Freesite Critiques

[dzinerbear]

Hi guys,

I'm a bit stumped and could use some help.

I've been trying out a couple of new templates. One of these freesites is outselling the other by a huge margin. The one I thought would sell isn't selling at all.

Could you have a look and tell me what you like and don't like about each? Also, could you let me know which one you think is selling.

http://www.nakedmennow.com/hotoldermale/bearded-hairy-men/index.html

http://www.nakedmennow.com/hotoldermale/sex-with-older-men/index.html

Thanks
Michael

[Paul]

As with most of your stuff, I like them both.
I did actually spend more time looking around in the black one but actually read a lot of the text on the blue one. The e-mail thing is a cool idea.

Nothing really excited me to click through on the blue one so I'm going to guess that the black one sells better. At least it would for me.

Both look nice.

[gaydemon_jr]

Michael, I'd have said the second one with the dark colours sells best?

The first one is nice and clean, set out well, but the adverts aren't in what I'd say eye-catching positions, with the exception of the text ads.

The second one is much hotter in my opinion. The yellow, red and white on a black background really makes everything stick out. The Impact font works really well and it's very in keeping with the niche. I like your gallery links on the left, having pictures.

All that said, I'm guessing your blue design is selling better from the way you said you are surprised which one is doing better?

[Bec]

Blue had me looking around, Black had nothing that particularly grabbed my attention and seems cluttered. I'd say Blue is selling for you.

[Ben]

Both are very good but I'd say the black one is more eye catching and better presents the content.

However, in the black one it's not easy to get to the picture galleries (they are positioned in vertical order on the left side), so I clicked the ccbill link and went directly to the sponsor (and probably was disappointed cause I expected to see some free pics first). Perhaps the black one underperforms because of this?

[raunchpup]

i liked the black one the best held my attention and forced me to click it also made the images pop off the screen more

[Bill]

I'm not sure you can make a true comparison between a hardcore and softcore freesite.

But I would vote for the black site as making more sales.

It'll be interesting to find that the blue makes more, if that turns out to be the case.

[dzinerbear]

The majority of people felt the black freesite would sell more memberships; in fact, it hasn't sold one yet. The blue and white one has sold quite a few. It has sold memberships off the warning page, the gallery page, and the third gallery.

Any ideas or theories as to why?

basschick ... where are you? I always appreciate your thoughts on these things.

I guess the only thing to do now is to redo the blue and white template in the black and see what the results are. The problem is that you can never really replicate the placement it got in link lists, the traffic, the generally feeling of the surfing population on the day they viewed the site, the other things they saw before hitting my site that might have contributed to their horniness or buying desires, the models used, the photos chosen for premier placement on the site, the come-on text ... there are dozens of variables involved in these things. So a test really still is a crap shoot, isn't it? You can't ever really duplicate the test.

Thoughts?

Michael

[basschick]

my first thought - did link lists list the black one?

[Bill]

No, you really can't replicate tests. And sales tend to fall in patterns of random variation, so its possible a larger sample would change the numbers.

I'd guess it was a niche filtering effect - something about traffic patterns and the positioning and trigger words in the description used by the lists that brought you a rich stream of surfers likely to buy to the blue site.

If there was an obvious 'perfectly optimal' site design, market forces would eventually make all sites as close to identical as was feasible.

Did you like the black site better personally yourself?

[basschick]

the blue site has a naked guy on the warning page, admittedly not showing anything but still naked

i like the red text box over the guy on the right on the blue site - it stands out.

the black site has unclickable thumbs at the top of the page followed by a banner on the right that doesn't say to click here. my first thought is that the guys who clicked the thumbs are feeling a bit let down and didn't click the banner since they already tried clicking something that didn't work.

the big text on the black site - impact in bold - never clicks that well for me. it looks cramped,

the blue site's links on the warning page use keywords - big dicked, horny, daddies, older men - and the text on the black site doesn't. also the large text on the black warning page is generic - "ORIGINAL EROTIC STORIES, 10,000+ ORIGINAL PHOTOS, HOURS & HOURS OF HI-RES VIDEOS, CONTACT EACH MODEL VIA E-MAIL, UPDATED EVERY SINGLE WEEK!!" and combined with the keyword free text, and the fact that most sites make those same claims, it doesn't seem like it would rock.

black main page - i never made sales with text that makes it seem the action will happen to "you" like "GET READY TO GET SOAKED!"

more later - i'm back to work!

[dzinerbear]

"my first thought - did link lists list the black one?"

Yes, it's gotten fairly good coverage. It's hit six major link lists (I haven't checked all my recips, so there may be others.) I did miss Manpics weekened update, and it still hasn't hit Hunk Hunter.

"Did you like the black site better personally yourself?"

There are things I like about it. I prefer the colour scheme of the blue and white one, although there are design things I'd change now.

Thanks for the notes, basschick, that's the kind of stuff I need. It's useful stuff. I suspect it's a matter of tweaking and tweaking, but when there are so many elements, it's hard to figure out what to tweak. I suppose I could end up getting a separate account for each clickable element on a page, that would only be three separate accounts and that might help narrow things down.

Michael