Australia’s Next Top Model Banana Peel - Ziller Web Marketing Blog

This month our Banana Peel is a little different to previous months but something we thought is worth sharing. If you are not aware each month we pick a site and break it down showing what we think could be done better and differently. This month it’s not so technical but will go to show you how important it is to stay on top of your sites content and keep spam under control.

Australia’s Next Top Model is a hit reality series that shows a group of models competing to win a modelling contract by completing a range of tasks and assignments. Although we here at Ziller are not big flash fans when it comes to websites, the website is fairly well built and designed, having a clear navigation and good load time. The problem here is the fact that they are allowing anyone to write what ever they feel on the homepage. I am guessing some of you are scratching your heads at this point so let me show you a screen-shot.

The Australia’s Next Top Model website have a forum plugged into their site allowing fans to register and communicate with each other by asking and answering questions. What they are doing wrong is they have inserted a script which pulls the latest posts and displays them right their on the homepage. Take a look again at the screen shot and take notice of the the latest forum content:

For a site of this calibre you would think this kind of thing would not happen, however it did and and goes to show just how careful you must be. The forum used is a phpbb forum and is well known for spam problems – if the forums are not managed properly spam bots will get in their and post content similar to what you see above. If you run a phpbb forum or any other open-source forum for that matter it’s critical to keep on top of spam.

Social media is becoming more and more popular and so the need to stay on top of content on your website is really important. Gone are the days when you had complete control over your website – it’s 2010 and this is where the web is headed. I suggest always applying the latest spam plugins that are available and generally keeping on top of what content is written to avoid embarrassing situations like Australia’s Next Top Model did.

Yes I know – it’s been a while since our last Banana Peel of the month. Things here at Ziller have been a little crazy to start the year, however we are now back and ready to continue into 2010. To kick proceedings off – welcome Bing.com – our March Banana Peel of the Month.

If you are not aware of or have never used Bing, it is a new search engine which was developed by Microsoft and was launched in May last year with serious intentions of taking on the big giant Google. During the launch Microsoft’s chief executive officer Steve Ballmer was quoted:

“Bing is an important first step forward in our long-term effort to deliver innovations in search that enable people to find information quickly and use the information they’ve found to accomplish tasks and make smart decisions”

What a joke.

When Bing was launched, I was looking forward to seeing what Microsoft would come up with and how they would make search better. Now, just the other day I swore I would never use Bing (or Yahoo for that matter) again.

We were launching a clients website for beta testing and during the transfer to a new server, there were some server related coding issues we came across. Naturally, we tried ‘Googling’ the error code as we know it is one great way to solve a problem as often users out there have faced the same problem before and have either blogged about it or posted on a forum. Google returned pages of relevant search results to the problem, however we did not find a solution right away so thought we would go and perform the same search at Bing.

What Bing returned in the serp (search engine results page) amazed me. It’s first 2 or 3 pages returned websites that actually had the same problem. By this what I mean is that the error I was searching for was so common that many websites out there were actually down due to this very same error, they showed a white page with error output – obviously of no help what so ever to me.

When I performed this search at Google, Google was smarter enough to understand that I was searching for a solution. Google returned forums, blogs and websites that discussed the error, while Bing and Yahoo returned only sites that actually had the error. Google still returned these sites in the my search, however they were on page 4 and 5.

Google knew what I wanted and delivered it, the others didn’t.

Sorry Steve, but so much for finding information quickly and using the information I have found to accomplish tasks and make smart decisions. Fail.

If you have not heard of them or shopped with them before, Big Brown Box are a relatively new online shopping website that sell a range of products online. Big Brown Box popped up almost a year ago now and most will agree that the their website is not badly designed at all. Its graphic design is done well, and the rest of the features are also well designed.

One thing we have noticed with Big Brown Box is the frequency that the website is down for maintenance. It seems that quite often this is the case, and in most cases it is for extended periods of time, on busy days. From experience weekdays, in particular those days early in the week are the most busy times for a shopping website, and in many cases these are the times when Big Brown Box is down for maintenance. As web developers we know that any website at times needs to be shut down for maintenance, but at two o’clock on a Sunday morning there is going to be a lot less traffic and is a much better time to do it then midday on a Monday.

Now it could well be the case that these frequent maintenance screens are not planned and are instead problems with the site, which even in a perfect world can happen. In this event what Big Brown Box really should be doing is offering a discount to the user – if the user is interrupted when trying to shop on your website, displaying a discount coupon on the screen they could use during their next purchase would help ensure they come back, and don’t purchase off one of your competitors.

Another thing which we noticed during these down periods was the fact that they had not paused their Google AdWords campaigns. We imagine that the Big Brown Box AdWords campaign is quite large so it would be sensible during these times to pause the campaign until the website is back up. This is good advice for any business owners running a online store, during down time ensure that any paid advertising is switched off as this can save you a great deal of money, and ensure that as little people as possible see your website off-line.

2nds World – www.2ndsworld.com.au, has been chosen for our next Banana Peel of the month. While 2nds World have not done a bad job in overall functionality of the website, it does have a very serious issue with its design. Among other things, 2nds World have chosen to use a very bright yellow as the main background colour of the site, so why is this so bad?

It is a proven scientific fact that there is much more light reflected by bright colours like yellow, and worse yet yellow is the major eye irritant which can hurt your eyes. As shown in the screen shot below, I am viewing this website with 1600 x 900 resolution and I cannot look at the screen for more then 10 seconds without needing the blink or squint my eyes. There is no way I would be prepared to spend 5 – 15 minutes on this website without a break.

A color like this type of yellow, should be used more sparingly to get attention where needed, what 2nds World have done, in my opinion is way over the top and does more damage then good.

Most often then not, it is the functionality of a website that will hurt the conversion path to sale, and while the functionality of this website is no where near perfect, it is in fact a design error that I believe is causing the most damage.

With so many websites on the Internet that could be improved we have have decided to start a new column, Banana Peel of the Month. Each month we will pick a website which we feel is doing one thing or another wrong, and write about it, providing our thoughts as to how it could be done better.

To kick off the month of June, Crust Pizza -www.crustpizza.com.au is our Banana Peel of the month.

If you have not heard of Crust Pizza before, they are a relatively new pizza shop which is doing quite well, taking on the likes of Dominos and Pizza Hut with their range of great tasting and healthy pizza’s. This week when checking out the  Crust Pizza website, there were a few things that instantly stuck out to Ziller.

When you have given up your precious time to visit the website of a pizza shop, what is the most likely thing you are looking for? The menu! Apart from maybe the store locations and the opening times, the menu is what you are usually after. Looking at the Crust Pizza homepage you will see in their prime real estate they choose to display a good few paragraphs talking about their business. While this may be interesting and worth while for a ecommerce retailer, this is not what you want here. Ziller would of instead stuck the pizza menu in the users face, maybe with a nice looking picture navigation leading you to different parts of the menu. If users want to read the about us text then they will, but we feel the homepage is not the right place for this.

Crust Pizza Menu

Second thing where we feel Crust Pizza has not done a good job, is the menu itself. If you look at the Crust Pizza menu what do you feel is lacking? Pictures! When you are viewing a pizza menu, or really any menu in fact, you want to see pictures. A nice big picture of each pizza would really help the user decide and even persuade them into a purchase much easier. Apart from the pictures the other area the Crust Pizza menu lacks in is organisation. The small anchor links at the top of the menu are not very easy at all to see, and the menu being as long as it is becomes confusing. Here Ziller would of used the full width of the content area, and better organised the categories to make the page much smaller.

As always though, you wont really know what works until you test it.

Would be really interested to recieve feedback as to your thoughts….