Is this forum worthy to be online? Please Review.

Hi. Please review my website: https://www.biztalk.co.ke

Its a local business forum. Supposed to be a place where entrepreneurs and those who want to go into business to interract, collaborate and share business ideas and the likes.

My wish and hope is that it will be a magnet for all the local SMEs and business people.

I also included a section for int'l forums. Hoping that i would get some visit from across the boarders.

Thank you in advance for your valid feedback.

 

It's a nice forum. Your social media buttons overlap the profiles. I do understand that users can hide them, but I think it'll be better if they are not "in your face" all the time.

Your bounce rate is kind of high: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/biztalk.co.ke Do you know what may cause it to be so high?

 

Its nice and be sure to work a little on the logo ,also be patient as at begigning its very hard until you create a good audience for your forum and you must work very hard for it

 

Thank you all for you detailed review. From your review, am immediately going to:

1. Review the Social media buttons.
2. Investigate why the high bounce rate. I think its because we dont have interraction amongst members. Thanks @qwikad
3. @sarahk, yes i have been told alot about the logo. Am looking for a pro-logo designer to give me something better. Blue on blue is not good for sure.
4. Yes my niche is Kenya. Was supposed to be a local forum. With discussions on all business sectors.
5. The live feed on stock markets can be understood by the locals. The acronyms are for local stock markets.
6. Am changing immediately to 'Stock Market Talk'. Thanks.
7. Chat os only for forum support and general business inquiries. Not chating for users.
8. Yes @Spartan14 . It is really hard. Thanks for encouragemnt. I will work at it.

 

You have a LOT of places where your colours and backgrounds fail to meet accessibility minimums. The use of light blue on middle blue in the sidebar, the blue on blue in the headings, the white on too light a blue...

I'd suggest you refactor using a tool like this:
http://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/

To make sure you are within accepted norms. Given the painfully small font sizes I would treat "normal AAA" as your MINIMUM...

Though that brings me to the next problem -- one common to sites using vbull or xenforo -- inaccessible font sizes. Any time you see a font size declared in PX that is NOT part of an image interaction (such as beneath gilder-levin) you have inaccessible trash. The WCAG says to use EM, so use 'em. There's a REASON I have to use a 3k stylish template to make THESE forums useful, don't follow DP's example on that.

Of course it's xenforo, so the code is an inaccessible train wreck anyways; laugh being they throw all sorts of extra BS in the markup to try and make it "more accessible" only to make it less accessible as a result -- all because they fell for the "Tablez r teh evils" bull. If you have tabular data use a freaking table, not lists inside lists inside lists to then slop content-cloaking at it.

But that's not your fault, is the software you chose... though right now I'm shopping for a new choice myself, probably going to have to spin my own, since SMF refuses to pull their head out of 1997's arse and is about to piss their own bed with jQuery. Right now I can't find a forum software I would use, much less recommend to others... if anything they've all taken massive steps backwards the past five or six years.

All that said, focus on what's important -- CONTENT. Make posts that are interesting, reply to posts to help people with advice, and try to bring in experienced people to help with providing answers to those who need it. That's true for any forum.

 

Wow. Thanks man. That was some good insight. Despite the fact that i was lost in some acronyms at some point. But i will take your advice. Thanks.