Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

hey there startupnation, i am new to the site so please go easy... lol  i launched a free classifieds site about 6 months ago called www.madnonnie.com in the small city where i live. i have been busy fixing all the countless bugs and issues that go along with this kind of thing. i came up with the idea about two years ago, got together with two buddies and the rest is history. we have never done anything like this before but we have heart and a tenacious need to succeed.  we have not started any kind of SEO yet, but that is next. i would appreciate any and all comments, suggestions and criticism. we know its not perfect but we try everyday to improve it and your comments are crucial to that. please let me know any and all areas that you think we should work on. anything/time that you could give would be greatly appreciated. the site is written asp.net 2.0 - thanks again for your time.

www.madnonnie.com

 

 

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Jeff Kilgore

"Your life is designed to give you the results that you are getting"

Founder - Madnonnie.com

"It`s Like A Whole `Nother Internet"

:-) Hi there Nonnie...(I assume you`re crazy?) 

I looked at the site, which seems to run fine. My issue is that it`s a bit confusing. It`s not hard to understand what`s going on, but I mean that there doesn`t seem to be an *easy* way to zip around and find whatever it is you`re looking for.

I`m not sure particularly why this is....it`s just my first impression. I guess the first thing that confused me was the left-side navigation. It seemed "Nonnie Stuff" was personal, blogs, directories, and other unrelated stuff. Then below there, as a sort of afterthought---that`s where "Advertise Here" was just an extra.

Isn`t this a Classifieds site? And isn`t advertising the main point of advertising?

The tabs made sense, so I went and looked through them. I see it`s still a new site, so not many posts yet. On Firefox (1.x) there`s a very large white space at the top of various pages, to the right or the left, below the tabs.

For example, on "Personals," there`s "Browse Members" in a gray bar, then about 6" of white space before the first line of the form (Personals: I am....line).

On "Pets," the same white space moved to the right. "Real Estate," it was in the middle, above "Instructions." Then "Sports/Outdoors" the text over-runs the tab graphic, and crowds into "Jobs/Gigs." But there wasn`t the whitespace.

I think I`d like to see the user Login on the home page. We`ll assume people will or won`t sign up, but if they do, they`ll intend to either log in right away, or remain logged in unless they go to some other computer. I don`t see the point of a Login tab.

All in all, it`s an interesting site. Colors seem to be nice and bold, and the next step is just having more and more people sign up. It`ll be member activity that drives the site, I`m thinking, so that`s where it most matters.

To that end, I think on your Home page you should have at the top, some sort of introduction as to what your purpose is for building the site. You`re competing with things like Craig`s List, and people would likely want to know something about what`s different for this site, y`know?

CraigL , thank you so much for your suggestions. i will get those bugs fixed asap. we will work on the site to better define who and what we are. thanks again for your comments! jeff

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Jeff Kilgore

"Your life is designed to give you the results that you are getting"

Founder - Madnonnie.com

"It`s Like A Whole `Nother Internet"

This is top of my head stuff.

I just went to your site. I haven`t read anything about it .. I skipped your intro above on purpose.

1) There is a lot of stuff here. But nothing that says "THIS IS WHY WE ARE SPECIAL".

2) There is a weird search thing at the top where I can click to search an area, or search Google ... but that also gives me a drop down to search the site. That needs some fixing.

3) There is "Nonnie Stuff" on the prime real estate of the left bar. And that makes no sense to me. What is Nonnie Stuff and why do I care?

I will look more later ...

SEO for a classified ad just isn`t needed ... just add proper titles to all the pages.
The classified ads themselves will provide you with all the keywords you will need.

Something like "MadNonnie: Classifieds something something specific" on the front page, and all the classified pages have titles like "MadNonnie: Posting Title".

nhgnikole , thank you. we are working on the home page and should have a different, more direct look in the next few weeks. i will resubmit when we have it finished. thank you for taking the time.

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Jeff Kilgore

"Your life is designed to give you the results that you are getting"

Founder - Madnonnie.com

"It`s Like A Whole `Nother Internet"

I found it easy to submit an ad, except that I couldn`t get a pic uploaded.  It was taking longer than forever, so finally I gave up on that part.  I didn`t understand the WELCOME on the near top right until I clicked on it to find me there with an image not available.  May I suggest that "WELCOME" title be changed perhaps to "Member" or something appropriate and save the Welcome for your intro.

There seems to be a lot going on and I wonder if you`d be better served not having the Google ads on your landing page on the right side.  Maybe you could put the Get Started stuff there or the Movie stuff there.  Putting the Get Started steps in the movie box was confusing because I thought at first I was getting started to find a movie in my area.  By having Google ads on that first page aren`t you inviting people to leave before they get involved in your site?

I do think you are heading in the right direction and have a good idea, which is why I joined.

jillybeans , thank soooo much for your comments! we are hearing that alot about the confusion on the home page, so we are now redesigning it. it will be a little more direct, with all the nonnie stuff on the left under its own tab labeled "more" we are looking at startupnations homepage as a general direction with more emphasis on classifieds. thank you for your vote of confidence - we have working on this site for two years and it is starting to take on a life of its own. if there are any other things that you would like to changed or added it would be well received! thanks again, jeff

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Jeff Kilgore

"Your life is designed to give you the results that you are getting"

Founder - Madnonnie.com

"It`s Like A Whole `Nother Internet"