Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

I`d love to get feedback from the community here on KidPub, a site targeting tweens (kids 8 to 14) who love to write. The site has been online continuously since 1995 and has gone through four major redesigns, most recently in December of last year. Our design goal is to minimize glitz and emphasize content.

We see about 1,000 unique visitors a day, and the underlying content management is Drupal.

I`m a little concerned that we`ve gone too far in glitz minimization and have made it hard to understand how to interact at the site. What do you think?
Perry

Far be it from most anyone to give advice to someone that`s had an on-line business since 1995!  That is truly awesome.

It might be nice to have a quick tag line that states basically what your mission is, in the header to make it more clear what the point of your site is.  It wasn`t painfully clear to me what I could/should do on the site - maybe have a quick 1,2,3 listing of what I need to do (e.g. 1. write your story, 2. get peer feedback, 3. whatever).

You could probably make a social widget where your authors could list their recent submissions and help drive some traffic?

Might also be worth adding a "Share us with your friends" widget to make it easy for users to email your URL to their friends.

Do you have many great testimonials that you could pepper around your site?

Congrats on the length of time you`ve been around.

Since your target market is basically 8-14, you need a look/setup that appeals to them. Run a survey on your site and get their opinions on what would be more appealing to them. Colors, features, guidelines, etc.

It doesn`t have to be overly glitzy and full of trinkets to be appealing. If kids in this age range can write, that shows creativity, and I`d bet they could help recreate your site to be more effective for them.



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

M Hall
Website Critique Community
International Society of Curmudgeons

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

Carolina
Italiano e` la piu` bella lingua nel mondo
http://www.lapiazzadicarolina.com

Please vote for me in the Leading Moms in Business Competition!

Excellent ideas from everyone! KidPub is the classic `built by an engineer` site, my degrees are in EE and computer science, not design :^) I remember when I launched the site in `95, it took three years...until `98...to switch from the default gray page background to a white page...radical!

I like the idea of looking a bit more creative, might be time to hire a designer.