Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

Hi you`ll,

Our website has been live since September `08.  I will just leave at that.  Please be critical. 

Let me know what you think.
www.BuyDirectMailLists.com

Thank you very much for your time

David;
I went to your site, was interested in your service so I filled out or tried to fill out your questionnaire
since I know very little about your industry or trade I didn`t understand several if not most of your questions, which gives me an uneasy feeling that I may be taken advantage of.
Any way I am interested in a mailing list.

David;
I went to your site, was interested in your service so I filled out or tried to fill out your questionnaire
since I know very little about your industry or trade I didn`t understand several if not most of your questions, which gives me an uneasy feeling that I may be taken advantage of.
Any way I am interested in a mailing list.

Stan,
Thanks you for critique. I am not understanding why you feel this way:

"which gives me an uneasy feeling that I may be taken advantage of"

The forms on the website are used to better understand the marketing goals of our prospects. And to give the visitor the ability to request for a customized and targeted list count report from multiple criteria elections.

The website never took any of your money and didn`t ask for any private information. Your email address is also safe; it is only collected for business communication purposes.

Well, You Made Me Think Stan.  An that is what I was looking for from this critique.

I need to work on communicating better to the visitor.  And make sure they don`t feel like they got TURDED ON (or taken advantage of).

Our goal is to make are clients successful, because their success determines ours.

Thanks again Stan.

Come on you Sour Grapes, Give Some Good Feed Back. Thanks in advance.

David;
I did not mean to sound negative, I did receive your email and will set some time aside tomorrow. although it may be a few weeks before I act.
what i meant about the form is it might be a bit overwhelming for an inexperienced user like me of your type of services. surely I am not the first nor the last that knows this is a effective method but am really unsure how to proceed, the jargon, and most of the other things involved. I understand you want to be super responsive (which I think you were although I posted here as well) and get as much detail as possible up front, I submit that possibly less questions up front maybe something more generic and layman. Granted that will require more hand holding, and get more less than serious inquiries (tire kickers) but for the serious inexperienced user it is more comforting to be walked through the process step by step.
I am not sure how you might do it but somehow teach me (on your website) and others "how to do this, what I need to know before I proceed, make me feel comfortable letting you help me,.the experienced guys know what to do, ask, so they have the comments section to relate that.

I am looking to launch this sort of thing in my business and just starting to learn, you being on SUN and posting might be karma but gives me a bit of confidence so I.ll take a chance.

In general I like it.

I`m sure it`s well-know lingo in your circle, but I don`t really know what a "count" is, so I would probably not request one, maybe call it something more common.

Also, I would drop the word "List" from your "Mailing Lists" on the left panel, since it`s in every entry, it is not pleasing to the eyes.

thanks Eric and Stan,

So I need to explain in more layman terms.  Damn it, it thought i did.  the website is written at a high level according to website grader. 

The thing is that, these days, people want information fast, very fast, so that don`t really read.  Please, I am not defending myself or offending you Stan and Eric.  But the website does explain in detail for the newbie, but you didn`t read it.   Your both  lazy readers , and all you did was  scan the website.

The fact is, that i don`t read either, i also scan.  And my website is not scanable and it needs some videos for more in depth information. Our business does plan calls for videos to be produced and pop out introductions to be added to the website, but that`s not included until the 2010 budget.

IF we came up with some text links of "what is this?" in places where there might be question, would that work?  For some links a small pop up browser with a text explaination and others possibly a short video with a website walk through.  Would that be beneficial?

Quote:"Also, I would drop the word "List" from your "Mailing Lists" on the left panel, since it`s in every entry, it is not pleasing to the eyes."

I am unsure of how to deal with this issue. When the website was created, it was focused around keywords.  Those keywords are profitable.  They might be unpleasing to the eyes, but the robots love them.  I don`t like them that much either, but they were created for the search engine robots. they are honestly not used that much.

Most of our visitors never enter our site though our home page,  because they go directly to to page that matches up specifically with the keywords they typed into the browser.  If anyone wants to know where to find that strategy, send me a direct message or I will eventually start a new thread.

So, I have to figure out a way to convey to a newbies how we can help and what options they can choose from.  And also in a way that is short and scanble or in video format. 

That is definitely going to be a challenge, look how long my post is.

Thanks very much guys.

please I need some more feedback on how to give better explanations.

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Roland,

Good point.  I was trying to engage the reader to think, but I have to assume that they read the whole page to get the answer that I pose.  If it is not clear to you it`s probably clear to others.  I will rework it later today.

Thank you for time and input.  I like your golf site. and the others that you have created.

Nobody reads the whole page, but you do put the most pertinent data above the fold.  (No scrolling or links needed to understand what you`re selling.

I haven`t used mail lists before, but your "free" request form requires more information than I am willing to give you at this time.  Why do you need my business name and phone number other than to pester me with follow-up sales pitches?  If you want more responses to your estimates, you need to relax the scam weary business shopper.


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Steve Mann
Internet Videographer
MannMade Digital Video
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