The Corporate Law Academy - advice and criticisms would be much appreciated

[Sutton94]

Hi all,

I currently have a designer helping me work on the forums. He's only just begun, but I want to give him as much information on the design as I can whilst I have him, so I would be really grateful for any feedback/criticisms.

The first comment I think I will make is to have one column instead of two - I think I saw someone mention that in another thread and that sounds like it could make it clearer. I appreciate it's empty at the moment as I'm yet to launch the site

Thank you!

 

[runnyeggs]

Is the frontend also XF? Frontend looks good. I probably get rid of that test page. It makes it look like you are not ready to open but pushed to open anyway. The forums look like it can use a lot more categories. Again, it may be best no to go online if your site is still in the developing stages. Content needs to be filled in. The front page, the footer is too dark to read. I don't think anyone wants to struggle trying to read something. It's very dark and gray, almost like watching a Batman movie. Maybe have current posts in the frontpage too so it will draw readers in to go to your forum? Most people know and expect a forum, I had to guess where it was by hitting your join the academy button. I would probably get rid of it too. You should make people feel welcome and feel like they can have access without joining. The join the academy basically hides the fact you even have a forum. If I don't want to join then I would not even know it existed and just leave and you lost a potential user.
This is just my 0.02.

 

[Sutton94]

Is the frontend also XF? Frontend looks good. I probably get rid of that test page. It makes it look like you are not ready to open but pushed to open anyway. The forums look like it can use a lot more categories. Again, it may be best no to go online if your site is still in the developing stages. Content needs to be filled in. The front page, the footer is too dark to read. I don't think anyone wants to struggle trying to read something. It's very dark and gray, almost like watching a Batman movie. Maybe have current posts in the frontpage too so it will draw readers in to go to your forum? Most people know and expect a forum, I had to guess where it was by hitting your join the academy button. I would probably get rid of it too. You should make people feel welcome and feel like they can have access without joining. The join the academy basically hides the fact you even have a forum. If I don't want to join then I would not even know it existed and just leave and you lost a potential user.
This is just my 0.02.

Thanks for the feedback, that was really useful.

It's Wordpress and we've integrated it with Xenforo using Xenword. The idea is there's going to be many resources on the main site for people to use, but yes I would like to bring people in to using the forums. It's still developing, is there anything wrong with making it online at the moment? I figured people aren't likely to find it now anyway.

I could definitely add more categories; I wasn't sure whether people tend to add a small number of categories to start with until they get more users in - I figured it'll look even more empty, but maybe I'm wrong there.

Good point about the footer, I didn't think of that. I think I'll make the text white or make the background lighter. Towards the bottom half, where it says 'popular discussions' that's where I'll be featuring the popular discussions to draw people in. You're right about the Join the Academy section, it's not very clear, would you say I should just call it 'forums'? The idea of calling it the academy was just based on the names, but I agree people wouldn't necessarily notice it.

 

[runnyeggs]

I worked on my friend's website years back. It seems there is a lawyer owned website company who sells many extraneous services and generic websites to first time law graduates. They sell new guys services such as blogging etc., and charge them an arm and a leg, supposedly to help them rank better. When I saw my friends website and Googled him, he was on page 7. After we revamped it, we made it to page 3 in 1 week. He went to page 1 within the first month and now his name is synonymous nationwide. But what got me was how drab this company's colors were. They tended to be dark and drab, with the premise that monolithic projects power I suppose. We went with more welcoming colors. The XF forum is a case in point. One can easily read things.

If you look at your forum as a real business then you would see the picture more clearly. Would you go to a business that seems to be getting things together still, one that looks ready to run, or one that's fully running. Probably the latter 2.

I would forego academy at this point. If the field was enforcement (such as police) or a trade school then academy would work. I think most law students are aware of what a forum is. I used to live off this forum called studentdoctor.net. Look at them for pointers.

Since you are focusing on law students then you may have categories such as: pre-law, LSAT prep, Bar prep, specialties, general, etc. You may want to start writing a few posts to get it going, such as which areas have the highest paid salary, internships, etc.

I just dabble with websites for friends when they need one. From what I've read, webmasters think you should launch a site only when you have enough content to actually engage people. I am not sure if this lowers your Google ranking. Some posts have said that once Google does a crawl of your site and doesn't find much, it won't come back for a while. You can Google it and see for yourself or maybe someone here with SEO experience can tell you. So, I tend to work on websites offline and upload it when they are 80% ready at least.
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