Inspiration needed, design

[damiun +]

Hi,

I am using 68classifieds for a while now, together with the 68classifieds template (fluid).
I customize (with great help of you!) quite lot, because my site is a charity site and we are dependent of charities.

I customized a lot to be original and to stand out agains the crows, because its a charity website,
But today i received a email from our biggest charity that my site is denied because it was orignal and it didnt say charity.

So i am asking you all for help, do you have any tips to make me site more original and to say more charities.

(background, my site isnt a charity organisation itself, my site let people add listings to gather money for charities, the charities we are connected with now are about helping children in roemenia, and Rwanda)

[Lhotch +]

My personal opinion is that far too many people concentrate on the tool and not the plan. Make it clean, simple and easy to use and people will use it IF YOU SELL IT. You cant just make a fancy site and expect people to flock to it. You have to market it, a good site alone will not cut it.

When I look at your site in firefox the right column is down underneath the main site.

[seymourjames +]

Let me be honest with you Dominick. I am going to be harsh but it is not my intention to offend - just to get you thinking as Larry is proposing.

Part of your problem is you keep changing everything and doing it on a daily basis. Nothing stays constant for more than a day if lucky. You continually try to change too much and you make radical changes. Last time you had to scrap your whole site and start again from scratch because you zoomed off without being cautious the 2nd time. You do not focus on your business model or in this case your charities but instead on technology. You think it is a technology race. IT IS NOT A TECHNOLOGY RACE.

You could change your site in 10 minutes with a sympathetic logo which had the word charity in it and some text saying the same. You however, keep wanting to change the functionality of the site with widgetery, jquery plugins, special sql operations, online chat, a watermarking solution which I sent you, etc. WHY - do you think your visitors really care? A few do but not many.

I just went to your site and it has now changed back to a template which is over 6 months old even though yesterday it was fluid green. I just clicked again and now it has changed again in 30 minutes. I am totally confused as a visitor. It was bright green yesterday and now it is red and a different design. Stop - hold the press it is now lime green again. DO YOU GET MY POINT. I am trying to help you.

There is nothing wrong with your site with the fluid template in any color you choose. You just need to put some nice images on and some sympathetic images which talk about your site. Change your logo as well. I am not Dutch but damium.nl says nothing to anyone for sure. The logo even breaks the layout.

Instead you make posts asking for new modules to be developed and core file customisations. Why don't you stop doing that and get back to basics? Make small changes on the images and focus on what you say in your site. Focus on your marketing not the widgetary.

Visitors are not objecting to your site design. What they will object to is being presented with different widgetry every different day. Well I said it but someone needs to tell you.

P.S widgetry is easy - marketing is hard. Face your problem. Its easier to make reasons based on widgetry as to why something is not working. Much harder to look at your business model and get it right.

[damiun +]

Hi,

Thanks for your replies,
I really appreciate your reply, and i really want to thank you for it.

@seymourjames,
You said

The logo even breaks the layout.

What do you mean by this, this is a language thing i think, i looked it up and it translated something like :" it damages your design, damage as in break appart, into pieces.

I think one of the main reasons why i keep changing the site is because of the business model. Damiun's business model is hard because charities make it difficult.

The idea behind damiun is to create a site which makes it easier to give to charities because its the same as a normal day thing. So damiun isnt a charitie, so we dont have a clear face. Thats why i choose the name Damiun, because it has no meaning. We dont fixate on one particular charity or or particular goal. We help charities in general.

So i am trying to give my site a more charitisch face, a more human look, add more photos ad make it more clear.

[seymourjames +]

Yes - the logo had too much height and it was pushing down though the header area. Now you have returned to the lime color template it looks ok in FF and Safari at least. Worth checking in IE 7 and 8.

The name does not mean anything so your real problem is establishing a brand around your name Damium.nl.

So here are some ideas:

1. Use some traditional marketing techniques to promote your site.
2. Get some testimonials on your site from givers and receivers.


I am still unclear whether you are trying to make money out of this web site or not. If you are running a model whereby you are taking a small percentage of what people are giving to a charity or you are claiming to be giving a percentage of your revenue to charities, then you will have a very difficult time. You are unlikely to get anywhere without really good testimonials and official registrations from charities. You will need the charities to sign up displaying their logos, contact details, etc as seals of approval.

If I am frank, how many people would you give money to a web site that said it was giving money to charity without solid proof. I know hat my first thoughts would be. Businesses that do give money to charity don't tend to make it the basis of their business model. Occasionally they get good publicity out of it but that is all.


And your site looks good now but focus on traditional marketing and talking to people.

[damiun +]

I have already 4 official charities and they have gave me official approval and i have official documents,
But it is still hard to convince people without having somekind of trademark of whatever.

I am not making money out of this, and i dont want to.
A little history, three years ago i went with a teacher of the high school i went to, to romenia, and i made a documentary of a project he was doing there. Since then i always had the urge to do more for charities than what i was doing back than.

Damiun.nl is the site which give 50% percent straight to charities, the other 50% is put away for 'emergencies' un-ordinary events.
So when a big charity event is talking place, damiun usses the other 50% to give a donation to the charity they are having the event for, so we are also helping other people to keep positively buzzy with charities.

You were talking about traditional marketing,
What are they,
because next week i have several interviews with both national as local newspapers and we are handing out flyers.

So i think i have to improve the charities pages, i have pages with the information of the charities, but i think i need more, like you said, contact details etc etc.

I dont know if you know the charity KIKA (kinderen kankervry = children cancerfree) they are interested to be a charity and we have really good contact but they cannot be a charity because the voting is done manually. I created a thread recently about the mod to gather result, that was to do it automatically, but it seemed to be to hard. So big charities (in the netherlands, kika is one of the biggest charities) need prove the voting and processing (each seller has to be able to pick a charity for 50% of his placing fee) is done legally and automatically.

So if somebody has an idea to do the processing of votes in a way automatically, i am really interested.

@seymourjames,
You mentioned: You will need the charities to sign up displaying their logos, contact details, etc as seals of approval.

But how can i do this the best way, because hardly any charities (especially none of the smaller ones) has a seal of approval)

Dominick

[Lhotch +]

Originally Posted by damiun

But it is still hard to convince people without having somekind of trademark of whatever.

....

You were talking about traditional marketing,
What are they,

......


But how can i do this the best way, because hardly any charities (especially none of the smaller ones) has a seal of approval)

These snippets from your above post just go to highlight what seymourjames and I are saying. You need to stop hiding behind the technology and work on all these other aspects. The snaziest web site with all the latest tech in the world will not make your business. Its a suppliment to your business.