Feedback on poker business site made with Joomla
 

We've been working on this site slowly for about 4 months now and are very close to launching, so I thought it might be time to get some feedback and to fix any last minute things I haven't noticed. I have two excellent partners but I would say I did the majority of the site building itself, and learned Joomla to do so, so feel free to ask me any Joomla questions as I've spent a lot of hours on their forums and searching around on the internet learning how to use Joomla and many of the components that aren't pre-installed.

The site is www.deucescracked.com

I already know things don't look too pretty in Internet Explorer right now, not sure what the issue is but its a work in progress. The business model of the site is a subscription-based one. We provide free content in the form of blogs, articles, and forum posts, and premium content in the form of strategy videos. We focus on limit holdem and other games that do not get as much attention. I would like to cover all poker games except for tournaments and NL cash for the time being, as neither of those are an area of expertise for myself, Joe, or Rob.

Any feedback appreciated,
DeathDonkey

Re: Feedback on poker business site made with Joomla
 

Looks great, really professional appearance!

Just a couple small things:

- Holding your mouse over the "customer login" button in the top-right shows "alt tag here".

- You should try to get headshots for the bios to show that you're real people. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

- Under the "free" subscription, the button says "Offline Payment". It's kind of confusing, making it sound like I'll have to pay something even though I won't. I'd suggest another label for the button.

Re: Feedback on poker business site made with Joomla
 

Where did you get the joomla template? How easy was it to customize?

Re: Feedback on poker business site made with Joomla
 

I don't know if joomla supports it but if you can, set up a newsletter. And what I'd do in the newsletter is give a small "tip" article and link to a free sample video each week/month that you send out the newsletter. The free sample video may just be the first 3 minutes of existing videos, you then try and do an upsell getting visitors to convert to members.

And on your sign up page, when someone is unsure about paying, have the newsletter sign-up with some verbage like, "Still unsure? Sign up for our newsletter and get access to free videos!". Of course you don't tell them that they're only 3 minute videos but that gets them in the door. You may want to link to the free videos on your site also but the newsletter is better because it reminds them to come back. I've went to cardrunners once a few months back and watched the free video they had. However I've never been back because they haven't reminded me to come back. If they had reminded me to come back, I'd probably join ($$) after 2-3 times (although I don't play much poker anymore except for bonuses..so I doubt I'd ever sign up personally). Each time a new video comes out you can send out a newsletter with a link to the "sneak peak" of the video. Eventually the videos will sell themselves.

Re: Feedback on poker business site made with Joomla
 

What forum did you use in your website and how did you set it up with joomla?

Re: Feedback on poker business site made with Joomla
 

looks like he's using an extension called Joomlaboard Forum Component 1.1.4 Stable which you can probably install by loading the required files through the admin folder.

when i ran one, i used smf forum which i had installed as per the application's instructions and then i used the joomla smf bridge extension which allowed for the user tables of both applications to talk to each other.

Re: Feedback on poker business site made with Joomla
 

[ QUOTE ]
Where did you get the joomla template? How easy was it to customize?

[/ QUOTE ]

The template came from Joomla Junkie, and I customized the CSS on my own. I'm still tweaking some things (color schemes and the like) but I'm pretty happy with it right now.

Rob

Re: Feedback on poker business site made with Joomla
 

[ QUOTE ]
Looks great, really professional appearance!

Just a couple small things:

- Holding your mouse over the "customer login" button in the top-right shows "alt tag here".

- You should try to get headshots for the bios to show that you're real people. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

- Under the "free" subscription, the button says "Offline Payment". It's kind of confusing, making it sound like I'll have to pay something even though I won't. I'd suggest another label for the button.

[/ QUOTE ]

All solid suggestions. I'm looking through the site code right now and fixing the alt tag error you talked about.

Rob

Re: Feedback on poker business site made with Joomla
 

Much thanks for the newsletter idea, makes a lot of sense!

The forum is JoomlaBoard - I tried SMF with the bridge and Loudmouth forums as well. SMF integration was a nightmare and the best way to use it would have been to just link to an external SMF forum with a similar header to our main template, we wanted to keep the menu system and look of the site intact so we needed a fully integrated forum - between Loudmouth and Joomlaboard I was a bit happier with Joomlaboard because it is more actively updated.

-DeathDonkey

Re: Feedback on poker business site made with Joomla
 

[ QUOTE ]

And on your sign up page, when someone is unsure about paying, have the newsletter sign-up with some verbage like, "Still unsure? Sign up for our newsletter and get access to free videos!". Of course you don't tell them that they're only 3 minute videos but that gets them in the door. You may want to link to the free videos on your site also but the newsletter is better because it reminds them to come back. I've went to cardrunners once a few months back and watched the free video they had. However I've never been back because they haven't reminded me to come back. If they had reminded me to come back, I'd probably join ($$) after 2-3 times (although I don't play much poker anymore except for bonuses..so I doubt I'd ever sign up personally). Each time a new video comes out you can send out a newsletter with a link to the "sneak peak" of the video. Eventually the videos will sell themselves.

[/ QUOTE ]

Bradley,

Great suggestions! I love your ideas!

Thanks,
Joe Tall