FabSwingers.com forum: Club websites

By *lackCherry OP Couple
over a year ago

Bristol

As I browse through the clubs section looking to plan our next club visit I cant help but think the websites the majority of clubs are serving up are utterly terrible.

Broken gallery's, out of date information, a struggle to find contact information and just zero time or care put into them.

You cannot deny that swinging and the web are linked in an intrinsic way and a good website should act as your shop front to the world.

With the rise of HTML5 and site building software there is no need to have a page that looks like it was put together in a weekend in 1997 on geocities and still use it is there ? its a way to sell your night and experince and if you're charging us £xxx for membership, £xxx for the night and then drinks and the rest on top the least you could do is take some time on the website.

Less marquee's less "sparkly" stuff all over it, less clutter, give me simple menus where I can find all the information, contact page, how to get there and then a nice gallery so we can see it before we get there its really not hard.

I dread to think the number of people who click on the clubs section and go to some note pad written site where you cant find anything and decide not to bother (we have many a time).

There are a few good ones (VA's stands out) what some of you club owners need to do is start emulating these sites, just remember its your shop front and some of you have (done the equivalent of) hung some tatty posters up that you cant see properly through dirty windows.

Reply privately

Reply in forum

Reply +quote

By *ibanditMan
over a year ago

Liverpool

I couldn't agree more. As a fairly recent newcomer to the scene, I've visited quite a lot of the sites lately, and some of them are absolutely atrocious.

I'm not sure it would put me off going, especially if the reviews are good, and I guess club managers will have the day to day running of club higher up the priority list than website maintenance.

You are right though, the internet is the first place people look for information these days, and if your site is one for sore eyes, it could lose you business.

Reply privately

Reply in forum

Reply +quote

By *lackCherry OP Couple
over a year ago

Bristol

Its all part of it for me you cannot ignore the web the entire thing should make up the "whole" Ie club, website, staff and attendees and I don't think in this day and age excluding one aspect is healthy for the club long term.

Reply privately

Reply in forum

Reply +quote

By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago

I was looking at a club not to far from here yesterday and showed it to Lynn. It put us off going very slap dash and out of date.

Surely for this kind of business it is money well spent first impressions and all that.

Wayne

Reply privately

Reply in forum

Reply +quote

By *lackCherry OP Couple
over a year ago

Bristol

"I was looking at a club not to far from here yesterday and showed it to Lynn. It put us off going very slap dash and out of date.

Surely for this kind of business it is money well spent first impressions and all that.

Wayne"

The very point and people im talking about, I started a topic about this over a year ago and nothing has changed there are still websites who remain unchanged a year later.

What I dont get is you can get an HTML5 self site builder that might cost you £6-7 a month and often will include hosting and a domain, the way these site builders work is incredibly intuitive now and the results are very good for the cost, expertise and time involved there is no excuse to have something that looks like a geocities page got lost for 15 years.

It literally just comes down to apathy and lack of interest.

Reply privately

Reply in forum

Reply +quote

By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago

The club we go to is lavish inside. How'ever the background they use on the website is deffo something that resembles an early 90's version of windows.

Reply privately

Reply in forum

Reply +quote

By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago

Lots of those cheapo build your own sites won't accept adult content.

Club sites are terrible. I'll offer to do a make over in return for lifetime free entry

Reply privately

Reply in forum

Reply +quote

By *lackCherry OP Couple
over a year ago

Bristol

Mrs cherry is quite a talented designer too.

The reality is the clubs would not have to reach out far to get help if they desired it but ive yet to see it happen thus far.

Reply privately

Reply in forum

Reply +quote

By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago

"Mrs cherry is quite a talented designer too.

The reality is the clubs would not have to reach out far to get help if they desired it but ive yet to see it happen thus far.

I've always thought the same thing. I suspect some clubs believe that they don't need a good site and just rely on sites like this.

Reply privately

Reply in forum

Reply +quote

By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago

"Mrs cherry is quite a talented designer too.

The reality is the clubs would not have to reach out far to get help if they desired it but ive yet to see it happen thus far.

Cool lets team up - obviously we'll need to thoroughly investigate the facilities, target market & clientele etc. to put together proposals

It is odd that nearly all of them are really bad given that every first time visitor must look at the web to check them out.

Reply privately

Reply in forum

Reply +quote

By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago

"Mrs cherry is quite a talented designer too.

The reality is the clubs would not have to reach out far to get help if they desired it but ive yet to see it happen thus far.

I've always thought the same thing. I suspect some clubs believe that they don't need a good site and just rely on sites like this."

Definitely and that it's a niche market. Still crap business though and you'd think image and impressions would mean an awful lot in this market.

Reply privately

Reply in forum

Reply +quote

By *lackCherry OP Couple
over a year ago

Bristol

I think a good part of it is a lot are "established" and the clubs we see today nearly all have been going before the internet really took off and sites like this came around so they have established reputations.

I guess as long as they get their regular business very few are thinking of their club as an entire entity and how they could improve the entire experience.

To their credit I think AtlantisEvolution had an entire site redesign in the last year and it much improved it but they are all I can really think of off the top of my head.

Reply privately

Reply in forum

Reply +quote

By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago

I hate that site - pretty much unreadable on an iPad.

Reply privately

Reply in forum

Reply +quote

By *ollie_JCouple
over a year ago

London

On a sort of connected note..

I thought Dirty Davids was the bees knees back in th the day. As well as Dean and Mattys, but I think one of those passed away.

Reply privately

Reply in forum

Reply +quote

By *lackCherry OP Couple
over a year ago

Bristol

"I hate that site - pretty much unreadable on an iPad."

Havent tried it on a tablet so I stand corrected.

The first iteration of the re design was pretty terrible since they have improved it to their credit.

Reply privately

Reply in forum

Reply +quote

By *aydeesclubCouple
over a year ago

Bedfordshire

Hey is our site ok, jay-dees.co.uk ?

Reply privately

Reply in forum

Reply +quote

By *lackCherry OP Couple
over a year ago

Bristol

"Hey is our site ok, jay-dees.co.uk ?"

your gallery doesn't work its full of dead links.

The spacing of the site is very poor, it takes up a 1/4 of the screen on a larger monitor.

The background is a bit jarring.

The links page is broken in parts

Slide show page is totally broken

your "twitter, facebook, mail" etc icons to the bottom left are all dead or link to nothing (I assume you dont have a Jaydees faceboo/twitter/etc)

The events page has "sexy" going through the text, that text tells you the time you open etc.

There are different fonts and styles all through the site making it very diss jointed part of the key to a good website is consistency through it and having different styles, sizes and types of fonts from page to page can often detract from the feel of it when looking at it.

I commend you for asking the question and the above is not meant to offend but more show you what it looks like through a critical eye.

Reply privately

Reply in forum

Reply +quote

By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago

"Hey is our site ok, jay-dees.co.uk ?"

Design wise it's an example of why using those free site builders are a bad idea. But at least it has plenty of up to date info on it.

The photos take way too long to load - they don't need to be such a high resolution for screens. Scale them down to 800px wide or so and they'll load a lot quicker and still look fine.

A plain background would make it look a bit less 1990's

Reply privately

Reply in forum

Reply +quote

By *aydeesclubCouple
over a year ago

Bedfordshire

ooppssss, ok lol, I just checked out what you was talking about and yes you are right lol, I updated the pics about two weeks ago and it hasn't done it right, I will work on this first thing Monday morning and hopfully it will look much better soon.

love Tracy x

Reply privately

Reply in forum

Reply +quote

By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago

"ooppssss, ok lol, I just checked out what you was talking about and yes you are right lol, I updated the pics about two weeks ago and it hasn't done it right, I will work on this first thing Monday morning and hopfully it will look much better soon.

love Tracy x"

Reply privately

Reply in forum

Reply +quote

By *rummiePartyManMan
over a year ago

birmingham

"On a sort of connected note..

I thought Dirty Davids was the bees knees back in th the day. As well as Dean and Mattys, but I think one of those passed away."

Dirty David's site was "THE" site of it's day. But then again, Netscape Navigator was "THE " web browser of that day too. David consolidated his database, sold it on to what became A**thub who then syndicated the database and "out of the box" web sites to whoever wanted an instant swingers site. He made a small fortune and emigrated to Spain.

Dean & Matty's was perhaps the #2 site in the rankings back then. Sadly, one of them passed away (not naming names in case my memory is playing tricks on me)

The thing is, web sites could have been built with Lego bricks in those days and nobody would have been any the wiser. We are 15+ years on and 8 versions of Internet Explorer (let alone any of the others) further on from those days...problem is that many web sites don't appear to have moved with the times.

Reply privately

Reply in forum

Reply +quote

By *MFC PartiesWoman
over a year ago

Here, There & Everywhere

[Removed by poster at 15/09/13 23:24:15]

Reply privately

Reply in forum

Reply +quote

By *MFC PartiesWoman
over a year ago

Here, There & Everywhere

Would really appreciate your critique if you have time folks .. Blackmansfanclub.co.uk

(Takes a deep breath and sets aside some time to work through the suggestions this week )

Reply privately

Reply in forum

Reply +quote

By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago

Only had a quick look - again on iPad (and presumably other tablets/phones) it's a bit of a mess. The sidebars are all squashed up, the images and text don't resize etc.

The big image at the top is good for the landing splash, but doesn't need to be on every single page as it hides the info people will want to read below it, adds to scrolling etc. etc.

I wasn't clear if your market was ladies/men looking for black men, or black men? Probably all of those - but better to make it obvious who you're appealing to and speak to them eg. Info for ladies looking for men, info for men looking to join etc,

Reply privately

Reply in forum

Reply +quote

By *MFC PartiesWoman
over a year ago

Here, There & Everywhere

"Only had a quick look - again on iPad (and presumably other tablets/phones) it's a bit of a mess. The sidebars are all squashed up, the images and text don't resize etc.

The big image at the top is good for the landing splash, but doesn't need to be on every single page as it hides the info people will want to read below it, adds to scrolling etc. etc.

Thanks for that, its honestly appreciated as an extra pair of eyes are always useful, but when they are 'professional' eyes, its even better!!

Points taken on board

Now to convince my volunteer web designer that some tweaks need to be made ..

Reply privately

Reply in forum

Reply +quote

By *lackCherry OP Couple
over a year ago

Bristol

"Would really appreciate your critique if you have time folks .. Blackmansfanclub.co.uk

(Takes a deep breath and sets aside some time to work through the suggestions this week )"

There is really and truly very little to complain about with that whatever HTML5 builder you're using is very good.

Some of the text spacing is a bit off in some of the boxes but all the links work, pictures of the venues plenty of up to date info.

The main page also has a box with Quotation marks but nothing in it.

But thats all I can spot, honestly if all clubs took a leaf out of this and The VA's site then I would have nothing to moan about, crsip clear, informative, pictures good layout modern look (classy look)

gets a

from me.

Reply privately

Reply in forum

Reply +quote

By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago

"Only had a quick look - again on iPad (and presumably other tablets/phones) it's a bit of a mess. The sidebars are all squashed up, the images and text don't resize etc.

The big image at the top is good for the landing splash, but doesn't need to be on every single page as it hides the info people will want to read below it, adds to scrolling etc. etc.

Thanks for that, its honestly appreciated as an extra pair of eyes are always useful, but when they are 'professional' eyes, its even better!!

Points taken on board

Now to convince my volunteer web designer that some tweaks need to be made ..

You're welcome - although they're tired eyes now

Shouldn't take long to fix just a few tweaks to the CSS will do most of it.

Reply privately

Reply in forum

Reply +quote

By *MFC PartiesWoman
over a year ago

Here, There & Everywhere

"Would really appreciate your critique if you have time folks .. Blackmansfanclub.co.uk

(Takes a deep breath and sets aside some time to work through the suggestions this week )

There is really and truly very little to complain about with that whatever HTML5 builder you're using is very good.

Some of the text spacing is a bit off in some of the boxes but all the links work, pictures of the venues plenty of up to date info.

The main page also has a box with Quotation marks but nothing in it.

gets a

from me.

OMG - I'm flattered

I didn't expect feedback like that so thanks so much

I never rest on my laurels though so will take on board the earlier comments ..

Reply privately

Reply in forum

Reply +quote

Post new Message to Thread