Site Tours and Splash Page

[KellyTaylor]

Ok so I know I havent posted in awhile but I loose my train of thought in all the work I have to do and the question of the DAY cumming from me is...

What are key elements that are very important to put in a tour?!!?

Also do you think if you show to much nudity and your to aggressive with your tour.. People will just jack off and feel no need to join cause the tour was hot enough to jack off 500 times?!?!?

Also does Video sell your site when it is on a tour!?!?
How many pages is good for a tour without over doing it?
Also what do you think are colors to stay away from??

Another thing splash pages...
Would you say it is important to have
" TOUR IN BIG BOLD LETTERS??"
OR THE WORD "Preview" Which one is better

Also what do you think pages are better ,.... bigger showy front pages and smaller tours or smaller front "" Splash pages"" and bigger tours or one bolth mixed equally or together?!?!

Also when a site gets re design what are things not to do .. So you dont make a mistake and then you get a design that you like better and you members dont.. ..... And if you end up doing that how to fix it .. without having to go back to the old design .. because it is time for a redo of the site??? Please tell me what you guys think... Thanks

K. Taylor :nowords:

[basschick]

i've always had better signups with nudity - much better. also a sexy trailer that builds from telling the story of the site to nudity. we tested this with our gay and str8 tours, and all sold radically better with nudity and some sex or masturbation (depending on niche).

you can use the words next, tour, more or anything you like that makes it obvious. and if you're not satisfied that the word makes all the sales it can, you can always have several versions of the same graphic made, each with a different word on it and try each one.

i've seen beautiful slick graphical tours make sales and i've also seen amateur looking tours make sales. there is no one answer here.

a bad video will cost you bandwidth - a good one sells memberships. a bad video will either get guys off or look bad or not build the surfers interest. if there's any kind of a plot or something that defines the site that isn't sex, i'd try to start the trailer there.

for example for a j/o site - instead of just showing clips of guys jacking off, you start by having guy number 1 say "hi. i'm bob and i'm 19 years old". then cut to him starting to take off his pants, but don't get all the way there yet. then cut to guy 2 explaining why he's doing a porn video. now cut to guy 3 masturbation - include a couple good closeups that define the shoot. then guy 4, guy 5, guy 6 in quick cuts - not too much, but enough to get someone interested. then guy 7 saying something as a good conclusion. then the site name and a message like "see them all at sitename".

see, you've shown a variety of models AND you've explained what the site is about. if you use the right music over the masturbation clips, dropping the music when the last guy talks, you've got the drama of suddenly dropping the music to pull their FULL attention to read the words at the end.

[gaystoryman]

I am going to disagree a little here. I think that yes tours using images, navigation using buttons or images work... but i think you also remove yourself from gaining tons of free SE traffic.

I also think that words chosen need to be agonized over in a sense. I mean come on, the whole purpose of a tour or free area is to get the surfer to buy... and 'next' 'more' just don't cut it really. Go outside the box, specially if this is a single model site.. instead of 'next' try something like 'come on, there is more of me to see here' or something enticing, something making it seem like you are talking right to them.

Fancy tricks are something used in place of imagination, and they work too, but for a single model site, its you that you are selling, and who better to sell you than you? capture your essence, your vitality and you will have a winner...

Navigation is one of the single most important aspects of a site, and in a free preview area, it must always lead to your sign up page. Tours that reflect an honest depiction of what is inside, without giving it all away, is essential and images judiciously used with hard hitting ad copy is what really works.

Instead of 'join' i'd use something like.. 'Meet Me Now' or 'Let's Get Acquainted Now" or something different, something personal.. to draw them in...

I'd also disagree slightly with the nudity, money shots belong behind the door... now some nice teasing pics of you nude but only hinting at the treasures is something more erotic and enticing than you standing there with your hands on your hips and your dick staring them in the face... after all the goal here is to sell them a fantasy... of being with you, of being a part of your world... and if you give it all away up front, well the selling job becomes harder I think..

Previews/Tours should keep their focus on selling, through enticement & not overpowering the surfer. You need to lead them by the hand to the point where it is essential in their mind to become a member, and you cant really do that if you have explicit pictures or huge fonts and garish colours.

On a technical note, the goal of a free area is to attract customers and you need traffic for that. Text navigation is essential for the SE traffic, as is proper Title tags on each page in the head section plus h1 tags and supporting text within the body tags. Alt tags should be used kept to a minimum of under 6 words that describe the image, and links title should also be used to help the linking ranks with the SE. Plus you should have a site map that is linked to from every single preview page for SE.

Anchor text should be used that is relevent to the page it links to. Naming the pages tour1.html is useless for SE and should be named to a specific keyword that is linked to with anchor text. If you have a page talking about a cam show, then call it twink-cam.html and link to it by using anchor text such as 'see my twink cam here' or something like that.

By themselves none of these are big shakers, but put together they can get you ranking high up in the SERPS which in turn will generate a great deal of targeted traffic that converts. Best of all, it is FREE! if you do the work needed.

Also keep in mind your page loads. Long page loads turn the surfer off, and as a rule of thumb, you should have no pages taking more than 12 to 15 seconds to load on 56.6 modem, even though right now a lot are on cable, you still need to design for those who arent. Why exclude such a large number from your potential customer base? Images no matter how much you slice them add greatly to a page's load time...

merely my 2 cents though.

[BritishTwinks]

We used to have a graphical tour that I thought looked amazing. Webmasters always told me how great it looked and we had loads of affiliates... I thought flashy designs with airbrushed graphics were definitely the way to go.

Then when I was setting up my second big site, three designers in a row let me down and I eventually decided to design something myself. It looked pretty amateruish... but sales were amazing (conversions around 1:40). I've tried other amateurish-looking sites over the years and they've always done better for me than the big production designs.

The problem I have faced, though - and it's definitely something to bear in mind - is that affiliates seem much more likely to promote a site that *they* think looks hot. I couldn't convince many webmasters to promote my second site because they all thought it was ugly. They were happily promoting my first site that converted 1:120 but wouldn't touch the new one that was getting 1:40. Madness, but that's the way people are.

Over time, an amateur-looking site can build a reputation and people will back you because of that. But, at first, I think big affiliates are still much happier to try out a big flashy tour than a little amateur-type one with tables and text.

[basschick]

having an attractive well-designed tour doesn't mean you can't have plenty of text on the page for search engines as well.

a lot of people tell me the theory that no explicit content and leaving stuff to the imagination sells. but when ars and topbucks censored their tours, man did EVERYONE's conversion drop. lee, do you remember? it was a fucking disaster *LOL*

plenty of amateur tours sell as well as professional tours. the secret is not to make a bad looking tour, because there is a BIG difference between amateur and ugly. also when making your own tour, make sure that each and every page has naturally flowing links that lead to the join page. i go to a lot of amateur tours and there ARE no links to join on some pages *LOL*