Please Review my website - Whatsonglobal.com

Hi there,

Thanks for reading,

Please review my website www. whats on global .com.

The site is a single-page application delivering world-wide events on a map to any user.

Any feedback regarding general design would be appreciated,

1. What a user will like
2. What might turn off a user
3. Anything that is confusing or irritating.

Because the site is javascript only, we use the AJAX crawling guidelines to serve up the SEO content. This involves adding _escaped_fragment_?= to URLs so google knows to request the Html snapshot as opposed to the Ajax page.

Edit : The site does not support tablet/phone size, or a resized browser - We're working on the responsive design of the site to suit these formats, so I'm not looking for any feedback related to that. Thanks.

Thanks!

 

I usually browse with a resized browser window (as I need to see other stuff), so what I see is an under construction page. I wouldn't even say my browser is at mobile size, but rather PC, laptop or tablet. So this is an instantly big negative and design flaw.

When I fetched as GoogleBot I didn't get any different content. However, if this is your plan, is part of it also to get banned from Google? (This even happened to BMW for cloaking.)

(That wasn't SEO advice, just good practice for a business.)

I feel like you are ignoring your audience - a high percentage of people are going to be using smartphones and tablets to find out what's on. You have largely alienated these people though and they will instead use an alternative site. It's a shame, because it has potential.

I looked at one event (Carnaby Street) and the description was:

This doesn't really make sense to me. What has their FB page got to do with it?

 

Ryan,

Thanks for your response.

Yes the site currently isn't optimised for smaller screen resolutions (tablets, mobile) so we have a construction page there until the responsive design is complete.

Sorry I feel I have not explained myself very well in my original post, as I am new to some of these concepts. We are not using 'cloaking', more the official guidelines from google for how to serve up HTML snapshots for an Ajax page (which all of ours are being an SPA). https://developers.google.com/webmasters/ajax-crawling/docs/getting-started

I have updated my post to reflect my request in a more accurate way.

You're absolutely spot on with the descriptions, there are few of them are mismatched from an algorithm designed to pull in some extra information from events. Thanks for the spot.

Patrick.

 

By the way, search for "whatsonglobal" in Google and check the first result (I won't post here, as you probably don't want a link to it).

 

The idea and development is done well.
The balloon in logo of global should be up and not going down.
Data of many events shall be published so a user can see website filled with information.

 

OK, imagine I come across your website on a Google SERP.
The first thing I would think is probably, what the hell is this? And close immediately.

You must make crystal clear what your website is about from the very homepage!

 

Thanks for the feedback, is there anything specifically you can think of that would help with you identifying the intention of the website?

 

A short mission statement for after the logo? Anyway, this seems more like something for social media (and an app) rather than a focus on getting visitors from organic search.

 

Love the site! Really good idea. I have had times where I've wanted a good site listing events in my city but havn't been able to find a good one. I could see this taking off! Could definitely work as an app.

 

Hi Ryan,

What makes you say that? Organic search is the current focus give we have ~200k events (due to have >1m by January 2014), I'm curious why you would think otherwise?

 

Your site would be "cool" as an app (or working smartphones and tablets). Your site is "cool" for sharing through social media (a big hint to you that it's a great area for you to be marketing in). Your site's content (and the social media marketing) should do the work for you in terms of organic. Maybe that is a bit clearer?

 

Much clearer, thanks