I am looking for some feedback on our site

This is the web address -

http://www.pigeonglobe.co.uk

and the forum is

http://www.pigeonglobe.co.uk/forum/Blah.pl

Basically the site was built in Feb 2008 and membership numbers are growing ok however posting is becoming an issue with nearly everything been started by admin or a mod (The top 5 posters are basically mods and admin)

What i am looking for from you all (If possible) is feedback on the site both positive and negative to try and improve the site - There was a closed members area but i have opened this up for you to view.

I have already decided to change a few things on the site these include taking the chat room (On top of page) off and also removing the facebook and twitter links on the front page.

We have spent a considerable amount of money on the site and although not looking for financial reward from it - We would like it to be succesful.

No offence will be taken at any comments that may be negative.

Thanks in advance

Chris & Charlotte

Looking at the home page. The graphics seem quite poor. Also, there is a feel of it being "cobbled together" with just a few big images and a paragraph or two of text. There isn't any real page structuring.

The forum and site both have different background colours, pale yellow on the forum and white on the site, they should be the same. Also the widths are different, consider either making the site have a dynamic 95% width like the forum, or the forum a fixed width like the site... Considering on my wide monitor, the forum has a lot of white space between the board name and the post/thread count, I'd make the forum fixed width, seems the better option.

There is no favicon for the site, the pigeon would make a good favicon. This is requested by the browser by default and will return a 404 if it's not found, 404 errors should be avoided.

There are several coding errors on the forum, simple things such as un-encoded ampersands are easily fixed.

Website links point to index.html rather than to just a slash /. This means the home page is accessible from http://www.pigeonglobe.co.uk/index.html and http://www.pigeonglobe.co.uk/ which can give you a duplicate content penalty from search engines.

The home page's keywords meta tag is 34 long... It should be no more than ten. Reduce to only the most important ones making sure those terms actually appear at least once in the copy.
Use a tool like http://serpsim.com one of my sites to help determine the best terms and frequency to use.


I know most of that isn't very positive, but it's all constructive. I'm happy to elaborate on any points that may be unclear.

Kind regards, char.

Hi

Chris posted this.

He meant how could he improve the forum not the site you cheeky monkey!

However you raise some good points and we will look at alot of those points.

One thing, where do I add the code/ and what code do I add for the favicon, I have asked others in the past and they told me and it still didn't work,


cheers
charlotte

Well Chris didn't specify the site or forum. Both URLs were given.

Quoted from iCONICA

Well Chris didn't specify the site or forum. Both URLs were given.

Hi Chris here - Should really join in my own name eventually  

I was looking for advice on both aspects and appreciate your answer's.

hey iconica if you know how to add that favicon let us know
cheers
charlotte

I really like the forum - well done !

the auction is really neat too, I could never get my members to make use of it when I had it, maybe I should have another attempt.

I had the same problem getting people involved with my forum in the beginning (now I can't shut them up ) maybe try an extra "general chat" or jokes board to get them to come out of their shells a bit  

Quoted from unclejack

I really like the forum - well done !

the auction is really neat too, I could never get my members to make use of it when I had it, maybe I should have another attempt.

I had the same problem getting people involved with my forum in the beginning (now I can't shut them up ) maybe try an extra "general chat" or jokes board to get them to come out of their shells a bit  

Thanks for the feedback - The auction doesnt get alot of items listed but its a service and does come in useful and with time when people (within our sport) realise that they can use the feature for free rather than pay the others a % of sales then it will pick up i think.

To be honest with regards the jokes etc there shouldnt really be a need to break the ice so to speak as most know each other from the bigger forums but certainly look at doing it.

Did look at your forum last night and came away with some ideas of things i want to implement on the site (Nothing major) but potential improvements.

Thanks for the feedback

Chris

We obviously need to poach them from the bigger forums, send me links so I can see what they are offering that is different.

<link href="favicon.ico" rel="shortcut icon" />

Just put it in the head, and make sure favicon.ico or .png is true. Also, don't worry if it doesn't show straight away, try CTRL + F5 to clear cache refresh and if still no, might take a few hours before it loads..

Quoted from charlotte

Did look at your forum last night and came away with some ideas of things i want to implement on the site (Nothing major) but potential improvements.

Thanks for the feedback

Chris

only about 60% of my site is accessable to guests, the rest is hidden including general chat and trading boards because we have become more of a private collectors club however I make sure there is enough "knowledge base" stuff to attract new members  

I think that it is a case of being patient. I have several forums, some very busy, some not so.

For your forum, the header graphic, is way too big, cut it down in size, will help .... Many peeps do not like to scroll!

But hey, you do have over 700 members, so that aint bad at all.

Thanks for all the replies will certainly take on board it all.

Will send you all the links to our competitors Martin.

Nat - The 750 members is a positive for us but its been very hard to get them - The biggest problem we have is actually gettting them to post and contribute - There is around 25 dedicated pigeon forums in the UK so all apart from the big two (One 5000+ members and one with 3000+) are fighting for the scraps left behind.

From an SEO point of view, if you've heavy competition nationally, I'd try gaining an edge by trying to target a local area... I'd guess with Pigeon frying competitions and things, people will search their locality. Try targeting a little more locally, the wider audience isn't always the best option.

Quoted from iCONICA

<link href="favicon.ico" rel="shortcut icon" />

Just put it in the head, and make sure favicon.ico or .png is true. Also, don't worry if it doesn't show straight away, try CTRL + F5 to clear cache refresh and if still no, might take a few hours before it loads..

hiya, it's charlotte

what file type is that? does photoshop allow you to save it as .ico

char