Free Site Review #2
Review of trafficbunnies.com
Domain Name – I think the domain is good. It’s a nice shortish, two word, brandable domain. Which has a memorable quality to it. Now you just have to fully establish the viral aspect of that domain.
Design – I think the layout in itself is fine. Simple 3 collumn layout, content in the middle, sidebar either side. Popular and easy layout which is easy to customize. The overall visuals of the site… well, the actual graphics are well done. However I don’t think there’s a need to have all this highlighted and bold text. In this day and age, simplicity is professionalism, people view highlighted text and bold writing and immediately associate that with spam, landing page, spam, landing page, spam! well, I do anyway. I would recommend keeping everything standard Arial text and making everything seem as professional as possible. Without losing the character of the site itself. Emphasising words like FREE and capitalizing them etc will only degrade those aspects, too many people do it. People will make their own minds up, don’t try and do it for them.
Ads – There’s a fine line between defining and hiding, I think it’s good that you’ve let your users know, in a way what is what. But, you’ve basically wasted an ad, you’ve shoved a small vertical banner ad right at the bottom of the right sidebar. Your simply putting the ad on as an after thought. If you’re worried about ads ‘degrading’ your site, simply don’t use them. The object of them, is to make money from them. Don’t force them on your users, but equally, don’t hide them either. Let them know they are there!
Conclusion – Overall I’d say you have a site with alot of viral aspect if used correctly, traffic exchange has been done to death but i’m sure you can still make a successful traffic exchange website. Yours has what alot of others don’t – character – don’t waste it! try, simplifying the text more. Using less obvious emphasised text and what not, it only compiles your site into a long list of stereoptypical ‘others’ in a visitors mind. They’ve seen all that before, it’s obvious brain-dead marketing. Equally, if you are going to use ads, don’t shove them at the bottom, you misewell not have them. Keep going though, your site has viral aspect and a memorable charisma which alot of sites in your field don’t.
