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Some Feedback & Inquiry Needed

by jrlsage
14 replies
  • WEB DESIGN
    • |
Hello All,

I am the designer and developer of this website (Home | The Gamer Studio).

Right now, things are going well, or as well as I thought, but I took a look at our analytics numbers and we have an obscenely high bounce rate.

I figured the first place I would start is my design, and will go for SEO later.

1) This website is built on a Joomla 1.5 backend
2) I am pretty apt at code, so any coding suggestions are welcome.

I am open to any type of help, becuase it seems we are able to get people in, but not keep them.

Thanks in advance.
#feedback #inquiry #needed
  • Profile picture of the author Daverz
    Looks fine to me, however it took a while to load.

    Also, the article slide show thing doesn't work in Opera.
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    • Profile picture of the author jrlsage
      Originally Posted by Daverz View Post

      Looks fine to me, however it took a while to load.

      Also, the article slide show thing doesn't work in Opera.

      You think the load time might be the issue?

      The bounce rate I got is about 80%
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      • Profile picture of the author Bellasys
        deep topic, but it sounds like you want feedback so I'll provide mine:

        Load time for me: 6 seconds on insanely fast internet.

        I notice some rendering happening after the initial load because my gamer laptop is jaggy for about 5 seconds after the home page pops. Good use of background loading, however together with above, may be an issue.

        I may not have provided that feedback unless I was prompted so let me mention something from my own perspective: from the mindset of an ADD riddled hyperactive gamer with no patience, I think I can live with the site if I see value when I get there. But what's there for me to do when I get there? Am I going to wait to watch more video? I don't see a strong hook, and in my opinion the best hook is an eye-catching amount of space around ONE specific article, action, or thing I can do.

        You know your demographic, so target that person - what if you cook one top promo (or feature) in the primary media queue slot? What about something bangin on white background with lots of space around 1 catchy phrase, promo, or call to action. Giant Arial Black letters (or Modcon) say: PROVE IT! on a white background and then your first video rolls behind it, it's a screenshot of your winningest score in your favorite game and the 10 seconds that precedes it. Then you invite people to send in their home-screencasts of their best victory, allowing 10 second videos to keep sizes down. What?? You're not cool enough to record your games- well that's why you come to a site like The Gamer Studio.

        What does it mean? I don't know but it's random enough for me to be intrigued. Putting value behind it would be even better.

        I think your issue is perceived relevance and a lack of a clear call to action. But I also think that you may well expect 60% bounce in your market unless you define your niche more closely...

        Kudos on your site. It looks good. Content Dev is the way to go.
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  • Profile picture of the author SpectreTek
    The front page is huge. It is probably the reason why everyone is mentioning the slow load time.

    You have seperate sections for News, Features, Review, Media; and are showing six posts previews for news, and four previews each for feautres, reviews, and media. This totals to 18 post previews all on the front page (not including the slider at the top). Put the best article (or the latest) from each category into the slider at the top. Make one or two slides for each category max. The sidebar is pretty busy too. It looks like you decided to try out as many different modules as you could. I would take a lot of those modules off the sidebar completely.

    Make your footer area smaller. The social media icons are small enough that they could all fit on one line no problem without interfering with your 'intelligerm' logo.

    Last item I think should be changed is the search box. It doesn't line up with anything and looks out of place.

    Aside from those changes, I think the design looks pretty good.

    I hope this feedback helps.

    P.S. I'm not trying to put you down, this is just my honest feedback.
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  • Profile picture of the author jrlsage
    Thanks for the insight guys.

    Any before this topic goes any further... Feedback , brutal feedback is what I am looking for.

    I've been a knockaround guy on the web (first as a writer, now as a designer) for a few years now.

    Get at critical as you can, without it I can get no better.

    Ill take some of the pages down this weekend. Any suggestion on what side bars are unessesary?
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  • Profile picture of the author jrlsage
    I made a few changes dealing with the some of the suggestions in this thread.

    Another look please?
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    • Profile picture of the author SpectreTek
      It looks much better in terms of design/layout. However, I notice still though is the orange footer at the very bottom of the page. You might want to add a black verticle bar as a spacer between the different links.

      One big thing I am noticing though is that your thumbnail images are not actually resized, you are just doing the sizing in the code. You really should generate thumbnail images and put them on the page to improve the load time. The image you have for leedmees is 1,200px Ã-- 720px (scaled to 200px Ã-- 111px). The file size for it is 794KB. There are a lot of programs that can generate thumbnails in bulk. This will save you time, just put the original sized images in a folder and then tell the program to scale all the images in the folder down. After you do this, the page size should go down significantly.
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  • Profile picture of the author jrlsage
    I made the change to the Images, seemed like it was just a switch.

    I think the page load faster now.

    I will work on the footer in a litle bit.

    Thanks for the insight.
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  • Profile picture of the author source47
    Load time could be an issue. But other than that, there is nothing wrong with the design and layout of the website.

    From the marketing perspective, you will want to focus the link building and social media efforts on specific articles, podcast episodes, game reviews, etc.

    If you are still getting a high bounce rate after the "website loading time" issue is fixed then you can look at offering some sort of incentive for visitors that enter the website from the home page rather than one of the article pages. Website visitors have a really short attention span, if the bounce rate is still high then the home page is most likely, not doing it's job and capturing the visitors' attention.

    I hope that this helps!
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  • Profile picture of the author jrlsage
    ANy examples on what sites invite visitors to enter the site via the home page?
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  • Profile picture of the author jrlsage
    Made soem more changes, would love to hear some ideas.

    Thanks to you guys, the bounce rate has dropped 20%
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  • Profile picture of the author globalwalyy
    its look rugged, but take a whole time to load especially when on a slow server i wonder when its going to come up.......but the fact is it look neat and calm.............
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    Life is a song - sing it. Life is a game - play it. Life is a challenge - meet it. Life is a dream - realize it. Life is a sacrifice - offer it. Life is love - enjoy it.


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  • Profile picture of the author lassekn
    For your load time use minify it can speed your site up, its do your css,js files smaller
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  • Profile picture of the author rawalbaig
    Banned
    Load time is more than usual also hangs up. I don't now why but It would be due to flash or css
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