Poker-Ropes Redone Pls Evaluate

[pokerropes]

Hi, I posted about 7 weeks ago asking for an evaluation of my site and everybody pretty much agreed it needed some redesigning, even if the basic idea was good. Well you guys spoke and I listened, and redesigned and expanded the entire site. Please let me know what you think, thanks!

http://www.poker-ropes.com/4407/html/index.html

[kingcobra]

I don't believe I reviewed your site the first time so forgive me if I re-hash some things that may have been said previously.

I like the layout in terms of its fresh look and good use of color schemes. It could be a little more organized though at least in terms of what you seem to want to do with it. That part isn't all that clear though, as in your opening paragraph you mention all sorts of things and then the stuff seems way too scattered.

If you tell me you've got a new poker site and you wanted to know what the number one way to improve it I wouldn't have to even look at your site to give it to you. The tip is to focus on improving your presentation of clear benefits in an organized fashion. Here's some real simple examples to show you what I mean:

Feature Based: Here are some poker lessons
Benefit Based: Here's some ways you can win more at the poker table

Feature Based: Here's a bio of Phil Ivey
Benefit Based: Learn how Phil Ivey has become one of the world's top players

So what we really want to focus on is not to just provide details but to provide good clear reasons to read on, given what we know about the general profile of our visitors. That's a very important statement though as you first need to look into why people are coming there before you can try to give them what they want.

Next, you want to try to organize things in a cohesive, simple, and easy to follow fashion. I think you're trying to do too much with your home page which ideally is a portal to the rest of the site. While it's good to get people interested and you're going to need some content for that, to be honest with you the stuff seems to be all over the place. Try to cut down on the stuff and look to pique their interest here and get down to the nuts and bolts on the sub pages.

Finally, and I hope you don't think I'm being too critical here but I think it's important, make sure you don't generalize your advice too much especially on the home page. For instance you say that you should play aggressive players aggressively and while this is true with some players, it isn't generally for the bad aggros that play at the lower stakes and they often tend to back off to aggression. As general rule you want to float these players more and this involves a lot more calling than against other players, not less. The whole point of this is that you don't just want to lump aggressive players all in one slot and there's lots of variation of players and strategy here, solid TAG's, weak TAG's, LAG's, maniacs. etc, and anyone who isn't a complete newbie is going to know this and probably will get turned off. Now we know the differences here but you don't want to fall into the trap of not giving your players enough credit and today's new player is a lot more spohisticated than he/she used to be and you really need to take this into account.

[pokerropes]

Hi, thanks for the constructive criticism, I appreciate it-rather hear what you really think than having smoke blown up my bum.

Its really a community site, and those kinds of sites tend to do a lot. But as far as the opening message, I hear you-the site can do a lot but you don't have mention everything it does in the opening message-better to focus on one part of it, or one marketing idea which you think is going to appeal to your target audience the most-instead of overwhelming or confusing people. I agree with you there, and can easily modify that.

Is the layout of the content itself on the home page too busy? It may be. Lots of popular sites do have busy opening portal pages though. I will definitely start to think about ways to simplify it and get some better organization going, though.

The other thing about the skill chart being too simplisitic when it come to TAGs-i see what you mean there as well. The whole thing is problematic space-wise, unless I make a bigger change to really expand it, make it longer, and then can fit more details concerning different kinds of aggressive players. Maybe instead of a pre-made graphic I'll make a table out of it, or use the graphic as a background image and lay a table over that....

Websites are work aren't they? Thanks again.

[suffolkpoker]

hello pokerropes,

I see you have been busy since your last review :-)

The design is a million times better, i much prefer the colour scheme this time around, its much kinda on the eye.

Its much easier to navigate around the site, i see you have got a news letter, but its not on the home page, i would put this in a dominant position, so you can get a good sign up for it.

Also I would pay some one to design a new header for you, as this would set off your website.. there are many talented people here who can do this at a reasonable price.

On the free to play poker game, i would make the picture a click able link, also i would do the same on your poker room reviews.

sorry just seen you news letter on the home page, so ignore what i said about putting on the home page, i might consider about giving it a better position as i didn't see it the first time :-)

[pokerropes]

I have one question-I designed the whole site with Microsoft expression web 2.0, instead of Dreamweaver. I have no regrets about buying or using the Eweb tool, which is great. The only thing is I kind of want to up my game by adding flash animation-but Eweb uses Silverlight, and most people don't have that compatability installed on their browsers, even though its just a simple download to get.

So my question is will creating Silverlight flash on the home page turn people away because they don't want to be bothered with the install?

[pokerropes]

Thanks for the advice Suffolk-yes I should get a better header with a slick logo-i will when i can afford it, kinda low on funds right now.

-about the link-its a Java link supplied by the hosting site, so I can't just add it to a graphic, otherwise I would have made the sign a clickable link-it will only display as text. Kind of irked me too. There may be a way to get around that, but I'm just not advanced enough as a designer to know how.

-definitely going to see what i can do about the newsletter placement

thanks again, your site is looking good!

[kingcobra]

I agree that the header could be a little snazzier there and I didn't want to throw too much at you the first time out. I actually don't hate it though and it has a nice homey feel to it but you don't necessarily have to hire someone to do one up for you although that wouldn't hurt. The borders though are a little amateurish I'd say and it might be a good idea to use actual buttons. If you were looking to spend the money for only a little more you could get some banner and button making software, not really necessary as I say but there's some stuff out there that's fairly cheap and easy to use.

Having said that I don't think that's that high up on the list really and you need to focus more on simplifying the home page in terms of your presentation. Keep in mind that most people don't scroll down and it's not real bad to have a lot of stuff there but you want a quicker view.

I wouldn't worry about visitors not having the ability to display flash, in the odd case where they don't have it they will be plenty used to being promoted for it. I'd be careful with this stuff on the home page, I'd avoid it entirely in fact since it jacks up your load times too much. I have a flash header for instance on all my pages but the home page and I've used it there but it put my rankings right in the toilet since it's over 100K.

Getting back to the poker tips, what you want is to attract their attention with these things and have them click to get more. For instance, click here to discover the best ways to play back against various types of opponents and then you can go into the thing in depth there.

[pokerropes]

Ok I redesigned the front page keeping in mind everything you guys talked about-the only thing i didn't deal with is the unexciting header. This link I'm giving you is just a copy of my main page, its not actually hooked into the site yet, and some of the links on it are not enabled, but this is exactly how it would look. Let me know what you think.
Thanks very much!

http://www.poker-ropes.com/4407/html/index_copy(1).html

[TheOPC]

Originally Posted by pokerropes

Ok I redesigned the front page keeping in mind everything you guys talked about-the only thing i didn't deal with is the unexciting header. This link I'm giving you is just a copy of my main page, its not actually hooked into the site yet, and some of the links on it are not enabled, but this is exactly how it would look. Let me know what you think.
Thanks very much!

http://www.poker-ropes.com/4407/html/index_copy(1).html

I like the font much better on this newer version. The italics in the box on the main page was impossible for me to read - my eyes lost focus... If it were me, I'd lose the big full tilt banner - maybe put a personal testimony or two there in its place, or better yet, put your newsletter subscribe block there, along with a personal testimonial, and get a smaller tilt banner for the left side where the newsletter block presently sits... just my opinion though.

The middle blocks, with the small italics writing --- I can't read it to save my life. Either upsize the font, or preferably lose the italics...

For the most part though, I like the look of the site.

Mike

[pokerropes]

Thanks for the advice everybody-especially Ken-glad I listened. I finally have a home page and a site that I'm happy with in terms of looks and functionality-only took me 500 hours of work to get there, lol. That other link is dead now because I switched things over to my main page. Final product:

http://www.poker-ropes.com/4407/html/index.html