Hi,

A short introduction: We are a small Chinese startup site, and have completed the initial coding of our beta site. We have just received a small amount of seed funding and now plan to upgrade our site to .NET but first we wanted to ask for some initial comments on our current layout, design and concept from some US developers.

Our site is located at LongDaGe.com
It is a pretty simple site, and we would like to keep it as simple as possible. We don't need to have a lot of fancy graphics, etc.

Don't worry about the Chinese side, we have other people who know Chinese who are reviewing the content and layout of the Chinese side.

So we would appreciate some input on the English side. The flow to finding information, posting information and basic information management in accounts.

Thanks in advance
Long DaGe - President
LongDaGe.com

Congratulations, your site emulates a spam site PERFECTLY!

As link farms go, you have a very well thought out design, though I'm sure you could add more links if you really work at it.

Not one thing on that page will encourage any self-respecting user to spend more than 4 seconds looking at it.

If you're sincere in your desire to improve the layout, start by removing about 4000 links and add some useful, relevant information.

.02

__________________
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Web Payroll, Employee Time & Attendance with HRMS

I think you must have checked the wrong site. we don't even have 4000 listings yet.

We have real estate listings, job listings, along with other categories of information.

As far as spam, we require double opt in for any new user account, so we verify the email address fo any users, and we encourage users not to post their person email address with their listings.

I went to By "4000", I meant there are too many links on the home page.

Yet? You're hoping to have 4000 in near future?

<sarcasm>
Ooohh, link them all off the home page!
</sarcasm>

__________________
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Web Payroll, Employee Time & Attendance with HRMS

now i understand your meaning as far as the links go.

i am still not sure i understand why you call it a spam site?

I'm saying that your site is devoid of content.

When I visit your home page, all I see is hyperlinks, 193 of them, to be exact.

Please allow me to make is simple for you to understand:
193 HYPERLINKS ON YOUR HOME PAGE IS TOO MANY!

It does not have any articles or relevant information on the home page, nothing but links, that's why it looks like a link farm.

If you're serious about making your site useful, categorize your links in separate pages and add some content that your prospective users might find helpful.

Nobody, not Google, MSN, Yahoo!, Altavista, Cha-Cha, Ask, or anyone else, is actively looking for another page full of nothing but hyperlinks.

In terms of content, it appears that the longest paragraph on your home page is the very last paragraph at the very bottom of the page:

In case you were wondering, that does not classify as useful content.

At the very least, write a few sentences with some information people can read when they visit your home page. You have a vested interest in your site, but you're the only person who might be able to find value in it.

You need to realise that the average user will give you no more than 10-20 seconds of their time unless you can provide a compelling reason for them to remain on your site. 193 hyperlinks is not a compelling reason to stay.

Honestly, hire a website designer and a content writer.

Good Luck.

.02

__________________
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Web Payroll, Employee Time & Attendance with HRMS

By the definition of link farm you have given, our site is not a link farm.

1) the content is all user supplied content, so our members are our content writers. we do not supply any content to the site ourselves.
2) the links on the home page do not go to outside sites, but rather are to user supplied content sections inside the site or to user supplied content.
3) prospective users of our are are people who are either looking for real estate, jobs, etc or users who have real estate and jobs to offer and so post their own content.

This site is similar to your US craigslist.org site, where all of the content is user supplied listings.

Granted that craigslist.org UI is not optimal, but it is functional, and has been useful to millions right?

I would agree with you that the US sites you mentioned do not have much content on their home page. Do you have the same comments for sites like:

yahoo.com.cn, 51job.com kijiji.cn ?

Dude, you've got 193 hyperlinks on your home page, ABSOLUTELY NO USEFUL CONTENT and you don't appear to have a sincere desire to change anything.

Seriously, if it's not a link farm, what is it?

I've wasted enough time with this.

__________________
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Web Payroll, Employee Time & Attendance with HRMS

Your code is a mess.
You have multiple <html> tags.

__________________
Dave Barnes
+1.303.744.9024
WebEnhancement Services - Worldwide

ok where to start.

1. Your change location links should be in a drop down menu
2. your navigation is all over the place in two center columns. Move them to where you have the change location links and use fly out menus or drop downs for your sub-categories

This will clean up the page and help make it look more then just a bunch of links.

Now where you have your navigation in the two center columns since you moved them to menus you have room to explain to people
A. Why your page is there
b. How to use your page
c. How to place a ad
d. this will also give to room to add a news feed if you wanted

Search engines look at text not code and right now you have no text on your site.

Also since you have a lot of categories and sub-categories you need to add a bread crumb trail so people know where they are on your page.

This will get you started in the right direction. As of right now your page makes it very hard for people to find what they are looking for and all the links altogether get very confusing. You need to make the site simple and friendly.

I think the best way I can explain it to you is consider the classified section of a newspaper. Now if that newspaper had 2000 ads in it could you find the 1 ad your looking for in 10 seconds? I ask because 10 seconds is all the time visitors to your site will give you to find what they want. And right now your page is laid out like the classified section of a newspaper.

Thanks for the useful comments.

We were thinking along these same lines so it was helpful to see someone has the same thoughts.

Thanks
LongDage