Fizzy site tastes flat

Most often I'll review a website because I'm asked to do so. Other times I'll see a website I really like and I'll feel compelled to write about it. Sometimes, though, a site will be so poorly thought out that I just have to rant about it. This is one of those latter times.

You may know that I drink a lot of Coke (here and here). About, oh, six months ago, I signed up for an account at MyCokeRewards.com to earn something back for my patronage. I've managed to amass nearly 500 points in that sime—about 50 12-packs or 166 20-oz bottles. Suffice to say I'm on the site several times a week, enough that I'm regularly annoyed by several "features" of the site.

First, the site switched shortly after my signup to a Flash-based design. This caused my browser and my password program to be unable to save or fill-in passwords. Instead, I'm forced to enter my password manually every time.

You'd think the "Remember Me" feature on the site would make this easier, but no: the site only remembers your username (e-mail address), not your password. What's the point of a "Remember Me" feature if you're only going to remember my name and nothing else about me?

Far too often, the site displays a survey when I log in. Sometimes I've already clicked "Enter Codes" when this happens, at which time I'm unable to enter codes in the form until I close the survey. Hey, folks! Let me decide how I want to proceed through your site!

The site is slow. I don't have a speedy desktop Mac, but it's slow on my new Mac laptop and my reasonably new PC desktop. Stop it with all the animation and just get me to where I want!

Speaking of surveys, if you want to know what my favorite [insert type of beverage here] is, give me the opportunity to answer either 1) not one of your products or 2) I don't drink these. It's pretty stupid to think that everyone that answers the survey drinks only Coke products and and drinks from every possible category. I end up either lying on a particular question or just canceling the survey; which of those helps you?

It's not bad enough that all of the above occurs, but today you tried to open a popup window. Quit interrupting me!

And get some better rewards up there! There are people other than kids using your site—I think.

Posted by Don Morris at 9:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (10)

Artists website and e-zine seeks to draw more subscribers and more income

In Help Desk & Web Review issue 1280, Vann Reid wrote:

After a year of publication, and monthly improvements as I learned, I think I've gone as far as I know and would appreciate any and all comments and critiques to bring this site up to professional level without it turning into a site full of flashing ads.

Hey, Vann! That's quite a transformation that your site has taken over the last year. I must say, though, that I rather like the old masthead with its vibrant colors. It's too bad you can't incorporate it into the new color scheme.

Speaking of color schemes, I like the idea of changing them periodically, whether it's done monthly like yours or only on certain days (as when Google updates its logo). To make it easier to make the switch every month, you're going to want to start looking at Cascading Style Sheets, or CSS.

CSS "free[s] the design experts...to determine the site's aesthetics independently of its content." Rather than go into a long explanation of CSS I'll just point you to the book from whence I got that quote (HTML Utopia: Designing Without Tables Using CSS) and give you a brief example of how CSS would help you.
On your site, you define a table cell with a background color like this:

<td bgcolor="#9999FF">

You do that numerous times throughout the site and then must change each instance when you change your color scheme. With CSS, however, you would define a table cell like this:

<td class="head"> (You name the classes what you like)

and change one line in your style sheet:

.head {background-color: #9999FF;}

to update ALL of your pages. The same goes for any other design element on your page. (Later you'll learn how to get rid of the tables and still have a great looking layout.)

One design element you might look at is the amount of padding you give to your tables. I find that adding a little whitespace to text, instead of running it right up against a border, makes it easier to read.

This is particularly true of your sidebar. You might also consider making the sidebar stand out a little more by making it a lighter shade of the primary color. Right now it looks like a part of the newletter, but I think you need to make the newsletter separate from the rest of the site.

What "rest of the site?" Exactly! I don't see any links here to anything but the newsletter -- except for the Interview archive, which, because you use "Page 7," appears to be a part of the newsletter.

The first thing you need in your sidebar is a subscription form for Palette Peeps. While you've got a link at the bottom of each page, in my opinion you'll have a better subscribe rate if you make it more visble and more automated. By using a form your prospects won't need to wonder if they need to add anything to the email message your link generates.

Internal links (to pages on your site) in this area could include:

• About this site


• A bio: bout yourself, your experience, and your expertise


• Classifieds for your subscribers


• Auction pages


• Your forum


• Your store


• Tutorials


• Calendar of events

and the list goes on. Oh, and you should definitely have an archive not just of interviews, but of every issue of Palette Peeps you've ever published.

To start making money from your site right now, you might consider Google Adsense or Search Feed.
Depending on the traffic to your site you could make a little extra change each month.

Finally, to reach buyers of art you need to figure out who they are and then create a draw (pun intended) that gets them to your site. My friend, Don The Idea Guy, is running a promotion right now that might get you started on that road: Five-Buck Brainstorms.

Hope those ideas help!

Posted by Don Morris at 12:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)