Who hired the 6th Grader?
 

http://www.twoplustwo.com/images/2+2MastheadGreen.gif

I'm sorry but that's the worst looking graphic I've seen on such a large site.


And also, I've noticed the smaller green banner on other pages. You should have someone write you a 3 line php script that checks a users country and doesn't display the banner to USA customers.

Re: Who hired the 6th Grader?
 

The purpose of the graphic isn't to look good but to get your attention. So I guess our sixth grader just made it to junior high.

MM

Re: Who hired the 6th Grader?
 

i think the title of your post is harsh. you dont know the business arraingments between 2+2 and advertisers.

im thankful pages load immeditately.

Re: Who hired the 6th Grader?
 

[ QUOTE ]
i think the title of your post is harsh.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, it should have been "Who tricked a 6th grader into paying for ad space?" [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

Re: Who hired the 6th Grader?
 

[ QUOTE ]
The purpose of the graphic isn't to look good but to get your attention. So I guess our sixth grader just made it to junior high.

MM

[/ QUOTE ]

I was more concerned about the aweful white jaggy lines around the text. Tell your 6th grader to use the same background color for the text as the banner it's going to show up in. Using a white or transparent background results in the white jaggies as shown above.

And you can use a green background to get attention - it just doesn't have to be neon green. Go copy the green color used for Dell's add to cart button. Any company that does $20,000,000 in sales per day off their website probably does some usability color studies.

Re: Who hired the 6th Grader?
 

[ QUOTE ]
The purpose of the graphic isn't to look good but to get your attention. So I guess our sixth grader just made it to junior high.

MM

[/ QUOTE ]
Hey, trainwrecks get attention, but somehow they don't make me want to jump on the next train.

The fact is, the 2+2 brand on the net is something like out of the 90's when things like the <blink> tag was considered cool (well, by some at least), and effective styling and usability were basically unknown quantities.

Take the green sidebar for instance. For one, it's butt ugly, but that would be OK, or at least forgivable, if it scored high in usability. Sadly, it don't. The orange on green color of the links is hard to read, the way menu-items over two lines have their second line start at the same margin as the menu-headings makes it difficult to seperate between categories, and while the logical placement of the different subforums has been improved somewhat, it's still a mess, especially links for your products (books), authors, etc. should be seperated and highlighted. You DO want to sell your products, right?

Further, there doesn't seem to be put much thought in your advertising scheme. The ads are generally ugly, again something that could be forgivable if their placement was logical and their message clear, but that's just not the case, at least to my eyes. For instance, it would be a trivial matter to make ads for limit hold'em books for users visiting the limit forums. To take it a step further, you could track what forums users visit regularly, and throw ads based on their preferences. Someone who exclusively visits the MTT forums should get ads from your affiliate advertisers focusing on MTT's. Users browsing the sports forum, could get ads for sporting goods. Those most active in sports betting could get ads from bookies. I'm sure you catch my drift by now.

In my opinion, 2+2 need to hire a third party to do a complete overhaul of the site. A half-assed upgrade to the latest UBB-forums just doesn't cut it. You need to change forum software, possibly upgrade your server park, and make a clearer seperation between your products, the magazine, and the forums themselves, with plenty of visible "doors" to navigate between each. And you need a concise and thought-out advertising scheme, as well as put some serious thought into other ways of monetizing 2+2 (the earlier El Diablo thread had some excellent suggestions). All just my humble opinion of course.

Re: Who hired the 6th Grader?
 

[ QUOTE ]
The purpose of the graphic isn't to look good but to get your attention. So I guess our sixth grader just made it to junior high.

MM

[/ QUOTE ]

Mission accomplished. I noticed and read the banner, something I do infrequently.

Re: Who hired the 6th Grader?
 

[ QUOTE ]
The purpose of the graphic isn't to look good but to get your attention. So I guess our sixth grader just made it to junior high.

MM

[/ QUOTE ]
Mason, there are many people that are much LESS likely to click on or even read ads that are so visually abusive. There are a couple of posts on this topic in Jurollo's thread in the mod forum that are probably worth reading if you're interested in people's opinions.

Re: Who hired the 6th Grader?
 

It's funny how many people, who probably have no way of knowing how successful the 2+2 website is as-is, are so eager for 2+2 to spend money to 'fix' it.

Re: Who hired the 6th Grader?
 

Also, you guys deal with a relatively tech savvy group here. Why you'd give them more reason than they already had to use Adblock makes very little sense to me.

Here's some other things that also get my attention but probably not in the way you were hoping:

http://img440.imageshack.us/img440/5...crapdp6.th.jpg

Hitting your viewers over the head with a "look at me!" hammer just isn't an effective way to do things these days when you're dealing with people that don't use AOL email or Windows ME.

Re: Who hired the 6th Grader?
 

[ QUOTE ]
It's funny how many people, who probably have no way of knowing how successful the 2+2 website is as-is, are so eager for 2+2 to spend money to 'fix' it.

[/ QUOTE ]
Not sure if this is actually directed at me or just replied to me via quick reply, but I didn't actually say anything about money. I'm not talking about any real technical changes.

On a related note, when the page loaded for me to type this post of the 9 right sidebar ads I got (still one blank and one unreadable) 5 were for party poker.

Re: Who hired the 6th Grader?
 

[ QUOTE ]
Also, you guys deal with a relatively tech savvy group here. Why you'd give them more reason than they already had to use Adblock makes very little sense to me.

Here's some other things that also get my attention but probably not in the way you were hoping:

http://img440.imageshack.us/img440/5...crapdp6.th.jpg

Hitting your viewers over the head with a "look at me!" hammer just isn't an effective way to do things these days when you're dealing with people that don't use AOL email or Windows ME.

[/ QUOTE ]

I am not tech savvy and therefore probably do not know from whence I speak , but I am hard pressed to see how the vast majority of 2+2'ers are saying, damnit, another annoying 2+2 ad, time to get that adblocker I've been putting off! If that's the case, how do you suggest Mason gets their attention?

Re: Who hired the 6th Grader?
 

Yeah Evan, I didn't mean you, sorry if it came across that way. I'm just commenting on the thread in general.

It's just that every time these threads come up, there's always a push for 2+2 to go hire somebody to rewrite the site. But if I had something working I wouldn't go pay to change it just because some people think it's not necessarily pretty enough or doesn't copy some other site.

Re: Who hired the 6th Grader?
 

what's with all the vitriol in this thread??

Re: Who hired the 6th Grader?
 

ooooo, i like, will use more

Re: Who hired the 6th Grader?
 

kicka, I'm not going to put a number on it but I'd bet the portion of 2+2ers who use Adblock as about as high as any site online except maybe something like Digg that appeals specifically to the tech geek crowd. As far as how to get their attention, I'm not sure what you're asking. If it's how to fix the problems, the short answer is make the ads look better (the long answer is more than I feel like typing but that's still the main point). If you're asking how to get back the people already blocking ads, maybe you can't really make a material change in what's already happened. However, you can certainly slow down the attrition rate.


Neil, this isn't really an issue of rewriting the whole site. The changes are actually relatively simple from a technology point of view. This isn't to say it's an overnight fix, but these are not expensive things to do. As far as whether or not they should actually make changes, obviously that's not my decision. That being said, my take on it is that if your users feel compelled to tell you over and over again that they'd prefer changes to certain things it's probably worth taking note of. Do you make every change anyone suggests? Of course not. Do you just say "Whatever, it works, eff the haters"? That's probably not a real effective plan either.

Re: Who hired the 6th Grader?
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
The purpose of the graphic isn't to look good but to get your attention. So I guess our sixth grader just made it to junior high.

MM

[/ QUOTE ]
Hey, trainwrecks get attention, but somehow they don't make me want to jump on the next train.

The fact is, the 2+2 brand on the net is something like out of the 90's when things like the <blink> tag was considered cool (well, by some at least), and effective styling and usability were basically unknown quantities.

Take the green sidebar for instance. For one, it's butt ugly, but that would be OK, or at least forgivable, if it scored high in usability. Sadly, it don't. The orange on green color of the links is hard to read, the way menu-items over two lines have their second line start at the same margin as the menu-headings makes it difficult to seperate between categories, and while the logical placement of the different subforums has been improved somewhat, it's still a mess, especially links for your products (books), authors, etc. should be seperated and highlighted. You DO want to sell your products, right?

Further, there doesn't seem to be put much thought in your advertising scheme. The ads are generally ugly, again something that could be forgivable if their placement was logical and their message clear, but that's just not the case, at least to my eyes. For instance, it would be a trivial matter to make ads for limit hold'em books for users visiting the limit forums. To take it a step further, you could track what forums users visit regularly, and throw ads based on their preferences. Someone who exclusively visits the MTT forums should get ads from your affiliate advertisers focusing on MTT's. Users browsing the sports forum, could get ads for sporting goods. Those most active in sports betting could get ads from bookies. I'm sure you catch my drift by now.

In my opinion, 2+2 need to hire a third party to do a complete overhaul of the site. A half-assed upgrade to the latest UBB-forums just doesn't cut it. You need to change forum software, possibly upgrade your server park, and make a clearer seperation between your products, the magazine, and the forums themselves, with plenty of visible "doors" to navigate between each. And you need a concise and thought-out advertising scheme, as well as put some serious thought into other ways of monetizing 2+2 (the earlier El Diablo thread had some excellent suggestions). All just my humble opinion of course.

[/ QUOTE ]

Good post.

Re: Who hired the 6th Grader?
 

[ QUOTE ]
The purpose of the graphic isn't to look good but to get your attention. So I guess our sixth grader just made it to junior high.

MM

[/ QUOTE ]

Ads like this are the reason that users like me (who love, and would love to support, 2+2) use Adblock.

Just FWIW.

I do leave all of the text-only ads unblocked, but these atrocities are so painful to see even on an infrequent basis that I block anything glaring and ugly. I'm afraid that if I block them, more text adds but with the <blink> HTML attribute will be added, and I don't want to wish that upon the rest of the users. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

Rob

Re: Who hired the 6th Grader?
 

Blink is highly underrated.


<blink>-Sam</blink>

Re: Who hired the 6th Grader?
 

[ QUOTE ]
but these atrocities are so painful to see even on an infrequent basis that I block anything glaring and ugly. I'm afraid that if I block them, more text adds but with the &lt;blink&gt; HTML attribute will be added, and I don't want to wish that upon the rest of the users. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

Rob

[/ QUOTE ]

I think you have very little comprehension of what pain actually is.

Re: Who hired the 6th Grader?
 

I for one welcome our new MS Paintin' overlords.

Re: Who hired the 6th Grader?
 

[ QUOTE ]
The purpose of the graphic isn't to look good but to get your attention. So I guess our sixth grader just made it to junior high.

MM

[/ QUOTE ]

WTF is this post? Are you in sixth grade? What sort of site admin responds like this to a paying customer? What sort of professional says things like this to someone that is attempting to assist him?!

Re: Who hired the 6th Grader?
 

I'm not looking for work (as someone above may have implied) but I just took about 5 minutes to replicate the banner using only text (except the 2+2 logo).

And here's what it looks like -
http://img253.imageshack.us/img253/4945/22bannerat3.gif

compared to -
http://www.twoplustwo.com/images/2+2MastheadGreen.gif



&lt;!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"&gt;
&lt;html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"&gt;
&lt;head&gt;

&lt;meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" /&gt;
&lt;title&gt;Untitled Document&lt;/title&gt;
&lt;style type="text/css"&gt;
&lt;!--
.banner {
background-color: #589346;
width: 450px;
text-align:center;
color:#fff;
font-size:18px;
}
img { border:none; }
a:link {
text-decoration:none;
color:#fff;
}
a:visited {
text-decoration:none;
color:#fff;
}
.bannerContent {
float:left;
text-align:center;
}
--&gt;
&lt;/style&gt;
&lt;/head&gt;

&lt;body&gt;
&lt;div class="banner"&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.twoplustwo.com/bonus/"&gt;
&lt;div&gt;Two Plus Two Publishing LLC&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;&lt;img src="http://www.twoplustwo.com/images/twoimages/cardsBasic_BWO.png" /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div class="bannerContent"&gt;New! Five&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style="color:#FF0000;" class="bannerContent"&gt;Free&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="bannerContent"&gt;&amp;nbsp;Two Plus Two Books with poker site signup!&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;The Best Deal on the Internet!&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div&gt;(For Non-US members only. Click for details.)&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;/body&gt;
&lt;/html&gt;

You get some minor SEO benefits by having the ad as all text. But anyway, maybe they don't teach stuff like this till 10th grade.

Re: Who hired the 6th Grader?
 

[ QUOTE ]
I'm not looking for work (as someone above may have implied) but I just took about 5 minutes to replicate the banner using only text (except the 2+2 logo).

And here's what it looks like -
http://img253.imageshack.us/img253/4945/22bannerat3.gif

compared to -
http://www.twoplustwo.com/images/2+2MastheadGreen.gif



<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
<title>Untitled Document</title>
<style type="text/css">

</style>
</head>

<body>
<div class="banner"><a href="http://www.twoplustwo.com/bonus/">
<div>Two Plus Two Publishing LLC</div>
<div>http://www.twoplustwo.com/images/two...sBasic_BWO.png</div>
<div class="bannerContent">New! Five</div><div style="color:#FF0000;" class="bannerContent">Free</div><div class="bannerContent">Two Plus Two Books with poker site signup!</div>
<div>The Best Deal on the Internet!</div>
<div>(For Non-US members only. Click for details.)</div>
</a></div>
</body>
</html>

You get some minor SEO benefits by having the ad as all text. But anyway, maybe they don't teach stuff like this till 10th grade.

[/ QUOTE ]

FYP (sort of)

Re: Who hired the 6th Grader?
 

Most definitely not looking for a job either, but I was curious what I'd be able to do with the ad mentioned in the OP by playing around in photoshop for 5-10 minutes:

http://img512.imageshack.us/img512/5...twofivety2.jpg

Better?

Re: Who hired the 6th Grader?
 

[ QUOTE ]
Most definitely not looking for a job either, but I was curious what I'd be able to do with the ad mentioned in the OP by playing around in photoshop for 5-10 minutes:

http://img512.imageshack.us/img512/5...twofivety2.jpg

Better?

[/ QUOTE ]

wow, i like it

Re: Who hired the 6th Grader?
 

[ QUOTE ]
http://img253.imageshack.us/img253/4945/22bannerat3.gif


[/ QUOTE ]No offense but I have a hard time reading the red on green, and I suspect the color blind will have an even harder time. The existing banner isn't ultra pretty but it's legible.

Re: Who hired the 6th Grader?
 

[ QUOTE ]
It's funny how many people, who probably have no way of knowing how successful the 2+2 website is as-is, are so eager for 2+2 to spend money to 'fix' it.

[/ QUOTE ]
That's sort of true. My suspicion is that 2+2 is indeed making good money from their book sales, and to a lesser degree from ad revenue on the site. But I also suspect that's part of the problem - to the degree that making money can be considered a problem.

It seems kind of obvious that the management of 2+2 has become complacent, and isn't really interested in evolving or thinking up new ways to add revenue. Sure, they tried to give the site a face-lift and some added functionality by upgrading to the latest version of UBB-threads, but if I remember correctly, that was mostly because of expected scaling-problems with the current version of UBB-threads.

The thing is, for an outsider, who has some experience with webdesign, usability and e-commerce, it's pretty obvious that there's a lot of unreleased potential in 2+2 - the website. It may be that the user-base of 2+2 are anomalies, and that all the guidelines for usability and aestheticism don't apply to them, but I sorta doubt that..

Re: Who hired the 6th Grader?
 

Iron - the styles have to be included for it to work.

ZeTurd - very nice work!

Re: Who hired the 6th Grader?
 

wow this is pretty sweet

Re: Who hired the 6th Grader?
 

[ QUOTE ]
The thing is, for an outsider, who has some experience with webdesign, usability and e-commerce, it's pretty obvious that there's a lot of unreleased potential in 2+2 - the website. It may be that the user-base of 2+2 are anomalies, and that all the guidelines for usability and aestheticism don't apply to them, but I sorta doubt that..

[/ QUOTE ]I don't think anything about market research is necessarily 'obvious', personally. I understand where you're coming from, but customers can be fickle.

Re: Who hired the 6th Grader?
 

Zeturd, very nice! [img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]

Re: Who hired the 6th Grader?
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Most definitely not looking for a job either, but I was curious what I'd be able to do with the ad mentioned in the OP by playing around in photoshop for 5-10 minutes:

http://img512.imageshack.us/img512/5...twofivety2.jpg

Better?

[/ QUOTE ]

wow, i like it

[/ QUOTE ]

Re: Who hired the 6th Grader?
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Most definitely not looking for a job either, but I was curious what I'd be able to do with the ad mentioned in the OP by playing around in photoshop for 5-10 minutes:

http://img512.imageshack.us/img512/5...twofivety2.jpg

Better?

[/ QUOTE ]

wow, i like it

[/ QUOTE ]

[/ QUOTE ]

Re: Who hired the 6th Grader?
 

[ QUOTE ]
Zeturd, very nice! [img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]

[/ QUOTE ]

Zeturd for President!

Re: Who hired the 6th Grader?
 

Yeah, as a web developer myself, I agree with pretty much all the ideas ZeTurd has brought forth here.

Re: Who hired the 6th Grader?
 

[ QUOTE ]
Most definitely not looking for a job either, but I was curious what I'd be able to do with the ad mentioned in the OP by playing around in photoshop for 5-10 minutes:

http://img512.imageshack.us/img512/5...twofivety2.jpg

Better?

[/ QUOTE ]

Fantastic. The only thing I would change would be to make five and free different colors, but that would be the best ad on the site IMO.

Re: Who hired the 6th Grader?
 

Zeturd,

I think it sucks. I would redo it and have a little bit of the 4 visible under the 5 card. Then it would totally rule.

Re: Who hired the 6th Grader?
 

Although Zeturd's effort is undoubtedly aesthetically more pleasing than the original effort, does it perform the task at hand as well as the original? It's really a question of responses(is the present look effective?)vs. alienation of readers(still hard to believe a significant number of people give a rat's behind what it looks like). Lots of looks is probably good, no?

Many years ago Wisk had an ad that asked "Ring around the collar?" Everyone agreed it was a horrible ad, but it was highly effective as it got your attention. Maybe this is 2+2's version of ring around the collar. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

Re: Who hired the 6th Grader?
 

[ QUOTE ]
The purpose of the graphic isn't to look good but to get your attention. So I guess our sixth grader just made it to junior high.

MM

[/ QUOTE ]

Hi Mason,

The graphic does indeed get a person's attention. However, it is also such an eyesore that upon having your eyes drawn to it, you immediately want to look away. You may want to hold your sixth grader back a year.