Please review my new site CompareFootballOdds.co.uk

[CompareFootballOdds]

Hi folks,

it would be great to get some reviews of my new site:

CompareFootballOdds.co.uk

The intention is to focus on UK bookies just now (hence .co.uk) and widen to international market when I'm less of a noob to this!

Two main areas that I know require further work:
1. Get affiliated with more UK bookies (some already in progress), and
2. Improve performance by reducing size of CSS files.

But what else needs work? All opinions gratefully received.

Cheers,

Greg

[mediapartner]

Hi Greg,

The website actually looks pretty good.... as you mentioned you are a noob i was expecting something way worse haha. Everything looks well organized en is user friendly..,

The only suggestion i can think of for now is to switch to https, as when you visit your site on tablet/mobile the first thing users see is the message “this website isnt safe)...in the address bar...

A lot of people dont care, but you might lose some customers lver this... and its pretty easy to solve...just get some free ssl from cloudflare or something like that...

For the rest, all looks great!

cheers

Robin

[TheGameHunter]

Looking good. Personally, I'd pick a stronger colour for the odds boxes and maybe drop the drop shadow. Site loads quickly btw - which is great.

[CompareFootballOdds]

Hi Robin, TheGameHunter,

many thanks to you both for taking the time to review and for your feedback.

SSL is on my to-do list, but I've postponed so far since this has a cost (I'm running the site on Oracle and the host will make an additional charge). You're right, though, it's worth adding and will also boost the SEO ranking.

Glad the site loads quickly IRL. Google gives the site only a middle ranking for performance and Ahrefs has confirmed some needed improvements.

I'll play around with the colours used for Odds boxes. Now you've called it out, a stronger colour would be better.

Thanks again to you both for your help.

Cheers,

Greg

[TheGameHunter]

No worries! On the SSL front, you could always try Cloudflare, free plan has a shared SSL. https://www.cloudflare.com/en-gb/ssl/

[Gerasim]

I would make the font larger and add an interesting banner

[bingoreviews]

your Vbet links are going to an out of date landing page can coming up 404

[Syndicate]

1. Sticky content

2. Fill landing page

3. Don't make them search for decimal odds

4. Legal text should go in footer

In short you are trying to challenge oddschecker - keep asking yourself how can you gain that loyalty and get those sign ups!

[Former Member 14]

Why is https://www.comparefootballodds.co.uk auto-redirecting to: https://www.comparefootballodds.co.u.../cfo/team-odds, which, is now your home page. Your logo links to this obscure URL too.

[CompareFootballOdds]

Hi all,

many thanks for this extra feedback. It'll take me a while to work through them all properly, but I wanted to acknowledge them ASAP, so you know I'm taking these seriously.


Hi Robin (mediapartner) - SSL is now enabled.

Hi TheGameHunter - colours now tweaked on the odds boxes.

Hi Gerasim - thanks.

Hi bingoreviews - thanks for the heads-up. Annoyingly, that outdated link is still listed as valid on my Vbet dashboard. I've reached out to Vbet for an update.


Hi AussieDave - the short answer as to why it redirects to an obscure URL within the domain, is it's because of the technology I'm using (Oracle Apex) on a shared host (reasons of cost and maintenance). Oracle Apex is a superb technology, particularly for handling data and comparatively rapid website development. Unfortunately, there are some drawbacks, one of which is how it lays out URLs. I'm fairly sure there is no way to nicely lay out all the subfolders (e.g. to comparefootballodds.co.uk/premiership/manchester_united).

That said, it may be possible to mask just the top level, so at least the home page has a better URL. I'll reach out to my host and ask if there's anything that can be done. (Masking may be a partial solution, though there are also drawbacks to masking.)

In the meantime can I ask you, is the longer obscure URL a problem? It's not something that bothers me personally, but I'm pretty geeky.


Hi Syndicate - lot to digest there, thanks.
1. Sticky content
Agreed! Over time, I'm working to build up more content, for example the "Top Ten Tables" to hopefully hold attention for longer. Plus, of course, the odds are changing throughout the day, so customers will need to come back to get the latest information.
Is there something else in particular you'd recommend, though?

2. Fill landing page
Sorry, not sure I understand this comment. Could you elaborate, please?

3. Don't make them search for decimal odds
Good shout. The option to change decimal/fractional format is up in the menu. I'll take your advice and make it more visible. I'm also adding other odds types (e.g. #goals, BTTS) and will do this at the same time.

4. Legal text should go in footer
The footer already includes the link "Use of this website is subject to our Terms and Conditions", as well as the BeGambleAware link. Is that insufficient?


Thanks again everyone - this feedback is really helpful.

All the best,

Greg

[bingoreviews]

how are you pulling the odds? direct from the bookies I assume, surely not updating yourself. impressive depth though i must say. ps, your free bets page, add content and calls for action, banners alone wont convert

[universal4]

Have to agree with Dave on that, there has to be a better way to handle the obscure links. (obviously simple recommendations on a plugin or changing the permalinks in wp settings would not be correct suggestions for a custom development site - although some may still suggest that) lol

There are probably a few ways to handle it including but limited to an iframe or maybe server side includes, but you will likely get a few suggestions from the devs/tech's at Oracle to help with that.

SEO wise, the nicer you can make the links look may help you in the long run, as well as possibly helping reduce the need for main navigation changes later on if or when you make any kind of major changes or updates toy your custom backend.

Rick
Universal4

[Former Member 14]

In the meantime can I ask you, is the longer obscure URL a problem? It's not something that bothers me personally, but I'm pretty geeky.

On an SEO stand point, it wont do you any favours using the obscure URL. Instead, employing a friendly-url hierarchy such as: comparefootballodds.co.uk/premiership/manchester_united/, is the way to go. In addition, and as Rick suggested, if at a later date you change backends, as I'm sure as time progresses, you'll be adding more and more pages, establishing these SE friendly URL's now, will be one less headache to worry about, later.

[gil.langelaan]

Hello!
Overall it looks pretty good but I would recommend you to make the banners and main information or wider or more centered as now you have lots of free white space that is unnecessary I think - https://prnt.sc/uzq9to

[Syndicate]

1. I believe the most obvious sticky content would be match previews, and maybe a few blogs (best bookie for Premier league etc).

2. Need to get more words in (descriptions etc)

3. Are these bookies providing API / XML feeds, or are you scraping/crawling?

4. Indeed you have - need to get my eyes fixed!

[CompareFootballOdds]

Hi folks,

thanks for taking the time to provide this extra feedback. This is all much appreciated and incredibly useful.

Hi bingoreviews - yes, the odds are almost entirely pulled directly from the bookies, using their APIs. Thanks for the kind words. My database is set up to receive much more, but skips over a large number of the non-European leagues, for reasons of performance. If a customer searches for anything not yet included, though, I'll see that failed search and can reinstate the competition. A Third Party data service is also being used. That only handles the major leagues, but I've finding it a good quality cross-check, since some of the data provided by bookies (one in particular) is often very poor. Longer term, once I have enough bookies directly onboard I'll stop using that service.
Re: Free bets page - good point, thanks. I'll be applying on your recommendations.

Hi Rick (universal4) and Dave (AussieDave) - I've checked with my host as well as other Oracle experts. Sadly, there is no way to accomplish a better URL hierarchy from within Oracle Apex, itself. It may be possible at the webserver level (using mod_rewrite / ProxyPass / ProxyPassReverse). That is going to be a non-trivial exercise, as they say, and complicated by my not having access to the Apache settings so is a task I'll need to put off in the short term. If I can get it to work, though, I'll report back here in the hope a solution helps someone else.


Hi gil.langelaan - thanks. You're right - there is lots of white space. That is deliberate since I'm not a fan of webpages with lots of clutter and/or annoying popups.
I'll play around with my layout though, either centering or widening as you suggest.


Hi Syndicate - thanks for the extra notes.
1. and 2. - great, understood!
3. I'm using bookies' APIs. They are a mix of JSON and XML, with no two bookies using anything like the same data structures.
4. Phew! No worries.

Thanks again all.

All the best,

Greg

[Former Member 14]

Hi Rick (universal4) and Dave (AussieDave) - I've checked with my host as well as other Oracle experts. Sadly, there is no way to accomplish a better URL hierarchy from within Oracle Apex, itself. It may be possible at the webserver level (using mod_rewrite / ProxyPass / ProxyPassReverse). That is going to be a non-trivial exercise, as they say, and complicated by my not having access to the Apache settings so is a task I'll need to put off in the short term. If I can get it to work, though, I'll report back here in the hope a solution helps someone else.

Hi Greg,

With all due respect, I'm not sure you fully appreciate the importance of having SE friendly URL's. The UK betting market is a tough gig. Your competing against seasoned affiliates, who have literally years of experiences in this niche, and are on-the-ball to their site's SEO requirements. Right now your 2x behind the 8-ball.

1. Unfriendly SE URLs;
2. newbie affiliate.

While I can see the problem faced with the conversion to SE friendly URLs, not converting them could, and likely will, spell your demise.

In closing, as a programmer using Oracle Apex may have seemed like a no brainer. However, if there's an inability to easily add SE friendly URLs etc., etc., then it's why most people (even experienced coders) use other platforms for igaming niches. Without SEO on your side, it's pretty much game over.

[CompareFootballOdds]

Hi Dave,

message received!

Many thanks,

Greg

[PigWin]

Design is simple, clean and straight forward. Like it! Defenitely you could add more things to the right sidebar of the site. Looking forward to see how it develops in the future!

[CompareFootballOdds]

Hi folks,

just a few quick updates...


Hi Rick (universal4) and Dave (AussieDave) - I've managed to fix 95% of the obscure URLs. All the important pages now have much cleaner URLs. Thanks again for pushing me to prioritise this. It's taken a lot of work, but - fingers crossed - will be worth it. Now just need Google and Bing to finish recrawling.

(All - if anyone else is using Oracle Apex and wants to know how to accomplish SEO-friendly URLs, message me and I'll write up the steps. It starts with mod_rewrite but involves a fair amount of other code.)


Hi Syndicate - I've made the odds format option much more visible, as per your suggestion. I'm intending to make it even more visible (ie shown next to odds section, rather than in menu bar) but had to defer that work in the short term.


Hi everyone else - I'm still working throught the other suggestions, such as layout. So much to do, so little time!


Thanks again,

Greg