Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Obviously I'm interested in potential revenue, but I've read enough posts on here to understand the difficulty of prediction, so no need to cover that. Suggestions of attempting to get retailers to advertise are unnecessary thanks - we've obviously considered that. One stumbling block is that our site details in-store offers, which are not always available online, and the attraction to the retailer is to get them in their stores.
Oh, I hope I haven't breached any rules by including the site link. Since clicking on it now makes us no money, and it is not relevant to the majority of posters being a UK only site, I assume it's ok. It seemed relevant to allow anyone kind enough to respond to see the context if they so wished.
[edited by: engine at 11:39 pm (utc) on Nov. 5, 2005]
[edit reason] TOS [/edit]
With regards to Adsense, we've run it on one of our wine sites and got a decent variety of UK wine based advertisers. Google have quite a large advertiser pool in the UK so that shouldn't be a problem.
Give it a go and see if it works for you.
d
I'll just have to let the mods do it. Sorry guys.
btw, thanks for the reply.
It may be worth trying afont for the site that blends better with the ads (perhaps verdana, tahoma or arial). Also have a look at the adsense heat map for ideas of the best location for ads. You can find it at [google.com...]
good luck
d
can the ads be UK only ads, as USA sites would be useless for us
No offence meant however you really must learn what the Adsense programme is about.
The entire point of Adsense (for publishers) is to provide global advertising coverage for web sites, it is the Adwords (for advertisers) who decide where they want their ads to be seen.
Wine is wine is wine...the Adsense algo will serve up:-)) the appropriate ads for whichever country your visitor is viewing from.
I can compare by saying that I have some UK-based niche trade sites which rank very highly but offer a localised UK product and service however those Google ads provide us with some of the best CTR's and eCPM's since the US Adword advertisers ride "on the back" of that web site for relevancy.
Does this all make sense to you?
If not, then really learn what the entire program is all about. In simplicity it is a 24 hour advertising shop for your niche products worldwide, not just in the UK.
As I stated, I've just come across adsense. Trying to learn more about the program is precicely why I posted my questions here. Again, as I said, google's pages seem to tell you very little about what happens when using adsense - perhaps more info is available when you sign up. I did a google search on adsense and a few more words and this seemed the most useful site that came up.
Also, asking people who actually use a product seems a better way of gleaning reliable info than reading the advertising blurb.
Anyway, you did actually answer my questions, so thank you.
No offence taken...it's a good idea to research all the in's and out's before proceeding.
FWIW there is a good chance that it will be reasonably well placed in other English language Google engines since searching for specific wines you are already well ranked.
Whereabouts were you considering your Adsense and which type?
A leaderboard at the top or bottom of the page?
Great site - just showed my wife and can't get her off the PC!
<snip>
Cheers
[edited by: engine at 11:41 pm (utc) on Nov. 5, 2005]
[edit reason] No self promo, see TOS [/edit]
I know she'll want the ads "out of the way", which does partially defeat the point of having them. As to which pages should carry them, my initial guess would be the front page. Despite the articles, people really visit the site just to search wine prices, so the home page being the search entry screen seems a must, locationwise. The other would be the results page. On the results page there would be no option of placing the ads at the side, as the results take up all the screen real estate widthwise, so top or bottom are the only choices.
There is no scope for radically redesigning the criteria input or results pages. The site has been declared "site of the day" by BBC Radio 2, and site of the month by the BBC Good Food magazine, so we believe they (and out visitors) like the content and the format. We tinker with the format at our peril!
btw this is the only web site I have ever done (a simple version of it it was created by friends, but I've picked it up and developed it an enormous amount, so now I own and understand it all), hence I'm no expert. All advice willingly considered!
Let's be careful out there!
This sounds like an excellent and valid application for "cloaking". When your wife goes on the site, it shows her one page, but when other people go on the site, it shows the pages that make money :-).
Seriously, you may want to look at cloaking techniques to present UK and non-UK users with different pages. Non-UK users are unlikely to nip down to Tesco in Stroud, so you can make the non-price parts of the site much more prominent - ads, discussion forum, etc.. Whereas UK users do a search to go to the results page, non-UK users will more likely click on an ad to find a local supplier. There is a forum dedicated to cloaking here at WW.
As an aside, there are some parts of the site that don't completely work. Test all the links at the top of the page, and check all graphics. Clear your browser cache before testing it, and try it in different browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Netscape) including some older versions. Also, test it not only from your own PC but others. Sometimes other computers do really funny things with fonts, for example, that can ruin the look and operation of a site.
>the home page being the search entry screen seems a must, locationwise. The other would
>be the results page.
If you think about the flow through your site, including entry and exit points, then the results page is a bigger must than the home page, I suggest. Look at putting text at the bottom that explains who the major suppliers are, how to order stuff online etc., and consider "section page targeting" to help encourage ads to be displayed that are about online ordering. You could put ads at both the top and the bottom - adsense will over time work out where the hot spots are and put the most expensive ads in that slot. The overall effect could then be that a substantial number of UK users come to your site, do a search, then exit by clicking on an ad for an online ordering service.
True. Though the font (as with the rest of the site) should be chosen to convey the desired image. This site has the potential to become a real fun site, with wine quizzes, games, tests, webcams to vineyards, you name it. The look and feel may need some work, but the font could work in a site that oozes fun.
You could even have a little moving graphic of someone with a wine bottle staggering onto the screen, trying to empty the last drop, drinking it and then falling over drunk. Or alien spaceships flying from around the universe to scoff quoffers' wines.
Hmmm... the effect of last night's wine hasn't worn off yet.
COMIC SANS MS doesn't look very professional
I'm with 21_blue on this. I feel it's the type (!), ok genre, of site which can get away with it.
Many on-line buyers feel more comfortable with a "friendly looking" site rather than strictly coroporate.
Anyone can appear to be "yet another High Street site" trying to play catch-up with the Net whereas an evidently family site may exlicit returns and recommendations since their knowledge and enthusiasm is appreciated.
Which would you believe more?
A corporate site's wine description or the family site's "Here we are falling over in the Chateau"?
As to adsense, after a chat with "webpublisher" (thanks again Andy), we'll give it a go and see what happens. If it brings some pocket money in, all well and good - if not, we've lost nothing except a little of my time!
Pete
As an aside, there are some parts of the site that don't completely work
If you check the "browsers" page (available from the help page) you'll see I did test the site on quite a number of browsers. However, I do occassionally do updates and I don't check everything on every browser on several machines. I simply don't have the time, and I have to say that if some older browsers can't cope with some of the content pages, then tough. I'd be concerned at the search not working, but otherwise I have to balance the effort against the reward (currently absolutely nothing!).
Pete
What didn't work was one of the links on one of the pages - top right link, as I recall - plus one of the graphics didn't display in the top centre of the screen on one of the pages. It is possible that there was nothing wrong with the site, but at that moment in time the server was unable to fulfil the requests.
There are some bits of software that you can get off the internet that will give your site a thorough test and tell you which links don't work. Whenever we change a page on the site, we always rerun the test to make sure we haven't inadvertently corrupted a link. Also, uploads can occasionally (perhaps rarely) corrupt a file, so testing a site after update is always useful.
By the way, as you found our advice useful, do we qualify for a $100 referral fee? :-) A free case of wine will do - I'm going past Stroud on Monday if you want me to pick it up :-))
Many on-line buyers feel more comfortable with a "friendly looking" site rather than strictly coroporate.
Well I draw the line at COMIC SANS MS ... lol :D
I loved COMIC SANS MS btw ;) ... [embarrassed smilie] ..
It still cries hobby all over it, fine for some, but not for me.
I nevertheless accept if that's what you are after and it's working for them, it ...well... works. I still wouldn't buy there and it wouldn't necessarily convince me that it's not just Mr X making a wee wine list he likes and noone else.
Maybe I am wrong, but that's my feedback. :)
I still wouldn't buy there and it wouldn't necessarily convince me that it's not just Mr X making a wee wine list he likes and noone else.It isn't really germaine to my original query, but in the interest of accuracy I should point out that we don't sell anything on the site (or anywhere else, for that matter). The details of the offers are provided by the retail outlets themselves - Mel simply (hah) keys them into a spreadsheet and clicks a few buttons to get them on the site - and they are instore offers, not necessarily online. Put crudely, ours is an information sharing site and nothing else.
We are experimenting with making the font smaller, and trying other fonts. However, if we failed to get over the basic point that all we are doing is providing a list of prices of wine that people can buy in their supermarket or off-licence, maybe we should go for a bigger font!
