Need tips/feedback on my site

[livelove18]

Hey everyone,
I put in a lot of hard work and a couple of months ago launched LiftVibe - Welcome . Its a site designed to give people inspiration and information for self-improvement. There is some awesome content/ features on the site but we need tips from people to help improve the site. If any of you cool peeps could give me feed back that would be much appreciated Also if you have a blog/website for self improvement or inspiration please sign up on our site and post your article links and get free exposure back to your blog. Thanks so much!

[livelove18]

Any advice? There are some people who have great knowledge in here and any feedback/advice would be amazing!

[joydream]

This is actually the wrong section for a website feedback post... that should be in the technology or business sections I think... not personal effectiveness.

But anyway... I do like the website design. I think the DBurns Design team did a great job on the navigation and layout. Looks clean and professional.

A big thing on Steve Pavlina's site is the idea of delivering "value" to the customer/reader.

And when I clicked on some articles it just sent me to links to other websites. So I felt the "value" that you provided was just a hot link and left me feeling disappointed. Like I could just do a search on google myself for topics I find interesting. You did provide value with the hot link, but I felt it wasn't much.

Also the website is overly ambitious.... social networking... that's big stuff... and having almost no members makes it seem just.... like kids in the deep end of the pool who can't swim.

I think it would be better to have more modest goals and achieve them and then go on to bigger goals.

Also I've read that if you have few members, then you should have only one thread in a message board for posts, so the members can interact more.

Overall, I think you need to add more value to your website first and then set some smaller goals in terms of member recruitment.

Why should someone join a dead message board?

Maybe if you offered free life coaching emails or something else of value you could start the ball rolling with getting more members.

[Syndicate]

Originally Posted by livelove18

Any advice? There are some people who have great knowledge in here and any feedback/advice would be amazing!

Your website looks fantastic! Are you using a CMS? I see it's not WordPress. Either way, it looks like you know what you're doing.

You should remove the gmail e-mail from your Contact page and just have the contact form, in my opinion. That, or create a mailbox with your liftvibe domain, such as contact@liftvibe.com

[JTP]

Nice Design and layout.
I've register myself in.

my website about personal growth and development is this.
JTP - Journey to Peak

I'm too a new with my website, and I wish my knowledge can share with everyone through my website too.

Sharing is caring.

[livelove18]

Thanks for the advice so far! We worked real hard to get up the site and now comes the part of attracting people and showing all the features. Joydream while right now we don't have original content the site has a lot of value, though we have to figure out how to exactly market it and which points to highlight or to specifically market one part of the site. (Any ideas?)
A member can create a personal content library for their favorite articles, videos, and pics to motivate them and have all in one place for instant access. Also you can create a private journal on the site to record your thoughts progress etc. among other features. We are learning when it comes to marketing and exposing how the site has so many benefits but its tough!. Constructive criticism and advice always helps!

[richardxthripp]

Never try to create a social network. You should piggyback on other social network(s) instead, by building Twitter and Facebook applications.

As for the site, it looks good but the name is bad. I thought it was about vibrators / sexual issues.

[joydream]

Originally Posted by livelove18

Joydream while right now we don't have original content the site has a lot of value...

This is interesting to me because to you the site has value, but to me, a consumer, the site doesn't have much value except for the modest value of hotlinking.

I already have tons of inspirational material in one place-- on my laptop. I have over 1,000 inspirational pictures and I choose 3 a day to give a little inspiration boost. The fact that I could assemble inspirational material in one place is not of value to me. I already have it. Sharing what I have as part of a community might be of value, but first you would have to build the resource of a community.

Also a private journal is nothing of value to me... I already journal privately on my computer. Having a so-called private journal on your site would not feel very private to me. Also if people want to journal in a community there are bigger communities like livejournal.com and diaryland.com from which to choose...

Maybe you should do some market research and see what people would want on the website and value... because I think there is a disconnect between what you perceive as value and what your market values. (Of course, I could be wrong, this is just my impression.)

My recommendation-- market research!

What would I value in a personal development website that I don't already have? I said it before and it's life coaching. I have two very specific long-term goals that I want and the issue just comes down to good time management to achieve them.

You have a small community now and that would make life coaching advice/ interaction even easier for you... that's what I perceive as new and valuable.