Please review my GTA IV site before I change the design

Hey,

Basically my site was hitting over 1070 uniques for the months of August and September last year, before being down/offline due to some ns issues. Anyway, the problem has been fixed, and this month so far is over 900 uniques again (last month over 400), but around 70% of people are leaving within 1-30 seconds (this is all according to awstats but is similar stats with page impressions in adsense so it's roughly 1 page per unique).

Basically I would like to monetise on the large number of uniques, and possibly keep users staying longer. In the new design I'm putting adsense to the left of the page as it seems to be a better place, previously people have told me the site is too dark. What do you think?

Here's the site: GTA.Scoty.net

Also the idea was that eventually I would expand to all other GTA games making a larger site, I just haven't got around to it. (Hence it's "GTA" and not "GTA IV").

The most popular pages according to awstats are "boostingcars.php" and "randomcharacters.php".

Thanks,
S

 

Pretty neat design. I think you should add a favicon to make the site feel more complete. Good ad placement.

 

i would get a solid domain name and not a subdomain for the site.

 

fantastic website..... user friendly....

 

I can see why people leave so soon. There is too much to read before they find out what the site is all about.
I found it hard work and could only manage the first paragraph. Needs a good heading to capture the attention.
People come to a site because they are interested. The heading is what makes them stay and read on.

 

I agree with Howard G, titles would be a good addition, as would increasing the line spacing so the text does not look so intimidating. I'd also recommend installing google analytics, this would show you the keywords people are using to find your site. They're more than likely 'bouncing' because they can't quickly find the content they were looking for. That will tell you how to improve your titles and navigation to get people to stay longer.

 

i think there is something u should do with those buttons in the left side...
its kinda anoyying.. and maybe it will looks better if u change the gradient of those buttons and make the corner rounded..

 

nice clean looking. Definitely need a top level domain.
The headings should be distinguished a bit more.

 

You might try colored headlines to make the text easier to read.....

 

Quite a fit look,

You should really the first image on the left side header, you should make it a bit smaller.

 

Pretty great design! Font could change abit but looks perfect!

 

Thanks for all your suggestions! I will take note of everything and try to apply those the best I can.

As for the domain, that was always the intention to get it's own, but then I could never set on one so I didn't get around to it.

And for the image on the side thing, in the new design I'd already started making it smaller but it's still a bit too big, initially it was going to be rotating with other screenshots and stuff. I might do that when I update this.

EDIT: Ok, I got the domain GTA 100 .com, what do you think? I didn't want to stuff it full of keywords but keep it short, unfortunately none of my webmaster mates are on so I couldn't ask them beforehand but I figure even if this domain fell through it could always become a top-100 site or something, but I asked a couple other gamer friends n they seem to think it's memorable.

EDIT 2: As per too much content, too much to read/take in, should I split some of the larger pages into two-parters?

Thanks again guys!
S