Concept Critique Please ...

Hmmm... I'm not really sure what you're getting at here. If you're looking to attract professionals I think your credibility would increase significantly if you had an actual domain with a forum using UBB or VBulletin (like this forum does), not a free service.

Your layout seems to be very disorganized and confusing. There seems to be stuff all over the place without any regard to it's relative importance or relationship to other elements.

So the point is just for women to join your community to promote their businesses? I would really try to approach this from a different angle. It seems kind of... what's the word.... superficial. It might be better to make it more of a grass roots community type thing - women helping women do business, more about finding out how to

If you would have spent as much time actually working on your site instead of promoting it, things might be better. I despise EZ-board myself. You have to about give your life's history to join. Then you can pay $1 a month to remove their annoying pop-up ads. Plus they use some really sorry, buggy code. UBB is good but V-bulletin is better, IMHO.

I am also not sure of the reason for your post here. In your own words

Quote: Do you engage in Self Promotion?

. I would have to say that YES you do. It doesn't appear that you really wanted a website critique. You either wanted a 'concept critique' or to engage in a bit of free advertising. Initially I considered closing this post altogether since it appeared to be an advertisement for your site, but I decided not to lest I, being a male, be accused of bias.

Here are a couple of general rules:

• Posting here for promotion is not allowed. We do obviously give someone the benefit of the doubt.
• If you want a site critique, please give the web address with a few simple comments. Not an entire page of an email that you had sent out. I had to read your rather lengthy post several times to figure out where you where coming form. Still not quite sure.

I have to agree with both Megan & mairving! I don't understand what you are trying to acheive with either this posting or the site. If you want to attract business women then you'll have to give them something worth sticking around for. Try organising the site, change the forum and perhaps people will want to be a part of your community.

Even thou I didnt get far, I think you have way to many "click here" on that page - very confusing
Also pop-ups (new windows) are very annoying, you warned us in here but not on your web site for people whom didnt come from in here. you use that $#@*& status bar message to cover over your links, If I dont know where i'm going - I dont go.

-I viewed source and found you link to your things via iwon.net -

on the iwon.net, which I take is your homepage
way to much white space up top on 800x600, then very cramped underneath. At first glance looks like there is nothing there.

I couldnt work out what was an advert and what was a link so I gave up - sorry

One thing that made me wonder thou, is this site for iWomen or Shannon? No offense but it seems a bit like a vanity page for Shannon rather than a iWoman busines site

Okay, it is now obvious to us that we have confused you all. That was not our intent, so we'll word things a bit differently.

But first we'd like to publicly say how very grateful we are for Megan Jack, mairving, The Webmistress and Busy to have taken the time and the effort to help give us the much needed feedback and input that they did to make us realize that we need to approach this from another perspective.

T-H-A-N-K Y-O-U!

Okay, here we go ...

We would like a critique of our "Self Promotion Concept"

The concept is quite simple actually ...

1) ALL business women can promote their own business (through their signature file) by FIRST promoting (actually referring) another woman owned business.

2) This can be done once a week by posting to an Online Forum.

3) Then to create an even more reputable and credible "self promotion opportunity" we would provide a special section of the Online Forum for the top "Women In Business Communities".

4) These communities would be defined as ANY organization with more than 100 members/subscribers. The owner/manager/moderator of these communities would be featured (photo, logo, banner, etc.) along with the relevant info needed to join, subscribe, visit their Web Site as well as all contact info.

5) Since these women are the community leaders (which means clout, status, reputation, etc.), and they would have the opportunity (once a week) to feature (recommend, refer, etc.) one of their members' businesses, if YOU and YOUR business were featured, would you not think that it would instantly gain the credibility and trust that all business owners seek?

We hope that if we make all this information available via an Online Forum as well as provide a recap of the highlights each week in an eMail Newsletter, that folks would find this type of free service, valuable and useful enough to participate in and/or to simply subscribe to via eMail, therefore never having to actually visit the Online Forum if they only wanted to receive the more convenient eMail version due to time constraints.

So, that is our concept ... and we'd appreciate a critique of whether you think such a venture would work (meaning to become popular enough to attract lots of traffic or participants and/or subscribers), or are we way off base here, that we need to scrap the whole idea?

I dunno... that sounds a little bit complicated to me. I also think that it sounds very superficial, as I said above. I wouldn't want to hang around a place where everyone is just trying to promote themselves.

It makes me think of the search engine iwon.com maybe you'll pick up extra traffic because of it!

I would agree with Megan. I am not sure if the concept is that great. It is too complex with all the rules. People also love to promote themselves but hate to hear others promote themselves. What is your goal? If it is to build traffic to your site, I don't think that it would work. The thing about having forums is that you can't really regulate them as much as your are trying to or people won't come.

You also have a somewhat limited audience.

• First you exclude men, which is 50% of the population.
• Then you exclude women who don't own businesses, probably 90% of the remaining 50%.
• Of that remaining small percentage, you make them invitation only, which is somewhat self-defeating. Then you stick all of these rules & stipulations on the members.

Can you imagine if Webmaster Forums was invitation only, it's only goal was to promote member's websites, and you had to have a minumum of 50 websites up and running before you were considered. Only a few would remain.

Quote: Originally posted by Megan Jack
I dunno... that sounds a little bit complicated to me. I wouldn't want to hang around a place where everyone is just trying to promote themselves.

Hi Megan Jack,

Thank you very much for your feedback. I don't think we have presented our concept where you fully understand it yet, so let me just ask you one last question, please, thanks.

If you have done business with any company that you were thouroughly delighted with and had the opportunity to promote/refer/recommend that company with your very own testimonial on a public forum (where it is both allowed and encouraged), would you?

Just a yes or no answer is all we need from you, thank you, Megan Jack.

Quote: Originally posted by mairving
It is too complex with all the rules. People also love to promote themselves but hate to hear others promote themselves. What is your goal?

Hi mairving,

First off, let us be quick to say that we appreciate your dialog with us, thank you!

Next, to answer your question ... "What is your goal?" ...

Our goal is to give EVERYONE, both male and female the opportunity to promote/refer/recommend a "woman owned" OR a "woman oriented" (which could be male-owned) business that they had a thoroughly wonderful experience with, period.

Then to help MOTIVATE and ENCOURAGE such referrals by folks, we are allowing them to use a signature file as a "self promotion" tool after FIRST referring ANOTHER business as a satisfied customer/client.

So, mairving, based solely on this new information we have just shared with you, would you please answer the same question we just asked Megan Jack?

If you have done business with any company that you were thoroughly delighted with and had the opportunity to promote/refer/recommend that company with your very own testimonial on a public forum (where it is both allowed and encouraged), would you?

Just a yes or no answer is all we need from you, thank you, mairving for your continued dialog with us, we definitely appreciate it.

Quote: Originally posted by Sharon & Roy

If you have done business with any company that you were thouroughly delighted with and had the opportunity to promote/refer/recommend that company with your very own testimonial on a public forum (where it is both allowed and encouraged), would you?

I probably wouldn't go to a specific site just to promote that business, no. I would recommend it to colleagues, friends, family etc. if the subject came up. I might mention it to people I think would be interested in that type product or service. Maybe I would write the company and tell them how happy I was with their service, but I'm not about to do some company's advertising for them.

I agree with Megan, I wouldn't promote another company, especially with all the rules & regulations you seem to have. I would tell those close to me about it if they would be interested but that's about it or maybe put a link to them from my own website if it was relevant.

Actually, Sharon, I will answer your question with another question that will be my final answer.

Don't you think if you have to spend this much time explaining the concept to people who are fairly savvy, that the answer has to be: No, the concept is not valid?

Quote: Originally posted by mairving
Don't you think if you have to spend this much time explaining the concept to people who are fairly savvy, that the answer has to be: No, the concept is not valid?

Hi mairving,

Yes, thank you for all your help and input. And a big thanks to everyone else who helped give us feedback too.

Am I the only one who sees this as, not a request for a critique, but as an opportunity for recuiting and self-promotion?

taff, read my original post here. We certainly try to give someone the benefit of the doubt. Is it self promotion? Sure. Is that the only reason why it was posted here? That is where the doubt comes in, so we decided to leave the post be.

Quote: Originally posted by mairving
taff, read my original post here. We certainly try to give someone the benefit of the doubt. Is it self promotion? Sure. Is that the only reason why it was posted here? That is where the doubt comes in, so we decided to leave the post be.

mairving - pretty clear and to the point. Sorry, not sure how I missed that. Delete these if you like.

Quote: Originally posted by mairving
We certainly try to give someone the benefit of the doubt.

Hi mairving,

We do appreciate what you did for us, by helping us with feedback on our concept. We really did not know where else would have been more appropriate to get a critique of our concept than here, but we also knew that if there was a more appropriate place, we would have been told so.

It is not our style to blatantly go against the rules, and when we posted it was to get feedback and input on whether we should pursue our concept of self promotion or not.

Had we not received the terrific feedback from you all, we would not have known until much later and with much wasted effort that this concept would not work the way we thought it could.

Thank you all again.