I run a new website dedicated to the funeral workers around the world (not the people who have lost someone and need advice but the people who actually work in the trade). My site is up and running as is the forum, which should be the hub of my prospective community. Now I have looked around and not found a single forum like this dedicated to funeral workers, at least not one with quality content and a very active forum with more than one or two posts. The funeral business is rather set in its ways and many people in my business, especially here in the UK, are not internet savvy but slowly they are seeing the light. Basically, the one or two sites out there are of fairly poor quality as far as content and basic aims so I am hoping that is the main reason for their lack of success when it comes to their funeral site and forum (if they have one). My own site sets its sights a little higher. I have created an extensive forum and populated with topics I feel will stimulate chatting among prospective members so the content is there. It aims to cater to funeral workers in general as well as specialist areas. I hope this post is not classed as spam and I hope my post is in the correct area here but I would welcome people’s thoughts on my concept and execution on my site. www.ifwg.info (please delete this link if it is against any rules but I believe it is ok). Please remember that the content is aimed purely at funeral workers so it may not appeal to most here but can you suggest what I may need to work on, what to add and what to remove to make the sight appealing to visitors. I want the site to be a place professionals want to come to exchange new ideas, chat with fellow funeral workers around the world and attain a feeling of ‘belonging’ to a real community. Thanks guys and gals (I am new here so my apologies if this post is in any way infringing rules, I will make changes if required rather than have my account suspended as I feel this site will be of immense use to me as I learn more and more about producing and marketing my site).
Are you targeting Funeral Directors or the day to day workers? In the US you will have both of course and I think you have a better chance of hitting the decision makers or Funeral Directors. Focus your site on things they can use to make the business run better, smoother, more profitable etc... HELP THEM help themselves ... JQ
Promote, Promote and Promote. Listen you are running a site that may take a long time to take hold, but it is probably a site that the funeral industry will be interested in. I would look to find companies that produce products for the funeral industry and even give them free advertising. By you advertising for them for free, your site will grow, find casket manufacturers etc... Cemetery, even florist and the word will spread. You may have to give away advertisement for a while, but soon they will be paying you to advertise their new coffin for the rich in 2012, complete with wet bar, with the self embalming option, for those dry days.
Fix your content. Whenever I go to a union or guild website for anything I'm involved in, if the content is poorly written or contains errors, I want no part of it. Some examples from your page: 1. "If you work in or around the funeral service sector you will find membership of the guild invaluable." Membership of would be to discuss a person or people- the membership OF your members. Membership IN the guild should be used on your front page. 2. Articles is spelled wrong on your sidebar. 3. "Here at the IFWG we ehemently believe the old addage stating, "Readers are leaders". In fact the motto of the IFWG is “Aut disce aut discede†which translates as“Either learn or leave.†ehemently should be vehemently, addage should be adage, translates as should be translates to, and there should be a space after to (where you currently have as). While your site probably has a lot of potential, the mistakes above as well as others on the site make it look unprofessional and will hurt your the growth of your site.
Wow, thanks for the great feedback guys I really needed it. Some excellent ideas there. To address ome of the comments: JonnyQ: The site is aimed at EVERY funeral worker. I understand that funeral directors will be interested but it is for any worker of supplier to the trade also. If someone is interested to seek out more info about their industry I want them to be able to come to me. I don’t want to simply focus on the business owners but on ANY worker (or owner) interested in knowing more about the trade in which they work. Rhoniedotcom: Hmmm some good ideas, some real food for thought there. The only thing I want to be careful of is overpopulating the site with adverts but I agree that a few well placed relevant ads might be good. I have incorporated adwords into my design in a way I hope blends well and doesn’t bug the visitor and I am keen to keep it that way. I would consider some nicely designed ads in other places though. Y.L. Prinzel Thanks so much to take some time to obviously check my site and give me the feedback. I really appreciate your feedback because I try to be a perfectionist and clearly some errors are slipping through the net and I will have to be careful to clear them up and be even more vigilant. Stupid errors like those you mention would bug me if I was a visitor and make me wonder if the organization is a professional as they profess to be. I can't believe I made an error writing Articles on my navbar AAARGH!!! Well spotted though. Thanks guys. More feedback always welcome.
Start a newsletter with a number of standard questions they might ask and then answer them...NO CHARGE... you need to build a brand or go to guy type reputation....get a landing/squeeze page with an offer of something FREE in exchange for their email address JQ
I have notice that you're serious in doing this, But why you use .info domain. Let alone that,but if you want your visitor to feel your site is professional,don't use free forum host.
Yeah, try and get a different domain rather than .info. There's at least one better one I found in a few mins of searching (if you want to know it, PM me). I'm sure there's plenty more. Also agree on the free forum host. You'd get a lot more flexibility and control over it if you installed your own free forum script. Not sure what your hosting setup is like at the moment but it shouldn't be too hard. Don't use a splash page, they're mostly just annoying, and open the forum in the same window. If you can get a programmer, integrate it properly or have some sort of site-wide accounts (maybe for the future?) Otherwise, it seems ok at least for the field that it's in. As you said the prospective users aren't that most internet-savvy, I wouldn't worry about a majestic design or anything at the moment. Just get it functioning, a good start would be your newsletter, as it's more likely the less internet-savvy people would still be able to read emails, and if you can send them out regularly, you'll get some traction going.
I have made changes to the errors mentioned above. The domain I am happy with but can see where other tld extensions may be more appealing. I will look into newsletters - any suggestions how best to go about creating and distributing newsletters quickly and easily. I have hosted forums before in the past but had a lot of problems losing data - especially when upgrading to the newer version of the forum siftware and using themes. I am worried about the amounf t of time going into the forum and them losing it all again but can't seem to find a suitable solution.