Posted by shar on July 28, 2000, at 0:27:53
In reply to Need advice on what we are doing wrong., posted by Nibor on July 27, 2000, at 9:03:16
Hi, Nibor (robin?) (j/k)
I visited the Undoing Depression website for the first time tonight after reading your post.I can't say from a marketing perspective why you are not included in some of the other websites, but I can make a suggestion about the U.D. website.
On the home page, I read the items in the left side frame, news, faqs, etc.--all of them except the archives. And I read the quotes and little synopsis.
The location of Living Well is the last thing on the home page, although, in my opinion it is the "substance" of the site.
Usually I think of the items in the left frame as sort of a table of contents for the site. But, as you know, these are really mostly opinion pieces by the author. With a couple of misstatements in the one about a/d meds.
After reading all those opinion pieces, I looked at the guestbook, looked at "Starting...a Group", then (because it was last) looked at Living Well.
Ahh! It piqued my interest right away! Several categories of symptoms (don't enjoy anything, stressed, trouble at work, etc.) and beneath each one, things that might help me learn about and/or cope with the symptom.
Why is this not the home page, I wonder. The little intro to Living Well says what is below is what the web site is about. So, should it be the last thing or the first thing one sees when visiting the web site?
Even just having the intro and symptoms (with links to either Living Well or to its very own list of helpful recommendations) prominently displayed would help.
And the rest of what is on the home page becomes additional information, maybe including something on "if you've read the book" and having a survey asking what people liked most, least, what they've actually used or implemented from the book, etc. That will tell you a lot about what people might want to hear/see more of. If that is doable.
Isn't it easy to make suggestions when one does not have to implement them? I hope this helps. If you visit other sites, can't you mention your web site? I hadn't heard of it, except on psycho babble, and it sounded like it would not be something I'd be interested in, so I never visited. I went through a "self-help book" phase for about 10 years, and then just stopped reading them, and I thought U.D. the book and web-site would be too self-helpy for me.
Hope this made sense!
Shar
poster:shar
thread:41496
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20000717/msgs/41552.html