Request Review: www.StudentBookSearch.com

What a great idea! I think your site is very attractive. It has a nice crisp feel to it...like a new book. There were only a couple of things I think I would change if it were my site.

I would take off the "Website just launched..." part. I don't think it helps the site, and it could actually discourage people from giving you a try since it is so new.

I like the use of dollar signs, but I don't like them as part of a sentence. (That's just me...others might love it.)

Other than that, I think it's great! I have a niece in college and am going to send her a link to your site right now.

Ginger

check this thread http://www.webmaster-forums.net/help-wanted/full-website-designprogrammi...

I think it's a really good idea if you can somehow get a lot of traffic. Text books at my college are so expensive. I like the design but I think that the white backdrop behind the 3 "panels" should be a different color. Try maybe dark gray? It just looks too complicated with so similar hues next to each other. I also think you should have a graphic designer create a cartoony logo for your site instead of having the generic photos of those books. It would really give yourself an image. Overall, great work, and great idea.

I like the basic concept behind your website, it will be very helpful site. I am not sure if adding the launch date is a good idea on first page, rather it gives me less confidence in your web site as a user. Also if you can add a book search by ISBN would be helpful, as there are students who would go beyond their own university to get the books.

Nice work I bought a name to build a site like this and never did anything with it. glad to see someone did it and did a great job.
Thank you
Chris

This is a good idea!

I like the design of the site, nice and clean.
The code is clean as well, no html errors and only 4 for the css.

There aren't a lot of people on it yet, but that will change over time.

Good job and Good luck running it!

Your website looks very simple but also professional.
Banner picture (holding books) is very good. very nice website.

An excellent idea for a solid venture indeed. I like the way it is set up and all. It looks very professional and would be a great resource for finding and selling textbooks.

Great idea for a website. Like the design. I have a couple issues (that you may or may not be aware of).

1) Site users can't view what books are available to buy or trade without registering and logging in. I think this restricts your users, who may not register until they've found what they are looking for.

2) Your sitemap looks pretty dangerous to me. There are lots of links that link through to pages which have no colleges and so look very similar. Google will frown upon this and if your unlucky may penalize your site. I would recommend having a small blurb on each town even if there are no colleges listed. Also, change the page title, description and h1 tags inline with the town or area. You should also look at changing the anchor text on the sitemap page to something more friendly like 'colleges in alabama'

3) Not sure if ive done something wrong but i tried to register and never received my activation email... ; (

All the best with your venture tho. I know when I was a student i would have surely used such a site. Text books are very expensive!!! and use up valuable beer tokens. : )

activation email just came thru

Great feedback from all of you. Thank you all for taking the time to check my site. I will make some changes next week.

Overall I think the site is very easy to navigate, I like the color scheme and the overall design. I would suggest eliminating the launched date, and perhaps moving the navigation from the bottom of the page to the top.

Cool design. Your website has really clean design. The layout of the website is well organized. Colors and fonts are nice. Overall, i think your website doesn't have any problem. Good job and congratulations.

First, I think your graphic design is brilliant, very nice. Clean, uncluttered, easy to find what I want. (If that's a template, I'd love to know which one.)

I'd change the copyright notice to text so that you can use the PHP date("Y") function to keep the date current from year to year. You don't want to have to change the graphic every year, and it's already out of date.

Your problem is probably a chicken and egg thing; you can't get the books added until you get people to sign up, and they don't bother to sign up because there are so few books.

People aren't going to bother to register their college. If there's nothing on the site to satisfy their need, they're going to move right along. Register the colleges yourself, or hire some kid to do it for you.

Also, why restrict book listings to one school? They can be shipped anywhere in a few days or less. Show the books across the board and you'll have books available in every school listed on your site.

I think you have a great idea very well presented. Your obstacle is developing a critical mass to get the ball rolling. You should seriously investigate an affiliate partnership with an existing online seller so you can sell their books through your site, at least until things pick up speed. You might be able to make that transparent to the users. Get in touch with the major sellers, by phone or direct email. What you need is beyond the limits of traditional affiliate marketing arrangements.

Good luck with this, I really think this could work out if you can get schools and books on there.

Hello,

My review is part of the requirements for an Internet Programming course that I am taking.

First, this is a great idea for a web site!

All the features are complete and functional.

I think some places to improve the user return of your site might be to ugprade some of the look at feel aspects to reflect some of the post web 2.0 styles that are being used by sites like 37 signals and boagworld.com

For example the registration form has sort of a compact look, with regular font thats been on the internet forever. It might be an interesting idea to try spicing it up a bit.

Another idea might be to allow students to join "groups" of people from hee same college. This might catalyst a growth for a community aspect of the site.

Great job on this site so far, hope that it is successful,
Alex

Very good feedback, thank you all.

Add some more content to gain advantage in google listings..

http://www.studentbooksearch.com/ - not load =(

i wait 2 mins and it still load.
I use Opera.

I agree with krates,
1st of all the concept is pretty original;
2nd the navigation is relatively easy to use.

With the original content you may want to have a blog section that can be updated regularly.
I know it sounds annoying but you have to think about your market, and how overly busy college students can be.

I'm not sure how to suggest increasing the number of registered users.
Honestly this is the type of venture where paid advertising is key.

Looking around it was difficult to see how you profit from this type of site which is probably my fault because I looked around but maybe not deeply enough.

I would suggest that if paid advertising is out of your means you may want to set up tables at universities around your region (at least) that way you could boost awareness by having a physical presence.