Please Review My Classified Ads Site

Discussion in 'HTML & Website Design' started by Anil Pandey, Jan 25, 2013.

  1. #1
    Hi

    I have got a site developed www.phonwa.com
    It is a classified ads site, posting free ads for selling used mobiles. It is a custom developed wordpress based site.

    I have tried my best to include whatever I could think of, but may not have been able to do that fully.
    Kindly provide feedback as to what more can be done for the site, in terms of design, or features. I can't think of any thing more.
    Since the site is new, it would be possible to integrate the suggested features easily.

    Thanks in advance.
    Anil Pandey
     
    Solved! View solution.
    Anil Pandey, Jan 25, 2013 IP
  2. #2
    The irony that the website mostly sells mobiles...

    I loaded it on a PC and it was painfully slow what with the thousands upon thousands of products with images loading and I thought.... "nooooo" surely he'd have a different version for mobiles, so off I went loading it up on the iPhone and roughly 1-2 minutes later (usually if it was a normal site I'd have closed off it by then, along with probably 90% of everybody else) it loads!

    The website is clearly responsive, so if you're taking care to make it look good to your users, you could take care not to cost them an absolute fortune in data usage too!

    Other than that, there's no clear identity to what your website does. You mentioned its classifieds but I don't see that anywhere, for all I know its an auction site or a mobile phone review site or you are a mobile phone company... I just don't know.

    Oh, your favicon doesn't work either.

    I took a quick look at your code but there was no way I was going to read down to line 6,711
     
    scottlpool2003, Jan 25, 2013 IP
  3. Anil Pandey

    Anil Pandey Active Member

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    #3
    Thanks. Thats one problem I myself am facing.
    When the site went live it was meant to display all the posts. It worked fine as long as the number of posts were low. But the problem arose as the number of posts increased. Now it takes a long time even with a fast connection. This is something I definitely need to look in to. In fact I have already brought this out to the developer. Hopefully it would be rectified soon

    As rightly pointed out, the lack of branding, or displaying the theme seems to be an issue. Need to tackle that as well.

    Thanks
     
    Anil Pandey, Jan 25, 2013 IP
  4. scottlpool2003

    scottlpool2003 Well-Known Member

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    #4
    What are you using for the CMS? I think its Wordpress. Is the gallery custom made? If so, just limit the posts to say 10-20 and either paginate or link to a page that does paginate.
     
    scottlpool2003, Jan 25, 2013 IP
  5. sweetkate

    sweetkate Well-Known Member

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    #5
    Hmm, i think the problem is the database or the hosting itself. If in your end the results of the classifieds took so long to show. You need to make the database of you site to be built very well in order for the information to show faster, efficient and make it easier to load.

    Another is that your webhosting is really slow in which a big problem you will be having in the future
     
    sweetkate, Jan 25, 2013 IP
  6. scottlpool2003

    scottlpool2003 Well-Known Member

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    #6

    No website has any business loading that amount of data on 1 page so I wouldn't jump in saying the database is wrong because we don't know without looking at the code.

    The data should, however be limited to x amount of results or paginated because;

    A. Its less of a load on the server
    B. Its less of a load on the users bandwidth
    C. Nobody wants to look at that amount of results on a page
     
    scottlpool2003, Jan 25, 2013 IP
  7. Anil Pandey

    Anil Pandey Active Member

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    #7
    Anil Pandey, Jan 25, 2013 IP
  8. scottlpool2003

    scottlpool2003 Well-Known Member

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    #8
    Your CSS and JS files are putting a huge strain on the bandwidth. You should consider taking anything out of them that you are not using and then minimizing them. E.g. your bootstrap-responsive.css file is taking mega long to load so consider minimizing it.
     
    scottlpool2003, Jan 25, 2013 IP
  9. Anil Pandey

    Anil Pandey Active Member

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    #9
    Yes, its a custom built wordpress site.
    From my end, from my admin panel, I tried restricting the "Blog pages show at most" to 5 posts. As is evident, that does not seem to work. Approaching the developer seems to be the only alternate.
     
    Anil Pandey, Jan 25, 2013 IP
  10. scottlpool2003

    scottlpool2003 Well-Known Member

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    #10
    Yes the developer should be able to help. It sounds like a custom gallery, I'm not overly familiar with Wordpress so I can't help too much.

    I tested out that Pingdom though and the results drastically change every time you test it, like from 438ms to 12+ seconds...​
     
    scottlpool2003, Jan 25, 2013 IP
  11. Anil Pandey

    Anil Pandey Active Member

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    #11
    To sum it up, the issues need to address are:
    • Reduce the no. of posts
    • Adressing the CSS and JS files so as to reduce bandwidth consumption (if reducing the no. of posts works, then this step may not be required)
    • Restructure the database for faster loading
    • Branding. Making the site show the idea of the site at first glance.
    Any other issues, like suggestions on optimal ad placement? Right now the site does not use much on the homepage.
     
    Anil Pandey, Jan 25, 2013 IP
  12. sweetkate

    sweetkate Well-Known Member

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    #12
    Restructure the database correct! Many tables and fields are overlapping maybe. Thats what im pointing
     
    sweetkate, Jan 25, 2013 IP
  13. Anil Pandey

    Anil Pandey Active Member

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    #13
    Can you eloborate this point? May be I need to look in to something, which I have overlooked so far.
     
    Anil Pandey, Jan 25, 2013 IP
  14. diziadvice

    diziadvice Member

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    #14
    Your website loads too slow! Moreover it doesn't seem to be a classified website.
     
    diziadvice, Jan 26, 2013 IP
  15. Anil Pandey

    Anil Pandey Active Member

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    #15
    Thanks.
    One reason for the slow loading could be the huge no. of posts on the homepage itself.
    It is a site for posting free ads for buying and selling used mobiles.
    The branding seems to be the issue. Have approached the developer and requested him to take a look.
    Hope it works out well, and matches with the theme of the site.
     
    Anil Pandey, Jan 26, 2013 IP
  16. diziadvice

    diziadvice Member

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    #16
    Hi Anil Pandey!
    Don't think that I am not trying to rate your website with good points but I just want to help you out here. Your domain name Phnonwa may be what people call mobiles in Bihar. You may try a classified website with some fancy domain names such as 'Quickr'. Moreover I think your website has an Ajax based application on the homepage. You can remove it and post only the summaries of a few articles.
     
    diziadvice, Jan 26, 2013 IP
  17. Anil Pandey

    Anil Pandey Active Member

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    #17
    Its true.
    The domain name means exactly that. While searching for the domain name, I tried a lot, but couldn't come up with anything else. Didn't want to use any look-alike terms because it would have looked odd. Moreover, also try to avoid using too long domain names. This domain is short, does convey the meaning, and is easily rememberable. The only downside I can see is that the name may relate to a geographical region
     
    Anil Pandey, Jan 26, 2013 IP
  18. diziadvice

    diziadvice Member

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    #18
    Thats what I mean to say!
     
    diziadvice, Jan 26, 2013 IP
  19. Anil Pandey

    Anil Pandey Active Member

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    #19
    Couldn't help. That was the best I could do. I tried to avoid long domains like usedmobilesforsale.com
    Lets hope for the best. Nobody knows what can click, just hope for the best.
     
    Anil Pandey, Jan 26, 2013 IP
  20. diziadvice

    diziadvice Member

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    #20
    Thats right! Happy blogging!
     
    diziadvice, Jan 26, 2013 IP