Hi, I have just made a website with funny jokes: http://www.laughandjoke.com Basically you can read jokes, add jokes, view whos added what joke, and its got a form to capture email and links to tell-a-friend service, Its something I had in my mind for the past 6 months, I've done some basic on-site seo. Just wondering if you guys had any suggestions on how to expand the website, ive been thinking about funny pictures and videos, but should I let users upload pics and vids or just embed them, any other things i could do? to get more user interaction, PS: ive tried to keep the design as basic as possible for fast browsing and ease of use, currently not many visitors hence no ads. Thanks
I think it's quite obvious the site needs to be worked on by a professional designer. If you built it yourself, don't take it personally, it's just a matter of business. If you had to decorate a dining room, in your house, it would be great fun and adequate to do-it-yourself. If that dining room was in a restaurant you owned, and were trying to make money with, then you would hire a professional to do it, right? Same for the website. Also looking at how the jokes are presented, maybe you should set things up so that the "more" link appears just before the punch line. This should be quite easy to do in code.
you need to improve the design a lot. yes letting users upload picture and vote on them would be great. may be a top 10 rank?
Flashy design and make one section on the home page for newly added jokes and one for top rated jokes.
There are a lot of sites like yours out there with the same jokes, you need to offer something different to get more visitors, maybe you can add a feature where someone can send the joke to their friends.
The main content area is cool, you just need a good header, and a footer. Get rid of the funny background colors (header and sidebar). What's up with the light red in the header, are you that fond of it? You might as well want to check your monitor brightness and contrast settings, I suspect you have a problem there, too.
Have to agree here, your design needs to be 'sexed' up. Could be a great site otherwise. Important also to offer something unique. What that is well, thats the hard part. If I knew I'd be a millionaire.
Again, I'd forget about most of the advice above. Don't worry about 'flashy design'. One HUGE change I would make is that I would make the Opt-In box the main focus of the site. Maybe give a sample joke then get them to opt in for daily jokes emailed. Also, if you are going to spend money on design...DONT...spend money on creating an App for I-Phones and Touches. Either price the app at 99 cents or do a free one thats filled to the brim with ads. A basic squeeze page with a sample joke will do a lot for this site.
Thanks for the advice everyone, The design, yeah its a bit too simple but I think its more important for a website to load quickly, still I will consider some changes(that red was a bit too bright ) I will definitely focus more on the Opt-In box, to encourage people to submit their email and send them daily or weekly jokes. Iphone app seems like an excellent idea, I will do something about it later on as my website gets more visitors. I've got a leaderboard for the users who add jokes, just need to arrange them by highest first. Thanks for the time and suggestions everyone!!