Hi there,
I spent a few hours at your site and have come up with the following
problems and suggestions.
Getting Advertisers
===================
I have found a few problems which might be affecting your ability to
recruit advertisers.
1) The ad at the bottom of the home page is animated. For the most
part one cannot tell that the text is related to advertising. There is
plenty of space at the bottom of the page, so why not make the ad two
lines deep? The top line could be static, saying "why advertise at
arrogya?", and the second line could contain the rotating reasons,
like this:
Why advertise at arrogya?
We have over 7,000 pages of content
2) Clicking on the ad takes me to an excellent page that convinces me
that you have a quality site. However, once I have decided that I
might want to become an advertiser, it takes a lot of effort to find
the link to more information. The link is at the very bottom of the
page, in small text. Usually this area is where sites have links to
general site information such as Terms and Conditions, Contact Us,
Site Map etc... People don't look down there for further information
on a topic.
At the very least you need to put these links on the left had side of
the page, near the top, consistent with the navigation of the rest of
your site:
- Why advertise on aarogya
- Price List
- Online Advt. Form
I would also place the links halfway down the page, above where it
says "Response to aarogya.com" - and make the links stand out, with
larger text.
3) Advertisers require a piece of critical information when making
advertising decisions - the number of times their ad will be seen. If
your home page received 100,000 views per day, then the advertising
rate would be very good. However if it received 100 views per day it
would be too expensive. Requiring the potential advertiser to contact
you to find out this data is an extra step that most would be
unwilling to take.
The solution is to tell them up front. There are two ways of doing this:
- give exact figures of the page views the advertiser can expect per month
== or ==
- change the pricing to a certain amount per 1000 ad impressions,
known in the industry as CPM, which stands for cost-per-thousand
impressions (?M? is the Roman numeral for one thousand). This avoids
disclosing the number of visitors your site receives.
4) Where would the banner ad appear? The potential advertiser needs to
know where on the page it would be. At the very top, the middle or the
bottom of the page. The very top is more valuable than the bottom.
5) Pricing. Depending on how many page views your home page receives,
your current pricing looks a bit steep. If your home page received
30,000 page views per month, that equates to $7.40 CPM. I found some
other Indian sites that have posted their ad rates online. These are
very popular sites that already have advertisers
India.info
http://www.indiainfo.com/advertise/performance.html
$10 CPM
Express India
http://www.expressindia.com/about/advertise.html
$5.88 CPM
123 India
http://corp.123india.com/advertising/
$3.80-$5.50 CPM
I suggest that you fix a price at a lower rate than those I listed.
Once you get advertisers, then you can consider raising the price. On
my sites I make sure that advertising agreements are on a
month-by-month basis, so I can keep my options open.
6) It would help if there were more links to your advertising page. I
only found the ad on the homepage. It needs to be linked to from at
least the site map, and preferably every page of your site. The
easiest place to put it would be a text link at the very bottom of
each page. I also noticed that you do not have an "About Us" page. An
"About Us" page is something that potential advertisers look for, and
it is always good to have for visitors in general
Affiliate Programs
==================
Finding any affiliate programs that are relevant to your site and that
accept Indian sites proved impossible. If any exist I was unable to
locate them. If you are interested in advertising that is not
health-related, here are two possibilities:
Shaadi
http://www.shaadi.com/shaadi-rewards/faqs.php
Hyperabadbazaar
http://www.hyderabadbazaar.com/affiliate.asp
Using a 3rd Party
=================
There are many ad networks that pay on a per impression or per click
basis. However I am not aware of any that serve India, they tend to
offer lower rates than dealing directly with the advertiser, and you
would probably prefer the ads to be related to health.
You should consider Google Adsense. These are the same ads that you
see to the right of Google search results. Google pays participating
sites a percentage of the pay-per-click fee that advertisers are
paying Google. Benefits for your site are:
- Adsense accepts Indian web sites.
- Adsense ads are relevant to the content of each page.
- Adsense ads are text, and therefore more pleasing on the eye for your visitors.
- Your site design has room for them on the right hand side. It
appears to be only 620 pixels wide.
Google Adsense
https://www.google.com/adsense/
Target Audience
===============
Health is a topic that touches everybody. In terms of countries, you
should focus on the general public of India. The number of Internet
users in India is growing fast. If you targeted the whole world, then
you have a lot of competition:
http://directory.google.com/Top/Health/Resources/Consumer_Information/
To make your site more relevant to the people of India, one aim would
be create the most comprehensive directory of Indian health resources.
At present your Yellow Pages appears to cover just two cities. If it
covered all of India it would be a powerful resource that people would
bookmark and return to.
Navigation
==========
Considering the wealth of information contained within your site, the
navigation is pretty good. The only improvement I can think of is
getting rid of some of the links in the left and right columns. For
example on this page:
http://www.aarogya.com/Conditions/index.asp
...I would remove all the links from Complemetary Medicine down, and
the News links to the right. Otherwise it takes extra effort to work
out which links are leading to subsections of the topic. Apart from
the drop-down boxes there are 73 links that the visitor could click
on, and only 11 go deeper into the topic of Conditions.
Site Search
===========
I found instances of your site search not working:
http://www.aarogya.com/Miscellaneous/advt/whyadvt.asp
http://www.aarogya.com/Miscellaneous/advt/price_list.asp
http://www.aarogya.com/Miscellaneous/comingsoon/comingsoon.asp
http://www.aarogya.com/Miscellaneous/contact/index.asp
The problem is that you are linking to the search program like this:
<FORM action="../search1.asp" method=get>
If you changed every instance of the search form to use this:
<FORM action="http://www.aarogya.com/search1.asp" method=get>
...then the form would work regardless of where on your site it exists.
Even when it does work, I find the results to be unattractive and not
terribly useful. Compare the following search results:
http://www.aarogya.com/search1.asp?QU=yoga
://www.google.com/search?q=site:www%2Eaarogya%2Ecom+yoga
You might want to consider using Google's free site search:
://www.google.com/searchcode.html#both
Or try one of the many other site search services that are available:
http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Internet/Web_Design_and_Development/Hosted_Components_and_Services/Site_Search/
Search Engine Optimization
==========================
First of all, congratulations on having a PageRank of 6. This will
help you receive visitors via Google. Here are a few tips that will
boost your site's position in Google search results:
TITLE: The more closely the title fits the search query, the better
the page will rank. Having the words
aarogya.com "The Wellness Site"
in the title of every page is of no benefit at all from a search
ranking point of view. If someone searches for "hospitals", a title
that only says "Hospitals" will rank much better than one that says
"aarogya.com "The Wellness Site" - Health Resources - Hospitals"
H1 HEADLINE TAG: Google gives extra ranking to pages with the search
keyword in an H1 tag. These can be customised using Cascading Style
Sheets so that they look how you want. Without changing the overall
design of your site, I suggest placing each instance like this:
Home > Health Resources > Rural Health > Introduction
...within <H1> tags. In some instances it will bring extra traffic,
and no harm can come from it.
HOSTING: Currently if you go to Google India and search "pages from
India" for aarogya, your site is not listed, although if you search
the entire web it comes up as #1. If your site is hosted outside of
India, using a local hosting service could fix this problem and also
speed up your site for local visitors.
INDIA: Often people outside of the USA include the name of the country
they are seeking information from. An Indian searcher might enter
"health advice India" to make sure they received relevant local
content. I suggest that somewhere on every page the word India should
appear. Maybe at the very bottom of the page you could have:
Arrogya - India's Consumer Health Portal
Copyright
=========
At the base of each page it says Copyright 2000. This week would be a
good time to change the wording to Copyright 2004. Otherwise visitors
get the impression that your site has not been updated in the last 3-4
years.
Message Board and Chat
======================
Currently there are no messages displayed when you visit the message
board, despite it saying on the page that there are 21 posts. It is
quite rare for someone to post a message if they get the impression
nobody uses it. Perhaps you could remove links to the message board
until you get many more visitors, say 10,000+ per day. Then when you
link to it again, you need to kickstart it by getting friends or
employees to post a dozen of so discussions.
Presumably the same applies to Chat - there is unlikely to be anyone
to chat with, and this factor will merely frustrate your visitors.
Catalogue
=========
http://www.aarogya.com/HealthResources/catlogue/index.asp
I tried both forms and after a dozen attempts I only found one
listing. I got the impression that perhaps the directory contains less
that 10 listing in total. Like the message board, this is only going
to frustrate the visitor, and it is not worth having there unless it
has at least a few listings in each category.
Wrong Menu
==========
Some of the Journals pages have the wrong menu in the left column (it
is for anemia)
http://www.aarogya.com/Conditions/Specialties/results/journals/index.asp?specicode=21
http://www.aarogya.com/Conditions/Specialties/results/journals/index.asp?specicode=23
http://www.aarogya.com/Conditions/Specialties/results/journals/index.asp?specicode=26
http://www.aarogya.com/Conditions/Specialties/results/journals/index.asp?specicode=17
http://www.aarogya.com/Conditions/Specialties/results/journals/index.asp?specicode=25
http://www.aarogya.com/Conditions/Specialties/results/journals/index.asp?specicode=18
Within this area are a few links not working from drop-down boxes and
the sub-menu (News, Journals etc). Someone needs to go through every
page in this section and check every link by hand, if your
link-checking software is not finding them. For example on this page:
http://www.aarogya.com/Conditions/Specialties/results/journals/index.asp?specicode=18
...the News link doesn't find a page.
Browsers / Speed / Design
=========================
I tested your site using Explorer 6, Mozilla 1.3 and Opera 7 and I
could find no compatibility problems. The loading speed was normal
(via cable, from Australia). The site looks very nice. It has
pleasing, soft tones and rounded edges - perfect for a health-related
site. All the text is easy to see and read.
If you have any further questions regarding my answer, please don't
hestitate to ask for a clarification and I'll get back to you.
Best wishes,
robertskelton-ga |
Request for Answer Clarification by
aarogya-ga
on
27 Dec 2003 20:29 PST
Thank you Robertskeleton-ga. An excellent beginning.
I would appreciate if you could give me more ideas on revenue
generation. ( With practicable implementation steps ) Something like
sponsorship for varios sections, drug launches, section specific
directories, hospital web pages for a fee etcetera.
Also from a user point of view what's missing in the site. ( For
different class of users)
Basically my objective is to re-organize the site to make the existing
information more visibleand accessible ( maybe fill in the gaps, for
which I would have to identify the gaps ) Once the site is useful to
people it could translate into revenue.
Is it possible to test the page downloads from a dial up connexion?
Any suggestions on enhancing functionality using programming features?
Looking forward to your valuable input.
|
Request for Answer Clarification by
aarogya-ga
on
28 Dec 2003 21:11 PST
How can I show you the web site log files for your comments?
I am sorry but as I am travelling I have infrequent net access.
|
Clarification of Answer by
robertskelton-ga
on
30 Dec 2003 20:23 PST
Hi again,
I can't imagine any need to see the log files. If the majority of
traffic to your site is from one or two sources, mentioning them here
would suffice, but is unlikely to affect my answers.
I have been working on a full clarification in amongst attending to
festive duties (Christmas and New Years, our main holiday week in
Australia), and expect to have a wealth of additional advice for you
by the end of the week.
Season's greeting from robertskelton-ga
|
Clarification of Answer by
robertskelton-ga
on
01 Jan 2004 21:21 PST
Revenue
-------
Your focus should be on advertisements. Web users don't mind quality
portals having a banner ad at the top of the page, and Google Ads have
the ability to provide ads relevant to page content. Getting doctors
or hospitals to pay for inclusion in a your directory only becomes
viable when they sense they *need* to be listed. Consider how long
Yahoo took before they charged for inclusion as the correct model.
Which is the better option, from your visitors point of view?
1. A complete directory, supported by ads
2. A patchy directory, supported by submission fees
Revenue by section
------------------
In general, I do not think any gain can be made from dividing your
site into sections for revenue purposes. Although there may be the
occasional section of your site worthy of special attention, it is not
common for large sites to complicate their advertising in this way.
If an individual page receives a lot of visitors, then a static
advertisement that ties in well with the topic of the page can work
well. Typically this would be a link to a book or product that
directly fills the needs of the likely visitor to the page.
This could also apply to sections like your drug search. One presumes
that anyone using the drug search is either looking to purchase the
correct drugs for their situation, or have some concern about whether
the drugs they have been prescribed are correct. For this category,
prominent ads for an online pharmacy would do well, as would books on
the topic, like an "A-Z of Drugs".
Revenue streams that are available to sites such as those in the USA
might not be available to Indian sites, primarily because Indian
retail e-commerce is in its relative infancy. Being an American site
that links directly to books at Amazon.com is quite easy.
GoBookShopping would be a good Indian alliance for your site if it
provided a means of linking to books individually.
http://www.gobookshopping.com/alliances.asp
You are a Portal
----------------
Health is a never-ending topic, and trying to be everything for
everyone is impossible. It does, however, seem to be human nature to
try. Many amateur websites include a visitor book a long time before
they have any visitors.
As the web-surfing audience matures with experience, they take heed of
little indicators that continuing to browse a site could be a waste of
their precious time. As noted above, having a forum with no
participants is one example. So too are any pages that are "under
construction", and any link directories or databases that lack
content. Therefore your main priority is to fulfill the expectations
of your visitor. You can do this by focusing on one aspect and making
it as close to perfect as is possible.
Your site is a portal. Your focus should be on being a portal - a
combination of health information, links to specialist resources, and
a directory of Indian resources, products and facilities. And the site
needs to work how the visitor would want it to work.
Say someone goes to your site becuase they have psoriasis and they are
after the latest articles and remedies... No portal can realistically
provide such in-depth content. Portals are technically windows,
openings. They should by definition lead elsewhere. Many portals
forget this. I mentioned psoriasis without knowing if your site had
any information on it. Now I look for it:
From your front page I used the Google site search for psoriasis and
it provided this page as the #1 result:
http://www.aarogya.com/Conditions/specialties/dermatology/psoriasis.asp
As a portal, your site should provide some information, and then link
to specialist sites. The page on psoriasis is okay, but where are the
links?
The links at the top of this page are not very obvious - but if
noticed they give the impression that they are a subsection of the
psoriasis page, whereas they are actually a subsection of the
dermatology section and would be more appropriately located in the
menu on the left.
The visitor who is after more specific info on psoriasis has a lot of
links on the page to look at and determine if they are the right way
to go. None will help. There appears to be some links in the main body
of text, but they are only pieces of text rendered in dark blue that
look like a link - a better choice of color would frustrate users
less.
To improve the page, visit Google Directory:
http://directory.google.com/Top/Health/Conditions_and_Diseases/Skin_Disorders/Psoriasis/?il=1
or HealthLink USA
http://www.healthlinkusa.com/all.asp
...select appropriate sites and add them as links in the main body (or
subsections you create) of your page on psoriasis.
Also, where possible, add more Indian specific content to the page.
Are there any psoriasis specialists in India? Any support groups? By
having Indian content and links to appropriate specialist sites, your
visitor will be satisfied that visiting your site was the correct
first step.
Support Groups
--------------
Your site has allocated one eighth of your top menu to Support Groups.
This information would be more appropriately located on the pages
dedicated to the individual ailments.
Say your visitor has arrived at this page:
http://www.aarogya.com/Conditions/specialties/neurology/epilepsy/index.asp
There is some good general information on this page, but as an Indian
health portal, your unique ability is to direct the visitor to local
resources, such as support groups. Your site has this information, but
to find it they need to click on Support Groups in the top menu, which
takes them to:
http://www.aarogya.com/supportgroup/
Then clicking on the image that says Epilepsy Support Groups (not
obvious that it is a link), takes them to:
http://www.aarogya.com/supportgroup/epilepsy/index.asp
The subsections of this page are linked to via two menus (very
confusing), one on the left and one on the right. The page itself has
nothing specifically about support groups, just a general description
of epilepsy. Most of the links in the left column point to support
groups for other ailments. The epilepsy sufferer is unlikely to also
require a support group for AIDS.
Clicking on Support Groups in the right menu gets to this page:
http://www.aarogya.com/supportgroup/epilepsy/supportgroup.asp
The final destination could have been linked to from the body of the
page they originally arrived at, and given a much better impresssion
of the depth of information your site contains.
I suggest that the Support Group section be merged with Conditions section.
Simplify the Navigation
-----------------------
If someone comes to a health portal because they are unwell, their
navigation should go like this:
Home Page ---> Ailment ---> General Information on Ailment ---> Links and Resources
The home page is fine. If I have epilepsy, when I visit it I can
either click on Conditions, click on Diseases or search for epilepsy.
The search works well. The links do not. They lead to drop-down boxes,
none of which mention epilepsy. The visitor has to know that they need
the Neurology section, otherwise they can progress no further. Kidney
problems? - the visitor needs to know that the section they are after
is Nephrology.
The visitor should be able to visit your home page, click on
Conditions, click on Epilepsy, and reach a page that links to all the
info your site has on the topic. When I get to the Epilepsy page, I
would like to see a menu prominently displayed in the center of the
page, that links to:
- Introduction
- Definition
- Causes
- Charateristics
- Diagnosis
- Treatment
- Tips for living with Epilepsy
- Articles
- Myths surrounding epilepsy
- Do's and Don'ts
- Epilepsy & Women
- Famous people with epilepsy
- VNS Therapy
- Support Groups
The above sections do exist, but the links to them are split up and
appear in four different places. Some of the information is duplicated
by topic, but with different information, like these two pages:
http://www.aarogya.com/conditions/specialties/neurology/epilepsy/diagnosis.asp#t
http://www.aarogya.com/supportgroup/epilepsy/drug_therapy.asp
Fixing the Navigation
---------------------
What needs to be done is this, for each ailment, remedy or general topic:
1. Find every page in your site that is related to it
2. Create an index page for it
3. Link to all the related pages, in a very clear manner. This means
in the main body of the page. Not in side menus, and not split into
multiple menus.
4. When someone gets to the end of the chain, say a page of contact
details for epilepsy support groups, try to only have links in side
menus going to other epilepsy information. This is the reason they are
there, this is the topic that interests them. If they want anything
else, they can return to the home page and start again.
Then test it from a visitors point of view. Think of as many possible
types of information that your visitor is looking for, examples:
- What should I feed my baby?
- How can I relieve the pain of migraine headaches?
- Where is my nearest hospital?
- What is homeopathy?
For each possibility (there are hundreds), start at your home page,
pretend you have never been there before, and see how long it takes to
find information. From following links your ideal should be three
clicks, although for such a large site four is okay.
Compare the ease of navigation, and the quality/quantity of
information with your oppositon (links below).
SiteMap
-------
Create a page like this one:
http://www.healthlinkusa.com/all.asp
Doing so provides an extra way for your visitor to find the
information they want. It also provides you with an overview and
reminder of what your site contains.
Know your limitations
---------------------
There are specialist sites that are better for health-related data
than your site is likely to achieve. For example, I have a
health-related webpage on one of my sites, and I link to the
following:
eMedicine
http://www.emedicine.com/
Health on the Net
http://www.hon.ch/
Drug Resource Center
http://www.intelihealth.com/IH/ihtIH/WSIHW000/8124/8124.html
RxList
http://www.rxlist.com
Your visitors would appreciate getting information from the above
sites. If it is combined with the knowledge that for an Indian
perspective of things, visiting aarogya.com is their smart first step.
So, your drug database could contain the basic information, plus
anything specific to India (local brand names, suppliers, prices), and
a link to the full information at RxList.com. Alternatively you could
investigate licensing their drug data. An Indian user would, even
though they knew RxList has the most in-depth data, visit your site as
the first step.
Your Opposition
---------------
Sites similar to yours include the following:
EvesIndia
http://www.evesindia.com/health/
India Times
http://health.indiatimes.com/
India Info
http://indiafocus.indiainfo.com/health/
These sites have the advantage of being a sub-section of an
all-encompassing portal. They are more suited to the casual surfer.
They both use Google Ads for revenue, and general ads that appear
throughout the entire portal.
There is also:
Indian Doctors
http://www.indiandoctors.com/
Programming
-----------
There is always a temptation to make the site more dynamic, by using
.asp or .php and databases of information. The suggestion to do so
usually comes from the programming and web design staff, rather than
from users. I do not recommend this for site because:
- Most of the information you provide is static
- Dynamic sites are more prone to errors
- Search engines prefer static pages
If your site becomes popular and attains a PageRank of 8 or higher,
then the vast majority of your visitors will arrive via search
engines. For this reason alone, keep the pages as simple and static as
possible.
Dial-Up Connections
-------------------
The best way of testing your site's speed using dial-up connections
would be from within India, as this is presumably where most of your
target audience resides. Unfortunately I don't have access to a
dial-up account here in Australia.
PS
--
This page is giving me a non-English version
http://www.aarogya.com/Complementary/
|
Request for Answer Clarification by
aarogya-ga
on
02 Jan 2004 05:51 PST
Seasons Greeting to you and your family.!
You have churned out some really insightful stuff! I really am happy
with the effort you have put in.
May I bother you to check out the complementary section once again. We
had by mistake put a wrong link to that section. Do you think
focussing on this section would be a good idea? ( The one you clicked
on and it took you to a Non English page )
I also would like to tell you that the visits we are getting to the
site are more from US than anywhere else. A lot from Europe and other
regions too. In view of this would you like to revise any suggestions
you made regarding revenue generation?
|
Clarification of Answer by
robertskelton-ga
on
02 Jan 2004 21:06 PST
Thanks for the rating, much appreciated!
It is important to differentiate between current visitors and target
audience. If your stats are able to, the important information is
return visitors and where they come from. There will always be random
visitors from all over the world, arriving via search engines. They
add to visitor numbers and page views, but what you need are visitors
that bookmark your site and use it as a resource. They are the
visitors who travel through many pages each visit, who read the
content, and who are in a better mood to notice relevant
advertisements. Many search engine visitors will only visit for a few
seconds then go somewhere else.
The advantage of Google Ads is that you get paid per click-through,
regardless of whether the visitor ends up buying anything. From this
point of view, it doesn't really matter where they come from - if they
can read English there's a 1-3% chance they'll click on an ad.
It is only an opinion, but aiming for an Indian audience, and treating
your site as a long-term proposition is what I suggest. This target
audience is going grow rapidly in the next decade. It is important to
be #1 at what you do. It is better to be the #1 Indian health portal
than the #37 international health portal.
I think each of Complementary Medicine, Conditions and Family Health
should be treated equally - the same amount of promotion from your
home page and the same amount of effort content-wise.
|
,
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