Hello,
In this blog post I will comment about succesul.ro web site and give some tips on improving the web site.
Copywriting
1. There is a duplicate link for the “Register” link:
You should have a link for login, another one for registration;
2. There are some texts in Polish (I think) – see the <title> tag and the header, which both say:
“Succesul.ro – Twoja droga do sukcesu”;
3. A lot of the graphics on the homepage are not translated into Romanian;
4. This text:
“Grupul încă nu a fost creat – poÅ£i să fii primul!”
makes little sense in Romanian; it should be something like:
“Nu există încă niciun grup; poÈ›i crea tu primul grup”;
5. Rather than saying:
“Pagina principală”,
most Romanians use:
“Acasă” or even “Home”;
6. Rather than saying:
“Proiectul ÅŸi execuÅ£ia: Human Technology”
it’s best to say:
“Site realizat de”;
7. You say:
“Persoane”;
I would use a more personal touch and either use:
“Membri”
or say:
“Membrii comunității”;
8. You should update your copyright specification to include 2010:
“© Toate drepturile rezervate – Succesul.ro 2009”;
9. You define yourself as this:
“Succesul.ro este un portal de socializare”;
In my opinion, portals tend to list information or products (so, they will list best pages, top new, hot products); instead you have a portal with people; that’s not a great advertisement;
I’d change this into:
“site de socializare”;
10. You have a very odd-looking empty line:
Design
+I like your use of the white spaces, it really creates a lot of room for my eyes to rest;
1. In my opinion, the terms & conditions, the rules, the copyright notice and the “made by” notice should all be placed in the bottom of the page with a smaller and harder to notice text; right now they are all too visible;
2. Regarding the graphic you use:
you prefer to use as a logo a graphic with a globe and some people; but they are all faded and they all lack specificity; I can’t really connect & bond with the globe and some unkown people; I’d look for solutions to give a more pleasant look; for example, Neogen lists the latest photos from its members, while Facebook lists on its homepage a world with specific locations and directions;
3. The register link is the same height as the link for forgotten password; this is bad design;
4. You seem to have used a lot of colors for the homepage, I’d stick to a few colors and use them on the web site;
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
1. I would expect a social network to be present on other social networks, such as Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn;
2. All the pages have the same title:
“Succesul.ro – Twoja droga do sukcesu”;
really bad SEO implementation, this is a major error;
3. You have an empty robots.txt file;
4. Your sitemap.xml file contains errors;
5. Right now the homepage has two URLs: 1 and 2; I would redirect one to another if I were you; same goes for the other pages on your web site;
Structure of information
1. I don’t get it – how is it possible to have persons registered on your web site with no name specified? This must be an error;
2. On the homepage you have a link for login and a login box; why the two things on the same page?
3. The same goes for the register link, which is present two times on the homepage;
4. The links are not translated into Romanian:
http://succesul.ro/about-us
http://succesul.ro/sign-up
5. You don’t have a company blog, and that’s really bad;
6. You have a lot of group categories, yet no groups; if I were you, I wouldn’t show the categories which have zero groups;
Usability
1. You have no search box on the web site;
2. I can’t subscribe to your newsletter since there is no newsletter;
3. If I visit the homepage, I should probably see persons who have a profile picture;
4. I would expect the homepage to show me top members of your community, right now it shows me random members;
The register box
1. The texts make little sense; they’re full of grammar errors and are clearly not written by a Romanian;
2. It has some texts in Polish: “pracowników”;
3. It gives me no actual reasons to register;
The contact page
+It’s good that you list a physical address in there;
1. Why are all the information in Polish?
2. Why no phone numbers?
3. I would prefer to see on this page a list of persons whom I can contact;
4. How about putting on this page a list of staff members and their profile?
Next steps
What I would with the web site if I were you?
a. Hire a Romanian to translate the text on your web site;
b. Translate the text in the graphics;
c. Use URLs in Romanian;
d. Fix the other problems on your web site I mentioned on my web site;
e. Test your web site.
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Bottom line: succesul.ro social networking web site may be a good inspiration for web designers and web developers.