Free Gay Videos for Testing our sites

[tombarr]

We would like to have input on our websites with respect to:

1. Ease of use
2. Intuitive surfability
3. Ease of shopping
4. Layout / design...
Etc.

and we are certainly open to other suggestions that are constructive.

If some of you could take our sites for a test drive and give us
your feedback so we can work on improving the customer shopping experience, we would be forever grateful.......

We'll be giving a free porn video of your choice to the 5 most insightful, concise, constructive and usable critiques/reviews
per site, within the next week.

Please critique:

http://www.wehovideo.com

http://www.gayasianshop.com

Thank you

Tom Barrington

[Dzinerbear]

Where should we send these? Or should we just post them here?

Dzinerbear

[tombarr]

Hey, you can post your reviews online, unless they are too scathing, then in that case you can send to me by email. admin@i-play-online.com

thank you ....

Tom

[Dzinerbear]

Okay, I'll post them here. I like these kinds of threads, we did one of these last month with Workin Men Movies. Thanks for asking us for our input.

Your Weho Video site loads too slowly. It took pretty close to 10 seconds to load on cable high-speed. I checked it in two browsers.

The first thing that jumps out at me as a webmaster is that your toll-free number is the very first thing I see. Now, if I'm a surfer who is nervous about buying online, I'm going to use that number and screw the referring webmaster out of the commission. I don't like that.

I'm an alignment maniac. Under the Highlights menu, for example, I'd be happier if the selections underneath were aligned with the H rather than the side of the grey box. (I'm a Virgo, sorry.) And I think the text should be bolder. By the same token, the bordered menu below exceeds the blue bar above (Categories) that bugs me. (Can you see how anal I am? Imagine living with me. )

Why are you spamming porn star names in your site title? That's a very important part of real estate where Google is concerned. Why don't you create a meaningful title that will get you good rankings.

And you title META tag is out of alignment. I have always been told that it needs to be the first thing. Your html should look like this:

html>
head>
title>Gay Videos

Don't bury your title.

I'm not fond of the green. I find it weak.

Interesting that Fetish is your first category.

Why do you have 'calendars' mixed in with the categories? It seems out of place. Oh I see, you've got 'magazines' too. (I'm flipping back and forth and typing.) I'd move those to a different area, you're mixing up flavours, niches, or turn-ons with products.

Your categories menu links to a Javascript for that rollover effect. It's cool, but it's going to kill you dead with search engines. They might be getting better at it, but last time I checked se's didn't follow links within javascript very well. That categories menu should be text-based to capitalize on all of those good keywords and links. And you can achieve the same effect with CSS and it actually help you get better search engine rankings. (PM me and I can send you a stylesheet that does this.)

More alignment issues on the right side, some of the sections are indented slightly, others aren't. I know this is picky stuff, but I think to the subconscious mind these kinds of things will detract from the professional look of the site. More professional look = I trust you with my credit card online.

You have a big block of space at the bottom of the first page that has your Outster, gayrated, and sextracker buttons and stuff. That's a big waste of space. (Why do people put those things there anyway? Do they bring you that much traffic?) That would be a wonderful space for a quick little movie review filled with wonderful keywords to suck in the search engine spiders, oh yeah, and a picture.

Your 'Highlights' section on the homepage is probably your most important spot because once the page loads, the surfer is looking there for something to do. (All e-commerce sites have left navigation.) So the very first thing I see is 'new release' which when clicked takes me to some magazines ... no pictures ... you want me to buy a magazine online? I'll just walk to the corner store and pick up Torso if I want it.

Look guys, you've got to get your servers sorted out because I just clicked 'top 50 gay videos' and it took another 10 seconds to load a page. If I'm a surfer, I'm not going to hang around. Talk to Luke at Chili Host. He can sort you out on this very important issue, the Luke dude is amazing.

I like that when I'm looking at a DVD's details that it's so easy to click to more DVDs by that studio, porn star, or fetish. That's very cool!

I think the thumbnails of the movies should be stroked (outlined). They just seem to get lost on that white background and stroking them might help ground them.

On a particular title's page, you have a lot of white space at the bottom that should be filled with something. White space = NOT MAKING ME MONEY

On your PID pages, the movie box covers are clickable, but they don't do anything. This is confusing and annoying as I wait for something to transfer that's never going to come.

When I click this link http://www.westhollywoodvideo.com/Si...r=Paul+Barresi

there's a lot of white space at the bottom, but this director has three pages of videos, so why not fill the whole page with thumbs?

Instead of saying 'other suggested products' why don't you say: more gay videos like this, or guys who bought this also bought these, or make it fun and say 'more spunkalicious gay porn'.

Is .asp crawlable by search engines? I don't know off hand. If it is, then you should change 'other suggested products' to something more keyword loaded, like what I suggested.

I really like your video suggestions feature. That's cool. But it doesn't seem to work, I made bears my first selection, bareback my second, and leather my third, and clicked, and nothing happened. But I really like this idea. Very good selling feature. You should feature this more prominently I'd find more of what I like faster.

I've got to say 'Weho' makes me think of a ho (whore) and I don't know if that's a good thing. I don't know. Is this a localism? Do people in L.A. say, "Come on, let's go to WeHo"?

You've got a powerhouse of a site there. I hope some of these suggestions help you out.

As far as the Asian site is concerned. It seems like you've taken care of a lot of my above critique on this site. I'm not sure about the green though, it's kinda minty. I'd actually try a red, something like HEX #800000, or in that range, it's a very sexy colour and with some black, it's really Asian. I think the designer was probably going for a jade look, but fuck the jade, red's a hot, sexy colour and it sells.

I think the gayasianshop is designed a lot better than the weho one, but it's still not quite there. There are just these little sniggly little things that, if taken care of, would add such a level of sophistication,professionalism, and class to the site.

Go here: http://www.gayasianshop.com/site/depIndex.asp?dep=11

See that bar in the middle that says 'Asian Feature Films', it should align with the tops of the 'search' and 'under $20' on either side. It just keeps the eye from doing a lot of jumping up and down. It'll make it cleaner. I design really boxy, component kinda of sites, and I agonize over every pixel, but in the end, I have a lot of people say, "Wow, it's so nice and clean." I love hearing that. Do it. You'll rock.

I'd move those white buttons at the top labelled 'videos' etc onto one line. It's a little mob. There's too much going on there. Stretch it out across the page. And you're doing that Javascript thing again, make them text buttons, take advantage of the search engine's love of the written word.

For the logo, I'd like to suggest removing 'everything gay asian and erotic' it'll clean it up a lot. And you've kinda got a rainbow, but not really.

You should register gay-asian-shop.com (it's available, wouldn't you have been pissed if I bought it?)

Okay, I guess that's enough to chew on. I hope it didn't hurt too much.

Good luck guys!
dzinerbear

[JustMe]

Greetings:

Originally posted by Dzinerbear
Your Weho Video site loads too slowly. It took pretty close to 10 seconds to load on cable high-speed.

Your post only took 35 seconds to load on my cable modem

It's so refreshing to see 10 mile long posts from someone other than myself. It makes me feel so, well, less long winded

[Dzinerbear]

Hey tombarr,

Did you catch this reply or did I waste my time? I spent a couple of hours working on this for you, a 'thank you' would have be nice.

Dzinerbear

[tombarr]

Thanks for the post. No i had not seen the post, and would never just ignore the fact that you took the time to do the review.

I will read through it now.

Please send your mailing address and video selection from our
website to admin@i-play-online.com and I'll be sure to get your video out to you.

Thank you for doing the review.

Tom

[Dzinerbear]

You're welcome. It was fun. And thank you for the video.

Dzinerbear

[basschick]

i think mine will be a little briefer and yes, Dzinerbear - a lot of us l.a. folks do say weho. we can't park there, but we do say it.

that green doesn't do it for me

i can't see why you have a warning page that has links to everything in the site

site doesn't fit in an 800x600 browser - it takes a heap of sideways scrolling - but a lot of surfers are still using 800x600.

i'd either put the categories alphabetically or else by popularity.

i was wondering why the categories repeat at the bottom. if the page was really long, it would make more sense to me. i'm not saying it's necessarily a bad thing, but it seemed like wasted real estate to me.

i see amateur is listed under young men. i am surprised it's not a category.

i'm with Dzinerbear - Other Suggested Products seems very dry to me.

i like the mouseovers for the movie boxes and for the categories, but i wonder how many of your surfers won't have java on. hopefully most will, or they'll miss out.

i tried the video suggestion page, which seemed like a cool feature but it didn't work for me. it just took me to the same page over again. i'm in ie 6 with java on, if that helps.

overall the functionality of the site is mostly pretty good, but i feel the header and menu buttons could use colors and design that are a little sexier.

good luck with your site!

[tombarr]

Hey Basschick

send me an address and video choice to me at admin@i-play-online.com.

Thanks a bunch.

Tom

[Dzinerbear]

Hi all,

All too often we only complain about crappy service, I wanted to publicly thank tombarr. Over a month ago I wrote the above review about his site and he promised to send me a DVD. The one I selected was actually so new that it was still en route from the distribution. Tombarr assured me he would send it out as soon as it arrived.

My DVD arrived in the mail today, and tombarr even noted "gift" on the custome receipt so I didn't get stuck paying duty.

Tombarr, if this is the kind of service http://www.wehovideo.com gives, I'm sure you have many happy customers.

Thanks and cheers,
Dzinerbear

[Lee]

Good stuff Michael :thumbsup:

I love hearing stories about when sponsors have treated webmasters right :thumbsup:

Regards,

Lee

[tombarr]

Sponsors are webmasters too!