What would make my site better?

[hotbodybattles]

Hey All,

I'm constantly trying to think up cool new features to put into my sites and trying to understand what the users really want to see out of these photobattles.. I came up with the leaderboards idea one night and had it fully coded in a little while. I'm looking for more ideas like that, and other ideas of what people think I should add to the site, or take away even.

If anyone has a second and wants to look at my site, and tell me what they think... I'd really love to hear your opinions, ideas, and general takeaways..

I keep a list of enhancements i want to make, and being only one guy with a family and a regular engineering job, I dig away at it little by little.. week by week... But i'd love to add to that list with some of your great ideas...

thanks
A webmaster trying to make a fun site

http://www.HotBodyBattles.com
http://www.AssBattles.com
http://www.TittyBattles.com
http://www.MuffBattles.com
http://www.StudBattles.com

[bxy]

What's wrong, everything. You didn't captivate me, a bunch of junk around 2 pictures that weren't even interesting. X

Push all those words down to the bottom of the page, you got a customer to "this" page, don't tell them to go away; leave the choices for the scroll down, to catch those who were bored with your pix, but still had an interest.

Next pictures say a thousand words, but they need to say your thousand words. Those pix say nothing about your theme, nothing. You seem to be about voting, ok try making the pix the same size and placing them in a frame that looks like a vote booth, you know, red X and a green check mark as the top of the frame. And add a lot more girls, make me stop and look.

Next, you want people to sign up, toss a banner across the top of the girls, Want to Vote for us Naked, Sign Up!

Good luck.

[hotbodybattles]

awesome feedback bxy... thanks a ton. These are the things that are gonna make the site better for sure. I actually recently was told to put the text links up near the battles... haha.. the differences of opinions of various webmasters is interesting sometimes.

right now the naked sites are free too... but maybe i should make it so they have to at least sign up for a free membership to view those. that's a good idea... The only thing right now that makes it worth people signing up for an account is to be able to see the galleries.. and upload their own photos.

i'll keep workin on it... and this is the type of feedback that's going to allow me to make it better and better for the user.

Thanks!

[Bill]

here, I'll post a cross link for ya...

http://www.greenguysboard.com/board/...d=1#post518072

[Bill]

Originally Posted by bxy

Push all those words down to the bottom of the page, you got a customer to "this" page, don't tell them to go away; leave the choices for the scroll down, to catch those who were bored with your pix, but still had an interest.

which words? header words, category words, that 'streaker' thing, whatever that is? the new set of T&C links underneath the battle area? which?

[hotbodybattles]

I thought he meant all the link words... but maybe he means all the other words underneath the picture.. like who uploaded it.. click to see full size.. category.. how many in the category. I guess i dont really need those and I could make the pics bigger if i got rid of it to fill out the space more.

[bxy]

Yes I was speaking of the cluttered words, not the tabs. The tabs look fine, nice and professional, I'd leave those.

[Bill]

Originally Posted by bxy

Yes I was speaking of the cluttered words, not the tabs. The tabs look fine, nice and professional, I'd leave those.

not specific enough man, for site critique and redesign. WHICH cluttered words, in which position on the page?

he's got at least 2, maybe 5, areas of cluttered words. header, top category position, right and left fields, and bottom T&C position, at least.

I myself question the use of gray as a base color - I don't really approve of it's psychological message. altho it is/was a popular theme color for a certain body of themes (and I was never quite sure why...).

[bxy]

The loose words are all clutter. The loose words just below the tabs would do better at the bottom. The loose words at the sides need to either be toasted or illustrated. Make things interesting, not overwhelming, not cluttered. Keep it simple stupid.

Yes grey is technically depressing, but quickly becomes neutral with more dominate colors.

[hotbodybattles]

Looks like i've got some work to do! keep going guys.. i'm soaking all of this in!

The cluttered words at the top of the battle are the battle categories.. I wanted to get them in there... and then make them "pretty" later. I realize they're just words and look like crap... definitely.

I'm going to build the stuff in the sides, into the photobattle component in the middle, so i can expand the photobattle area and make the photo's bigger. I feel like the photos are just too small. i realize the left and right might be great advertising areas... but for now, i think larger photos will bring more audience in initially..

[ecchi]

Firstly, you need some "point" to clicking. At the moment you just go on to the next two pictures. At the very least you have to give the results of the two pictures voted on. EG; "Tammy 27 votes, Sandy 32 votes" and preferably something more than that. Otherwise it is just pointless and boring.

Secondly, give the women's names, don't just show us photos. If you don't know their names, or they want to remain anonymous, make up names (if you find that difficult, there are several websites that are just lists of women's names, search "baby names girls").

Thirdly, give out a bio of the women. Again if you don't know, make shit up. EG "Tammy, age 24, loves jogging, and romantic walks. Works as a secretary during the day, occasionally moonlights as a fashion model. Lives in downtown LA. Prefers older men, but not too much older."

Fourthly, Why not try making a "championship". EG 10 girls a day, best two go through to a weekly final, best two of each week go through to a monthly final, and best two each month go through to an annual final.

My second and third suggestions should help you get people more involved, and keener to vote because they will develop favourites. Once you have done that my fourth suggestion will get them bookmarking and coming back time after time to boost their favourites in the various heats.

Finally, make the thumbnails the same height, this will make the page look neater and more professional. Your graphics software should be able to do this as a batch (ie tell it to resize all thumbnail photos to 250 high, maintaining aspect ratio and it will do the lot in an instant). If your software won't do this, download IrFan View, it is free and great for simple transformations either singly or batch, I use it more than my $300 graphics package.

[hotbodybattles]

ecchi,

Thanks a lot! Great advice and ideas... But your first comment seems to me like you didn't notice that on the right hand side after every battle, I post the winning percentages of each of the pictures you just battled, as well as whether your vote was in accordance with the winning picture based on win %.

Registered members (free) can get their votes recorded as they go along, and if they do well enough, get on the leaderboards on the bottom of the page. These are all ways i've tried to increase involvement in the page.

I was thinking about the championship idea... 10 girls a day... etc.. etc.. but made a decision that only doing 10 girls a day would bring people to my site for 1 minute and then they'd be done and not come again... There's a site out there that does much the same thing I do, but he has 1 battle a day. I was so bored with the site the first time i voted and found out there was nothing else to vote on, that i never went back.

Problem with making the thumbnails the same height that I can tell is that if i do that, and the pic is a wide picture vs. a tall picture, one pic is going to be huge and the other will be small. Know what i mean?

[ecchi]

Originally Posted by hotbodybattles

you didn't notice that on the right hand side after every battle, I post the winning percentages of each of the pictures you just battled......

Correct, I didn't. And since I was there to look over your site I am more likely to have seen it than the casual surfer. In other word: It is too low, bring it up higher, to the same level as the new "vote for me" pictures, so that they will see it. Personally I'd put it between the "We're Going Streaking: Login to keep track of your highest streak" message and the first photo. But if the photos are not too wide then I suppose the right hand side of the photos will do.

Originally Posted by hotbodybattles

Registered members (free) can get their votes recorded as they go along....

You need to make these things clearer. My thoughts when looking at the site was "Why the fuck would I bother registering?" If you want people to sign up, make the advantages of signing up clearer, and -more importantly- make them sound attractive so that the surfer will want to sign up.

Originally Posted by hotbodybattles

made a decision that only doing 10 girls a day would bring people to my site for 1 minute and then they'd be done and not come again... There's a site out there that does much the same thing I do, but he has 1 battle a day. I was so bored with the site the first time i voted and found out there was nothing else to vote on, that i never went back.

I see your point, but at the moment surfers will be doing the same to you, they will be thinking "Huh, there is nothing to do but click on pointless photos, I'll not bother going back there." There are actually lots of "vote for me" sites, you have to make your one more attractive than the rest, and for that you need a "gimmick" and you need to make people love your site and come back. Just clicking on anonymous photos won't do it.

Originally Posted by hotbodybattles

Problem with making the thumbnails the same height that I can tell is that if i do that, and the pic is a wide picture vs. a tall picture, one pic is going to be huge and the other will be small. Know what i mean?

Yes, but trim the wider ones. It is more important that they are the same height than the same width, but you don't want the landscape ones to be a lot wider than the portrait ones, so trim off the sides if you can, and don't use the photos if you can't.

One final note of encouragement: One of the many sites that are similar to yours was started by a coder called Mark Zuckerberg, who has just made millions selling shares in his other company - Facebook. So get this right, and the experience and knowledge you gain could take you on to even greater things!

[hotbodybattles]

ecchi,

I cant thank you enough for everything you've gone through here.. all absolutely great comments and recommendations. I plan on taking everything you've said into deep consideration when building the new "view". I have plans to take everything on right and left hand sides of the voting area, and build it directly into the middle component itself. That way, everything's in one place and I can sell off the left and right sides to advertisers.

Lots to think about... and LOTS of coding to do...

Plus i just got in with two other individuals who have signed onto my team. One is a talent agent that is going to partner up and build content (i.e. take videos and pictures of girls) for the site, and the other is a advertising/marketing executive.

So soon... i'll have my own content, my own girls, and videos where I get to dictate the contents. If i do it right, i think it will hit, and I may be able to charge a membership fee after all.

Again.. thank you so much! i really appreciate the help!
going to post another thread to see if there's anyone that has example "i'm over 18" and "you can use my video/pictures at your discretion" legal papers that I could copy and use. Anyone creating their own content should have those i would think. I need them to get the ball rolling on generating my own content.

[HowlingWulf]

Do we assume you're the Charlie that uploads most of the pics?
http://www.tittybattles.com/index.ph...,userpictures/

[hotbodybattles]

yea... i'm Charlie... not my real name... but cant use my real name.. that would just be silly

[bxy]

I agree with ecchi on almost everything, except for one thing, you don't need to make anything up.

AFTER YOU MAKE YOUR PLACE LOOK NICE

I ran one of these contest boards for years that was quite popular. People love to compete and girls are just as competitive as us guys. Just frequent the many Amateur Pick Posts out there and contact the girls. I use to give them a small gallery and a link back in trade for a little custom content, the content that populated that gallery; in your case streaking pix. The winning girl won her picture, a large picture, with her link at the top of the main page as bragging rights for the last win. The next wave of competing pix, much smaller, below hers.

My mistake was in not making those return links referral links, hence when a competitor (copy cat) began handing out a couple hundred to each winner, it hurt, and I was unable to compete. I wander if that person is the same ecchi is talking about, could very easily be.

[hotbodybattles]

Yea.. that's my major effort right now.. making the site look nice with my limited skill in php, mysql, and html... Should be interesting...