Hello everybody, I was so keen to ask for a review and eventually here I am . I created a free uk ads website with very detailed categories and with a database including all UK and Ireland towns and villages (more that 40.000 names). But this is probably not very important. I kindly ask you for a feedback before I start to promote the site on a large scale. Some tech details: It was built on a well known classifieds script and suffered heavy cutomisation (switched from tables to divs etc.). It's not completely done yet. I have to do some retouches but I only work in my free time so don't blame me You could also blame me for too many ads placed on the site. Well, this is a free service site and earning money from ads is in turn for it. I actually tried to put them around the most important area (the ads or the categories) so they're probably not very annoying (IMO). The most important aspect I've paid attention for is the SEO. I've done a lot of work for that (even to redesign the layout with div's and make the content come out before the other "rubbish"). Also, I have implemented a smart way to ping google on every post (aggregate all cats rss' into a blog and fwd the unique rss to social services) so most of the new ads are being show in google serp's in one or two hrs. These details are probably boring for a basic review, so I'll stop here. Anyway, I put about 4 months of work to breed this website, I hope it's worh the effort. Thank you in advance for your comments! Warm regards, Marius C.
I think you should have your categories at the top so this is the first thing the viewer see. Apart from that it looks nice and the colours are good.
hi nice site, i have a lot of sites and 4 classifeds. i like your colours etc will post later as don't have much time. the main thing I did notice was that the English at the top showing the price says 19,97 and 49,97 its not correct English it should be . not , ok best of luck
it's a nice site, and you already have lots of listings which is good i would suggest new colors and logos though. incidently, what's your daily uniques and revenue - off topic i know but i am interested as i run a search site for gumtree in sig
Hi dragonsden, Thank you for your feedback. Can you please tell me why do you suggest new colors and logo? I can explain why I've choosen these colors. They are variations of the UK flag (excepting yellow and green). The logo also looks like a very common british symbol: transportation. I wanted a simple color for the logo but then it would have a similar look to most of their logo (BUS, DLR, tram etc.). Actually it looks very close to the UNDERGROUND logo, which is a little bit concerning for me. About the stats you have requested, I've sent you a PM. Thank you!
Thank you missinglink for your quick feedback. As you probably guessed, I'm not a british citizen, although I've lived in Britain for the last few months. So I'm not very familiar with some aspects like the one you warned me. Thank you! I will modify the decimal sign
lol, hello marius, i'm from the uk too! and i understand your take on the underground logo and union jack, but i was thinking on a more web 2.0 feel, with the livening up of the colours. most people are browsing classified ads hours on ends looking for a car, etc, and so a nice touch of color really means a lot - look at gumtree for example. the site layout is also really important. for example, i would make the footer fit in thw width of the content so it doesn't "hang out". but the most important thing is the service and promotion, both of which you seem to be doing well in. so keep it up! thanks also for your pm
Thank you, rooothy, for your advice. I'm still thinking what's better regarding of what you said. If I move the categories on the top then the unique content (namely the latest ads) won't be indexed very well by SE. The categories are all the same in every town you click on the right hand side. The only thing that changes is the last ads section. So for SEO purposes I thought It's better to place the unique content above the static one. Do you think this will affect the user's experience? btw, 2/3 of traffic is reffered by search engines. that's a difficult decision I have to take thank you!
One more thing I'd like to ask for an advice. I have 3 google ad units, one from adbrite and one from bidvertiser. Do you think I risk a ban from google? The ads don't look the same, they don't have the same look and feel (If I remember well, that's part of their TOS), but still worried. I don't want to be greedy, ending up with a banned account. Thank you!
Thanks, gr8ecom, for your feedback. I will probably reconsider some design elements and probably the logo, because dragonsden seems to be right.