------------------

Bryan C. Fleming

http://www.BryanCFleming.com

Grant, I can only assume that by the looks of your product--it looks very finished--you have already attended or are considering a trade show that caters to the specific market that you are trying to reach. If you haven`t, you really should look into it. It only takes a couple of key contacts to make a huge difference in your future.  Great job with the website by the way. Can I ask who you used to do it?

Eric

-------------------------

~Eric
JE Design Group, LLC
If all you do is what you`ve done, then all you`ll get is what you`ve got.
www.jedesigngroup.com

I think you have a solid base of a site.
I do agree some cleaning up should be considered.
I have to say--I don`t really like the horzontal bar across the top quarter of the page. Not sure it`s necessary and it breaks up the page.
The words are kind of hard to read--would you consider breaking up the copy a little?

Matt

Grant - as a poker fan, I`d say it looks like a great product.

As far as the website, there are a few issues I can see.  First and foremost, the site is built using frames and flash.  The various frames lead to several scroll bars, with the most odd being the vertical and horizontal scroll for the top frame (where your navigation menu is found).

Beyond the visual problems with that, the fact that all of the navigation is reliant on Flash poses problems - anyone who doesn`t have it installed and enabled won`t be able to navigate into your site.  And as a search marketer, I`d be very concerned about your ability to ever have your site indexed in the major search engines.

So my advice would be to either move away from the framed/flash site, or create a distinct version of the site that relies on neither of these options (and is accessible from your home page).

I`m just scratching the surface, but that`s as good a place as any to start.


-------------------------

chuck fuller

I would definitely recommend removing the frames. It will make your search engine optimization much more effective. You could use server side includes if you`re just trying to make your editing easier.

Also, the text on the features section is a little bunched up. Since this is such an important selling component, you could make it easier to read by adding a little extra white space.  Instead of using <br> between each feature, use a full paragraph space <p>

Try this:

http://www.successfulsitesecrets.com/dealer_button/

 

 

Hello Grant,

I agree to all of the above comments, especially the parts about the unnecessary use of frames and flash.  I have also had a look at the page source and it needs some adjustments to have the website compliant with the W3C (w3c.org) web standards.  Web standards have many benefits such as:

- Faster optimized loading of the pages
- Ability to view the website correctly on the different web browsers with backward and forward compatability
- Ability to view the website correctly on different operating systems & devices (including PDAs, Palm OS, etc.)
- higher ranking in search engines
- Have the website accessible by a larger audience (such as vision or motor skill impaired

I also think you should submit your website to various search engines but make sure you pick and tweak the right keywords for that.  Also add your company and product details to various online business directories and buyer/seller matching services (like alibaba.com) (just google for them).

My company provides web design, development, web design compliancy and graphic design services.... Please let me know if you need help with any of the above.

Good luck!

Riham

Awesome feed back guys!  Thank you.  Keep them coming!

If you know anyone in the casino supply or gaming community please let me know.

 
Eric - I am waiting on permission from my website designer before I submit his info.

-------------------------

Grant S. Cooper
President
UltimateDealerButton.com
grant.cooper@ultimatedealerbutton.com
877-332-5858 work
972-423-5450 fax

I have to admit, I know very little about the poker craze except there is a poker craze going on. I know there are some well-known players and "stars" playing. Before selling your soul to the BIG BOX STORES, I submit the following suggestions.

I would suggest going for some endorsements from some top name players. Give away some UDBs to big tournaments. Or local tournaments. Create some buzz in the poker world. Make available as door prizes or lesser prizes if these tournaments do this. A short infomercial on late night cable is not that expensive to do and by buying group cable rates, you can cover a lot of ground on minimal bucks and hit up all the people who don`t sleep at night. I figure most of these tournaments are on the cable channels - not network.  

If you can jump through the home-shopping networks hoops, this is a good route - but suggestion, stay away from QVC - they are the toughest and are not easy to work with based on experience helping a friend with his product. He is having much better luck working with the several lesser known shopping networks. Get exposure here, create the fad, and every poker player will have to have one - but be ready for the orders.

And if you make it this far, do your pre-publicity announcements and post-show announcements - let the world know. Poker magazines (I`m sure there must be a dozen). Gambling trade publications. Ads here could also send people to your website, including wholesalers.

Just a few suggestions off the top of my head.

Good luck!

R@

-------------------------

Richard Arnold · Key Concept Writers · Business Communication: The "Key" To Success· Law of Attraction Blog · Life Ain`t Brain Surgery Blog

I`ll chime in here and agree.

• Lose the frames
• Lose the flash, you aren`t really doing anything with it any ways (nothing that a few images etc could do.
• Work on making the HTML code more compliant
  

and I`ll add

• Your site content is very basic. Have your designer (or find someone else who will) write up the code using CSS. This will allow your site to load a bit faster, and it get you closer to that standards compliant web site we all dream of (ok so some of us do)
• I like bullet points but you need a bit of padding around them and this should be an unordered list and pick one icon, versus a bunch of different ones. If you have a reason for the different icons (ie they signify some tying bond between items) then group them and switch icons then.

Best of luck to you!