Snowboarding affiliate site review

[the goat]

I have been working on this one somewhat frantically to get ready for the season. I think I have most all the features I was aiming for and a good amount of content. I will of course keep updating the content, but I was hoping to get a few reviews about the usability of the site.

I feel like I have been staring at it for so long I can't tell anymore if people will really get everything. I tried to have a good balance of affiliate products/links and info but I am not sure I did a great job getting some of the products into obvious places, I fear many may be overlooked.

Any feedback would be great.

East Coast Boarders (http://www.eastcoastboarders.com)

[cbscreative]

I'm not a boarder (x-country skiier though), so I can only comment on my impression. It looks clean, I get the "boarder" impression right away so I know what the site is. The only suggestion I might offer is having a more distinct snowboarding image on top to reinforce it more visually.

I like the colors because they seem to work very well with your theme. There is plenty of relevant info such as snow reports, so that is good. I like how you used the navigation headings to categorize content. That helps considerably with providing a flow for the eyes to follow. I don't think I would have any problem finding what I was looking for from what I can tell. I also like how you've distributed the navigation around in several places. This helps make it more user friendly too.

I'm sure others can offer more, and the wonderful thing about site design is you can always find room to improve, but I'd say you've done a good job.

[KristineS]

I like it. Very nice clean layout and color scheme. Everything is also easy to find.

I think adding articles and trick tips is a great idea. The only thing I wondered about is the glossary. The site seems to be aimed at established and experienced boarders. Those are the people who would be spending the money on gear and trips I would assume. The glossary seems more like something that would be on a site for newbies.

I also see that you have articles about starting to board, so maybe you're looking to capture both segments of the crowd, the established and the novice snowboarder. In that case, the glossary makes a lot more sense.

[the goat]

Thanks for the feedback!

Steve, you make a good point and I have been going back and forth on whether I want a static landing page or to keep the freshest content on the home page. I am going to play around with a few things.

Kristine I think you caught on to something I sort of floundered on also. I started the site with more experienced riders in mind. As I developed it though I started to think that the experienced rider is probably more likely to already have their sites they visit, all their gear, and less of a need for the site in general.

I kind of switched gears in the middle and added more beginner stuff. My thought process was that if I can capture a new rider at the beginning, they may be more likely to stick with the site, not to mention they are more in need of gear ;)

Thanks again for the feedback

[vangogh]

Can't say I'm a snow boarder either, but I too like the site. Very professional and I think the colors are perfect. It's a cool blue that reminds you of winter and snow.

I see Kristine's point about the glossary, but I don't see anything wrong with having it there. It can still be a good resource for links even if it's not aimed at your target market. I'd reformat it though. It's not filling the space and looks like it was copy/paste from another program that set the margins. I'd expand it to fill out the space, put line breaks between the different items, and even make the items stand out more. Maybe a different color or bigger.

[the goat]

I just looked at it and you're exactly right, I completely re-did it. That was one of those things I was going to come back to, but then forgot about.

This is why good site reviews are so great, I always overlook or forget about a few things.

Thanks!

[vangogh]

It looks much better now.

It's easy to overlook things. It's one reason I've become more forgiving of typos. I've looked at pages, proofed them, had other people proof them, and still find typos months later.

[Vivid Color Zack]

I like the glossary, i've been snowboarding for maybe 6 years now and I didn't know what a "jib" was until last season. But I'm a boardercross/backcountry/speed rider rather than a park guy. Mostly because I'm terrible at it. I live in the wrong place for my style but I love the sport.

I like the site, tons of useful info and a store all in one place. You've got a good name too, I think it could get big. The bigger your forum gets the more appealing you'll be to vendors, you can probably work out some donations at some point, someone can win some goggles or something once a month.

As far as the product layout goes I'm kinda torn. On one hand I like seeing all the information at once, however, I don't really like scrolling down for 63 pages to see all the goggles or bindings. Especially with say, the burton boards where the initial description is exactly the same for all of them. I don't know if there is a way to have more than two products per line without interfering with the rest of the site, or if you could display just an image and the name of each product and have them click for more information... Just something that I would think about but I don't have a great alternative for you right now.

Explain how your relationship with The House works if you don't mind sharing, are do they give you a commission for referrals or how exactly does that work? Do you just use their links so you can say you guys sell product too? Is this temporary until you get your own vendors?

As for your how to dress section - add a HOW NOT TO DRESS section, and post pics of people that dress like morons and make me not want to be associated with snowboarding. Haha. Actually that's probably not the best idea but it would be funny.

[the goat]

Thanks for the feedback Zack. I will eventually make the shopping aspect of the site much more user friendly, right now it is just pop shop stores so it is not very organized, or searchable for that matter. I just haven't had the time to make a custom store yet.

I have affiliate accounts with The House, CCS, EMS, etc. Basically anytime someone clicks one of my links, a cookie tracks them for 15-30 days (depending on the merchant) and if they buy anything at that store in that time I get a percentage of the sale (10-25% depending).

It is called affiliate marketing, it is a good way to monetize a website without having to sell advertising. Every banner/product you see on the site is an affiliate link.

Thanks again for looking, it reminded me I still have a lot of work to do on that one!

[Business Attorney]

I think the site looks good, but I wonder if there is another shade of blue that would be better. The site looks a little too business-like to me, with the standard "corporate" blue.

Also, I would try to see if you could put the same gradient that you use for the header as a background around the logo. With the white box around the logo, it looks like you just pulled up a standard Wordpress template and threw your logo on it.