Help in deciding if I should continue developing this website

Discussion in 'Websites' started by bursurk, Nov 20, 2014.

?

Do you think it has potential and I should continue putting more effort/money on this?

  1. Yes

    1 vote(s)
    100.0%
  2. No

    0 vote(s)
    0.0%
  1. #1
    I'd appreciate if you could please critique my website and let me know if it has any potential. I am having a hard time deciding whether I should continue my efforts or call it quits. The website has been live for more than a month now with very low traffic.
    The website is a portal for programmers and architects for discussions on technical topics and interview questions and answers. site: volatileread.com
     
    bursurk, Nov 20, 2014 IP
  2. Daniel.Thomas

    Daniel.Thomas Member

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    #2
    Good work man. I see potential in your site, but there are still a lot you need to do. Also, after one month you shouldn't expect any miracles in terms of traffic.
    Try to make the homepage more user-friendly. In my opinion you should make it clear what your site is about. This should pup up in the user eye. Now it's "Interview Questions" that is somehow ambiguous.
    Except the filters, I can't find any navigation on the site. You could get users that are not searching for anything in particular, who just want to find interesting topics. A navigation would help you solve this.
    Keep up the good work, and good luck :)
     
    Daniel.Thomas, Nov 20, 2014 IP
  3. bursurk

    bursurk Peon

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    #3
    Thanks Daniel for putting an effort to review my website. Really appreciate it. And thanks for boosting my morale a bit. I'll certainly try to incorporate your suggestions.

     
    bursurk, Nov 20, 2014 IP
  4. KewL

    KewL Well-Known Member

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    #4
    Pretty nice website. You can't really expect to see any traffic after a month, it usually takes 6 months to get things rolling. It's a tough call and will take a lot of work, your basically going against stackoverflow which is one of the best websites.
     
    KewL, Nov 20, 2014 IP
  5. PunctRo

    PunctRo Active Member

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    #5
    After just one month you can't expect miracles.

    A few suggestions :

    You should use a bigger logo / header.
    increase the size of the questions to make them stand out.
    Improve the navigation (browse answers by language / level / member)
    your meta description is the same (page 1, page 2 or when sorting)
    make your urls more seo friendly (http://volatileread.com/Thread/Index?id=1055 is not seo friendly)

    Good luck !
     
    PunctRo, Nov 20, 2014 IP
  6. COBOLdinosaur

    COBOLdinosaur Active Member

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    #6
    I vote for you to continue. The design is clean but still lacks usability and easy navigation. One month is a very tiny time period and you are still at the point where you should experiment wth presentation ptions, some of which have already been suggested here.

    I don't even worry about traffic for the first six months, and then I deal with SEO, marketing (if it is a for-profit site), and analysis of SERPs for given key words that should produce traffic. You are going in to a very competitive niche where you don't have to just compete for users, but you also have to compete for experts to handle questions.

    You may find that you are going to have to come up with some kind of unique offering or feature to set you apart from the crowd in a space that has a number of large players controlling big pieces of market share.
     
    COBOLdinosaur, Nov 20, 2014 IP
  7. sarahk

    sarahk iTamer Staff

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    #7
    It will take time to get a hold on the market and you're up against stackexchange and other well established sites so you need to be "playing the long game". You need to decide for yourself if you can afford to do that.

    Some feedback on the site

    I found the filter a bit clumsy to use. When I typed in php I had to select it from the drop down list, I couldn't press enter, or put in a comma as I can with other tagging tools.

    upload_2014-11-21_14-19-10.png

    I also expected to be able to click a tag and be taken to a list of all threads with that tag.

    upload_2014-11-21_14-25-38.png
     
    sarahk, Nov 20, 2014 IP