Please review europeansoccerstatistics.com

[pokerhawk]

Hello friends,

Please review my website https://europeansoccerstatistics.com and let me know what am I doing right and wrong. I get traffic, but very few conversions.
How can I increase the traffic factor and have more conversions?

Every opinion counts

Thanks all!

[Sausages]

Hi,
I couldn't find a link on your front page for any sort of sign-ups! Also, you need ads in the centre of the content, rather than just on the right. Try text based ads for good effect.
Maybe have a banner above the YouTube video on your first page too, as that is what most people will see first.

[pokerhawk]

What do you think about the Social boxes? Should I ditch them and opt for smaller icon on the top right of the page and use more widgets, something like upcoming matches?

[Sausages]

Your index page is pretty cluttered. I would stick to the Addthis code under your video, and use more useful widgets on the right. To me, the Facebook, Twitter and G+ widgets seem pointless, and the space could be far better utilised.
This is just my opinion though, and not everyone will agree.

[lots0]

After 3 minutes of looking, I could not tell what your selling.
Most users won't give you 3 minutes, more like 3 seconds or less.

You never asked me to enter your contest or to buy or to take any action at all.

I did see the tipleaders affy links.. but why should I click on them?

Other than that, it's a wordpress blog format site, one of a billion, you need to work hard to stand out from the crowd when your running that platform.

P.S. I also just don't see the Banner ads, I turn them off, just like MOST users do.
Banners just don't convert by themselves anymore. You need to give people a "sales pitch" and ask them to take action, sales 101.

[Sausages]

It has some good content, but it is messy. I think the biggest problem is the untidyness of the site. Minimalist probably works better, so maybe more links, and bolder designs for the links.
You also has Amazon ads on there, which seem out of place. I doubt anyone is clicking them, so just get rid of it. Direct your users to what they should be looking at and why.
You'll get there though, it just needs a bit of work.

[maxpot]

Too cluttered for me. Like others, I have trouble discerning what basic thesis of site is.

With a domain like yours, I expect statistics - and a bunch of them - right off the bat. Maybe you could focus on identifying and publicizing some of the odder / more interesting statistical facts about the game?

[DanHorvat]

You're not getting any conversions because you're confusing your customers. You need to rework the design.

You got a huge logo, huge menu - and then you're using tiny font for your main product, the statistics. If I actually want to see H2H for St.Etienne-Toulouse, I need to click a tiny tiny button. Actually, very few items on your main page are clickable.

It's all very confusing. You need a better design. Back to the drawing board, try to draw your design with pen and paper, it's obvious you did this one without actually making a sketch on how it should really look like.

Although it's far from perfect, you should check out my design of OddsNavigator, it is clickable and the actual content rules the page.

You might want to get professional help. You got a good product, and in a rich industry such as this one maybe it would be wise to pay someone to design your site. If you keep doing it like this, you'll spend years and still won't ever finish the site.

[maxpot]

I feel silly for having to ask, but what exactly is the product? It honestly wasn't apparent to me after an extended scan of the homepage.

[Maria F]

You definitely have a vision and I think after you follow all the great comments you have been given you will end up with a very great site.

I wish you all the best.

[pokerhawk]

I really appreciate all the thoughts that you guys submite, the hot and cold slaps are much needed and I've hired a Designer to re-design the website so it will have more visibility. It's hard to code, create template, work on marketing and take care of 5 other affiliate websites aswell.

EuropeanSoccerStatistics is an idea I had to help bettors make smarter choices but, implementing the bookmaker part is really hard, so the new design will focus more on h2h compares, news and conversion.

It will be done in about a week with all implemented features and widgets.

I invite you all back in 2 weeks to review the new layout and design.

Let's see how many slaps I will get then

Have a great one y'all!

[lots0]

Sorry if I came across like a slap... That was not my intention.

I have reviewed tens of thousands of sites in the last 15 years of so. So I try to get to the point without beating around the bush.

You do have a good concept, with more of a focus on sales/conversions you should do well.

[pokerhawk]

There is no problem lots0.....the important fact is that people express their opinion as you said, without beating around the bush.

Nice to see that there are so many webmasters and users with marketing skill that give advices for free.

)

I've recently hired an article writter aswell, he will write about 2-3 articles daily from Monday to Friday about upcoming matches of the weekend. We plan to keep this going 4 ever.

[DanHorvat]

Use the blue curved arrow as your favicon. Everybody has a soccer ball favicon.

[GaryTheScubaGuy]

What do you think about the Social boxes? Should I ditch them and opt for smaller icon on the top right of the page and use more widgets, something like upcoming matches?

Okay I've had a look at your site and I find several issues.

First, its not a conversion issue but rather a couple of potential issues with Google I'll tell you about before I go into the UI;
1. Change your 302's to 301's - Google sees these in a negative light because of redirects.
2. Eliminate the links to, or 301 the ten 404's I found
3. Why do you disallow all the https pages in your robots.txt file and then point to them with your sitemap? Somehow though Google sees this error (I am surprised they haven't warned you in Webmaster Tools) and are still indexing the pags. But this is also probably the reason Yahoo and Bingo have 0 pages indexed for you. A better option would be to do a canonical between the http and the https, or keep what you have in place and manually add a no-index to the pages and an exclusion request through WMC. The canonical will tell google they are duplicate pages and which to consider the primary

So on to the UI;
1. Concentrate on "conversion above the fold"
2. Try installing the trial for NewEgg and finding out where your traffic is gravitating to currently and keep those elements and improve on the others
3. Change the font in your page titles and drop-down menus. CAPS is sloppy looking
4. Change the "Complete Standings" button to something proven to convert better here. Those buttons are dismal
5. Personally I would change to a white rather than a black background
6. Optimise your page for 400x600. It's almost there but this is a tweak

If you are ambitious, and I see from the SEO techniques you have put in place already, I would dive into Google's A/B and multivariate testing. Add an official looking logo above the fold and try different layouts. Google will track the best elements.

Also look into their user paths and see where you are losing users.

I am very keen on this sector and in all honesty I think you need to clean up the appearance of the site. It looks very cluttered and sloppy. The 3 logo's at the bottom for instance. Line them up and make them look more uniform.

Test your site appearance in all browsers and browser editions. I use the most recent FF and the site has css issues and is sloppy. The text in half the size it should be and you are cramming too much information and links into the front page (111) to be exact).

Once again, I can se you have done all the off-page stuff, and very well I might add. Now its time to fix the on-page

GaryTheScubaGuy

Ps. Keep the Facebook where its at. Unless you are engineering the likes and shares it is being used.
Pps. I would also add larger Team Logos. These will draw a lot of traffic and links when others use your image (I add a no-right-click to mine so they have to reference the page/image rather than just copy your image. Pin these on Pinterest but be sure the images are at least 80x80 or Pinterest will not see them. If they are embedded in your background images then take them out. (any iframe content isn't usable either). Pinterest honors the height and width specified via CSS. The best size for Pinterest is 600x800 to properly display and for conversions. This will lead to traffic and the added benefit of links and traffic, as well as social media integration into Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter all in 3 clicks.

[GaryTheScubaGuy]

Here's one more SEO tip for you since I see you have a regular writer.

"Live scores" has a large demographic regarding language and geographic targets.

Consider paying a translator (I pay 5 of them $11.11 USD per article through ODesk) and get this unique content on your site. You can use it in subdirectories or subdomains. I recommend subdomains because you can then add language metas and geographical targeting in WMC. This may only have a minimal impact on conversion but your trafic will increase as well, and the sites stand on their own - or Google sees the subdomains as unique and separate from the primary domain and you can rank higher for subdomains with the above settings than you do with you existing primary url.

[GaryTheScubaGuy]

Sorry, one more thing after seeing Lots0's comments regarding Wordpress.

I have done everything I mentioned above in terms of social media (buttons, Pinterest, subdomains, etc.) and on WP sites I also use several plugins to optimise my content via social media, automatically and effortlessly.

Open an Onlywire account and add as many social networks as you can. Search plugins in WP for Onlywire Official and install this. This little plugin will automatically post your extremely viral content to all of these social networks automatically.

I would also look at the Jaggurnauts in SEO Ultimate (plugin) IN DEPTH. Don't cross link and be sure to read exactly how it works across all 4 tabs it offers in its interface.

If you choose to do this then also look into the G+ and Author tag plugins as well.

One more thing (yea right ) - I have done many of these Live Score and Spread Betting sites and here's a tip that will increase back links, likes, shares, favourites and everything else viral - Add the YupTube Embed WP plugin and build a Youtube channel fed with RSS video feds targeting your individual teams. This will self-populate as well, but you will need to manage the inventory on your channel. You can see an example here on the right side.

Okay I think that's all for now

Good luck!

[pokerhawk]

Got the preview for the new layout!

Going for the much cleaner version.

The coding will be ready in about max 2 days.

Will take note of everybody's advice!

This is the raw image of the future layout.

What do you think guys?

[GaryTheScubaGuy]

Just at first glance I would change the all large caps in the top bar to the appropriate ones, add a login box w/a 'remember me' option and also a 'join now' as well. If you are ambitious you could add a "get the latest tips on your team/match" with a data capture and set up rss feeds on each team to send snippets via email with links to the teams stats/pages/odds. Last thing for now is an rss feed reader into the bottom of your indexpage (and even internally if you want on each team/match. These are fed by the keywords that you select. This will create fresh and new content for the SE's to come back for and also internal permalinks if you set everything up right. Be sure to use a plugin that will randomise your rss feed so it is unique, and if you can fit it in the bottom or right side, a keyword cloud is always a good idea for sites run by feeder sites (to get your stats/odds/data).

There are a lot of thing you can add for better end-user experience and search engine optimisation but I would sart with these as they are proven winners.

Ps. Optimise the fold for 600x800 resolution

[Nicole Niki]

seems fine but it's very messy. too much stuff in the face but it can be arranged.good luck!