[Guy-Incognito]

Hello there,

I realise that there are many professional designers here at sijun.com - not only in the art department but also in web design.

So I hoped someone could give me advice on keeping a strong flow of traffic streaming through my web site (I don't want it to be ignored 'cause it cost me so much money).

I have fixed meta tags and tried adding it to several search engines, but nothing seems to work.

Can anyone help?

-my empty website-

[HawkOne]

There were a few thousand big companies who were wondering about the same things, and even though they hired the best planners and designers, people still didn't come rushing to hang out on their website for hours.... clicking all the banner ads while they were there And then the Dot.Com bubble burst !!! And they all wondered what went wrong ....

I don't think anyone can give you a black and white answer to your question, but, how about this ... You need one or all of these things, a well known brand name (or a large fanbase of circa 500-1000+ heads), worthwhile content updated frequently (or enough for people to not see it all in one visit), few/no banners/pop-up ads, fast server so people won't have to wait for slow-loading pictures, a well though out interface design and preferably pleasant graphic design. Pages with many large(60-100K+) images instead of thumbnails are a nuisance to all but those locally (in UK in your case) with high speed connections. Since internet users are from all over the world, a highspeed user in Toky will still have to wait to load images at snailpace from the UK, so it DOES make sense to think of download size. A loadlimit per page should total around 60K (including HTML), a page displaying one piece of artwork has NO limit as long as you prepare the user for whatever is coming ...

And LAST BUT NOT LEAST .... (drummroll ... ) Your site needs TIME ... Even though you have all of the above ... You might have to wait for a year ... or forever ... unless you are good at marketing your site ... by exposing people to your site (like you did here at Sijun) more people will look at your site, decide if they think it is worthwhile, if they want to come back later, or ... never again ...

These are just some things, there are more, but I think I covered the most important things ... There is a difference in what you would like your site to be, a self promo site, instead of sending out CD-ROMs to everybody, something like an advanced businesscard ...

Having an active forum is a completely different kettle of fish, and is very nearly impossible to pull through anymore, since most niches of interest already have an active board (or 3) with their faithful followers pretty much happy where they are ... It takes something special to make people switch ... CGChannel did it by shutting down one board, tempting all users to go to the new, expanded and improved board called CGTalk.com. Having known CG celebrities check in , contests and so on in addition to a well moderated board seems to have worked for them.

If users feel like they are getting something out of the visit, they might be back another day. Then again, they might go to hang out in that cool board called Sijun instead ...

Howzabout that ... ?

[ February 24, 2002: Message edited by: HawkOne ]