A bit OT. Comments on website needed.

[Bob Parker]

Hi,
EVB in Portugal is trying to sell his version of the ESR meter
which is also sold by Dick Smith Electronics. A lot of people are
visiting his website, but most leave again immediately and no-one is
showing any interest in his meters.
If you have nothing better to do, please visit
http://clientes.netvisao.pt/greenpal and give me your candid comments
which I will pass on.
I can assure you that this is not an excuse for some free
advertising. He really wants to know what's wrong with his website.
Thanks!

Cheers,
Bob

 

[mike]

Bob Parker wrote:

Hi,
EVB in Portugal is trying to sell his version of the ESR meter
which is also sold by Dick Smith Electronics. A lot of people are
visiting his website, but most leave again immediately and no-one is
showing any interest in his meters.
If you have nothing better to do, please visit
http://clientes.netvisao.pt/greenpal and give me your candid comments
which I will pass on.
I can assure you that this is not an excuse for some free
advertising. He really wants to know what's wrong with his website.
Thanks!

Cheers,
Bob

There's no information on the page.
There's text that sez there are five, count-em, FIVE rotating AD banners
that got killed by my popup/banner killer. There are placeholders for
twelve, count-em, TWELVE other bits of fluff that got killed by my popup
killer.
If you look close, the word "ESR" is in red on a busy background.
Short answer to "what's wrong" >> EVERYTHING.
FYI, Netscape 7.0.


To fix it, put up some text telling what you have for sale and a PRICE.
If I have to drill down three levels to find out how much the damned
thing costs, I know it's too much and move on.

If you can't convince me to buy it in 10 lines of text on page 1, you
need to
work on the product or the sales pitch. Read up on the differences
between features and benefits.

Add a progressive small low-res pix, (we don't all have broadband).
Put a link that sez, "click here to see rotating ad banners and
advertising crap and guest books and counters and all the other stuff
that's irrelevant to selling ESR meters"
that takes you to a different page. Put a counter on that page to see
how many hits it doesn't get. Save the flash and moving pix and all
that stuff for sites that sell games.

I'm not saying that you can't do good stuff with backgrounds and banners
and motion and, and, and...but way too many website designers add
clutter and call it attractiveness. Every day, the tools to filter
out that crap get better and we can't find your content.
mike


--
Bunch of stuff For Sale and Wanted at the link below.
laptops and parts Test Equipment
4in/400Wout ham linear amp.
Honda CB-125S
400cc Dirt Bike 2003 miles $550
Police Scanner, Color LCD overhead projector
Tek 2465 $800, ham radio, 30pS pulser
Tektronix Concept Books, spot welding head...
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Monitor/4710/

 

[Wild Bill]

Hi Bob, it's been quite a while.

What Mike said, way too much stuff on the page that's supposed to be about
the meter.
I like the inside/outside view, but it might be more practical to have t
somewhere else.. like a link to a "specifications page".
The USA & Canada Order page states 80 euros, where it should just state USD
or whatever Canadians spend?
When the value of the euro changes, the prices should be updated.

I'm glad to see that the ESR meter is getting more recognition and wider
distribution.

Cheers
WB
.....................


"Bob Parker" <bobp@bluebottle.com> wrote in message
news:apjbovs4fae6ecfo8cn99jm8doqg7n1ndi@4ax.com...

Hi,
EVB in Portugal is trying to sell his version of the ESR meter
which is also sold by Dick Smith Electronics. A lot of people are
visiting his website, but most leave again immediately and no-one is
showing any interest in his meters.
If you have nothing better to do, please visit
http://clientes.netvisao.pt/greenpal and give me your candid comments
which I will pass on.
I can assure you that this is not an excuse for some free
advertising. He really wants to know what's wrong with his website.
Thanks!

Cheers,
Bob

 

[mike]

Wild Bill wrote:

Hi Bob, it's been quite a while.

What Mike said, way too much stuff on the page that's supposed to be about
the meter.
I like the inside/outside view, but it might be more practical to have t
somewhere else.. like a link to a "specifications page".
The USA & Canada Order page states 80 euros, where it should just state USD
or whatever Canadians spend?
When the value of the euro changes, the prices should be updated.

I'm glad to see that the ESR meter is getting more recognition and wider
distribution.

Cheers
WB
.....................

Interesting, I didn't see any of that in netscape.
I tried opera and got a set of error messages.
Two applets not found.
One applet crashed.
Two scrolling banners of extraneous info.

I turned off proxomitron and two of the applets came up
before Opera locked up.

The inside/out pix is cute, I didn't time how long it took to come up,
but a whole song played on the mp3 player while I was waiting. Only
reason I waited was curiosity generated by the previous response.

So, the pix would have caught my attention IF
1) I had known what to expect and been willing to wait that long
2) I had been running a compatible browser...no, if the page
had been compatible with MY browser.

Still need to put the price on page 1 in big text.
If you can't hook me on the price, features are irrelevant.

If you wanna sell stuff, you gotta test it with every version of every
browser in the wild. They ain't all compatible for the fancy stuff,
but usually work if you stick to simple html text and jpg or gif pix.
Don't assume that we all have broadband, run XP and have the latest
upgrades to IE...we don't. Some of us actually use as LITTLE M$ stuff
as possible and stay way down the obselescence (price) curve on the
stuff we can't get by without.
mike

"Bob Parker" <bobp@bluebottle.com> wrote in message
news:apjbovs4fae6ecfo8cn99jm8doqg7n1ndi@4ax.com...

Hi,
EVB in Portugal is trying to sell his version of the ESR meter
which is also sold by Dick Smith Electronics. A lot of people are
visiting his website, but most leave again immediately and no-one is
showing any interest in his meters.
If you have nothing better to do, please visit
http://clientes.netvisao.pt/greenpal and give me your candid comments
which I will pass on.
I can assure you that this is not an excuse for some free
advertising. He really wants to know what's wrong with his website.
Thanks!

Cheers,
Bob

--
Bunch of stuff For Sale and Wanted at the link below.
laptops and parts Test Equipment
4in/400Wout ham linear amp.
Honda CB-125S
400cc Dirt Bike 2003 miles $550
Police Scanner, Color LCD overhead projector
Tek 2465 $800, ham radio, 30pS pulser
Tektronix Concept Books, spot welding head...
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Monitor/4710/

 

[anon]

There are no details (at least that I noticed) re what this meter is or
does.

Payment is requested in Euros = 0 sales to the US.
Canadians pay in Canadian $' s when at home. For an order to Portugal USD
can be expected.

Western Union is an expensive payment option. Why not Paypal?

There were other noticeable shortcominges - the site map opened to a nice
file layout - but the files were not labelled.


"Bob Parker" <bobp@bluebottle.com> wrote in message
news:apjbovs4fae6ecfo8cn99jm8doqg7n1ndi@4ax.com...

Hi,
EVB in Portugal is trying to sell his version of the ESR meter
which is also sold by Dick Smith Electronics. A lot of people are
visiting his website, but most leave again immediately and no-one is
showing any interest in his meters.
If you have nothing better to do, please visit
http://clientes.netvisao.pt/greenpal and give me your candid comments
which I will pass on.
I can assure you that this is not an excuse for some free
advertising. He really wants to know what's wrong with his website.
Thanks!

Cheers,
Bob

 

[Bob Parker]

G'day Bill,
Yeh, it's been a while since we were talking. I really appreciate
your input and that of everyone else. It's pretty-much what I was
thinking too.
I'll convey this info to the guy who's making the meters and
diplomatically explain to him (again) that when it comes to trying to
sell technical stuff, busy technicians are looking for the basic
facts, not slow-loading pretty pictures.
Thanks again!

Cheers,
Bob



"Wild Bill" <kwag98@usachoice.net> wrote:

Hi Bob, it's been quite a while.

What Mike said, way too much stuff on the page that's supposed to be about
the meter.
I like the inside/outside view, but it might be more practical to have t
somewhere else.. like a link to a "specifications page".
The USA & Canada Order page states 80 euros, where it should just state USD
or whatever Canadians spend?
When the value of the euro changes, the prices should be updated.

I'm glad to see that the ESR meter is getting more recognition and wider
distribution.

Cheers
WB
....................

 

[H. R. Bob Hofmann]

"anon" <recyclecomputer@@&hotmail.com> wrote in message news:<AiAhb.30752$k74.18338@lakeread05>...

There are no details (at least that I noticed) re what this meter is or
does.

Payment is requested in Euros = 0 sales to the US.
Canadians pay in Canadian $' s when at home. For an order to Portugal USD
can be expected.

Western Union is an expensive payment option. Why not Paypal?

There were other noticeable shortcominges - the site map opened to a nice
file layout - but the files were not labelled.


"Bob Parker" <bobp@bluebottle.com> wrote in message
news:apjbovs4fae6ecfo8cn99jm8doqg7n1ndi@4ax.com...
Hi,
EVB in Portugal is trying to sell his version of the ESR meter
which is also sold by Dick Smith Electronics. A lot of people are
visiting his website, but most leave again immediately and no-one is
showing any interest in his meters.
If you have nothing better to do, please visit
http://clientes.netvisao.pt/greenpal and give me your candid comments
which I will pass on.
I can assure you that this is not an excuse for some free
advertising. He really wants to know what's wrong with his website.
Thanks!

Cheers,
Bob

All the previous comments are right on - It took forever to download
the first page, and I gave up waiting for the pdf stuff to download.
Like it said years ago in Dragnet, facts, just the facts!!

H. R. (Bob) Hofmann

 

[Bob Parker]

Hi there Bob,
He's removed all the moving stuff and tried to put the basic info
about the meter and its price onto his main page. It loads in about
1/8 of the time now.
The .pdf file is 320KB in size, containing quite a lot of
information about capacitor ESR and meters. That shouldn't take very
long to download even with a slow modem. My poor old 33.6K one does it
in about 2 minutes.
Thanks again to everyone for your comments.

Cheers,
Bob


hrhofmann@att.net (H. R. Bob Hofmann) wrote:

All the previous comments are right on - It took forever to download
the first page, and I gave up waiting for the pdf stuff to download.
Like it said years ago in Dragnet, facts, just the facts!!

H. R. (Bob) Hofmann

 

[Laurence Dishman]

Sorry Bob - the web page is still too busy. He's trying to accomplish
far too much on one page. It's too bad that my multimedia class is
just finishing up. (the class is taking their finals tomorrow evening)
There are some folks in the class that could turn that web page into a
first class winner.

I believe that the one thing that every ESR web site should include is
a concise description of ESR and how it makes capacitors fail.

Stay in touch, Larry



Bob Parker <bobp@bluebottle.com> wrote in message news:<i4ceovskdqoug8rlnprhbtvk74emv0310j@4ax.com>...

Hi there Bob,
He's removed all the moving stuff and tried to put the basic info
about the meter and its price onto his main page. It loads in about
1/8 of the time now.
The .pdf file is 320KB in size, containing quite a lot of
information about capacitor ESR and meters. That shouldn't take very
long to download even with a slow modem. My poor old 33.6K one does it
in about 2 minutes.
Thanks again to everyone for your comments.

Cheers,
Bob


hrhofmann@att.net (H. R. Bob Hofmann) wrote:

All the previous comments are right on - It took forever to download
the first page, and I gave up waiting for the pdf stuff to download.
Like it said years ago in Dragnet, facts, just the facts!!

H. R. (Bob) Hofmann

 

[John Robertson]

He should consider something like PayPal though. It simplifies the
payment method for the buyer. We use a simple order system that is
almost a one-button PayPal selection for the customer, we also offer
the option of credit cards (for faxed orders) - these then comprise
95% of our sales (PayPal and c/c).

We have noticed a drop-off in ESR sales over the summer - perhaps
there is a general slowdown in orders? Our prices are still quite
competitive I think...

John :-#)#

On Sat, 11 Oct 2003 08:24:18 +1000, Bob Parker <bobp@bluebottle.com>
wrote:

Hi there Bob,
He's removed all the moving stuff and tried to put the basic info
about the meter and its price onto his main page. It loads in about
1/8 of the time now.
The .pdf file is 320KB in size, containing quite a lot of
information about capacitor ESR and meters. That shouldn't take very
long to download even with a slow modem. My poor old 33.6K one does it
in about 2 minutes.
Thanks again to everyone for your comments.

Cheers,
Bob


hrhofmann@att.net (H. R. Bob Hofmann) wrote:

All the previous comments are right on - It took forever to download
the first page, and I gave up waiting for the pdf stuff to download.
Like it said years ago in Dragnet, facts, just the facts!!

H. R. (Bob) Hofmann

(Please post followups or tech enquires to the newsgroup)
John's Jukes Ltd. 2343 Main St., Vancouver, BC, Canada V5T 3C9
Call (604)872-5757 or Fax 872-2010 (Pinballs, Jukes, Video Games)
www.flippers.com
"Old pinballers never die, they just flip out."

 

[James Sweet]

"John Robertson" <jrr@flippers.com> wrote in message
news:q9olov8rl63egci31ikpfciv9sucu5o8h2@4ax.com...

He should consider something like PayPal though. It simplifies the
payment method for the buyer. We use a simple order system that is
almost a one-button PayPal selection for the customer, we also offer
the option of credit cards (for faxed orders) - these then comprise
95% of our sales (PayPal and c/c).

We have noticed a drop-off in ESR sales over the summer - perhaps
there is a general slowdown in orders? Our prices are still quite
competitive I think...

John :-#)#

Perhaps it's just that the whole economy in north american in general has
kinda gone down the tubes and is only recently leveling off.

 

[Wild Bill]

Good to hear from you again Bob

There is a cute TV commercial "up here" about a dating couple discussing
their compatibility. The girl is saying she thinks they should end the
relationship, the guy asks if it's because of Mr Frisky.. she says no, I
really like your cat, it's because of your website.. I need more content.

More content can be delivered in a lot of ways, but trying to fit it all
onto one page is a common problem. I'm no sort of a web designer of any
type, I just prefer to see what I'm looking for in a short time without a
lot of clutter or distractions.

I had mentioned quite a while ago that I'd seen a B&K multimeter/ESR tester
on eBay, but I couldn't find any other info about it. This wasn't the one I
saw back then
http://bkprecision.com/www/np_searchmodel7.asp?lf=ESR+Meters
It looks like the display is an LED bar graph/scale, not a digital display.

Their MSRP is $200 for the 881 handheld, and they apparently have other
model versions that include LCR and other tests (B&K 885 886) for $550 and
$769.

Cheers
WB
...................

"Bob Parker" <bobp@bluebottle.com> wrote in message
news:c4odovgq0akpj02anrmofddu01t6voea35@4ax.com...

G'day Bill,
Yeh, it's been a while since we were talking. I really appreciate
your input and that of everyone else. It's pretty-much what I was
thinking too.
I'll convey this info to the guy who's making the meters and
diplomatically explain to him (again) that when it comes to trying to
sell technical stuff, busy technicians are looking for the basic
facts, not slow-loading pretty pictures.
Thanks again!

Cheers,
Bob

 

[Bob Parker]

dishman@wayne.edu (Laurence Dishman) wrote:

Sorry Bob - the web page is still too busy. He's trying to accomplish
far too much on one page. It's too bad that my multimedia class is
just finishing up. (the class is taking their finals tomorrow evening)
There are some folks in the class that could turn that web page into a
first class winner.

I believe that the one thing that every ESR web site should include is
a concise description of ESR and how it makes capacitors fail.

Stay in touch, Larry

G'day Larry and everyone,
I've done my own version of what I think the EVB ESR meter website
should look like. You can see it at
http://bob.parker.web1000.com/evb/index.html
All the links work. Comments?

Cheers,
Bob

 

[Bd]

Hi Bob!

Le Sat, 18 Oct 2003 05:18:51 +1000, Bob Parker <bobp@bluebottle.com>
écrivait:

I've done my own version of what I think the EVB ESR meter website
should look like. You can see it at
http://bob.parker.web1000.com/evb/index.html
All the links work. Comments?

Just one word: BETTER!

Regards!
--
Bernard
(NB: mon adresse de retour est valide. Ne rien y changer)
(NB: This is a valid Reply-To. Do not remove anything)
--

 

[Bob Parker]

Thank you for your positive feedback, Bernard!

Bob


Bd <nospamplease@ifrance.com> wrote:

Hi Bob!

Le Sat, 18 Oct 2003 05:18:51 +1000, Bob Parker <bobp@bluebottle.com
écrivait:

I've done my own version of what I think the EVB ESR meter website
should look like. You can see it at
http://bob.parker.web1000.com/evb/index.html
All the links work. Comments?

Just one word: BETTER!

Regards!
--
Bernard
(NB: mon adresse de retour est valide. Ne rien y changer)
(NB: This is a valid Reply-To. Do not remove anything)

 

[kaloalex]

G'day Larry and everyone,
I've done my own version of what I think the EVB ESR meter website
should look like. You can see it at
http://bob.parker.web1000.com/evb/index.html
All the links work. Comments?

Cheers,
Bob

Aloha, Bob.
I bought a DS kit from anatek this past week. I originally intended to
purchase the EVB, but changed horses in mid-stream.

Here's why: Although I am a technically inclined fella, I have no wish
to convert currency values, work through western union, or play
e-mail tag with a merchant. The phrase "The most convenient method is
through the Western Union online payment service." does not make for
happy consumerism. Frankly, by the time surcharges are added, the price
is quite similar to anatek's (with voltage protection) but the hassle
factor is much higher. The only "most convenient method" of payment
that matters is the most convenient method for the consumer. And WU
aint it. One-click ordering, Bob, one-click ordering. That's the big
roadblock (to my mind). Just give me the price and the order form, let
the seller crunch the numbers. Any decent web site designer can make
this simple service fully automatic.

Kalo

 

[Bob Parker]

G'day Kalo,
Thanks greatly for your detailed comments as an actual purchaser of
an ESR meter! That's exactly the kind of feedback I was looking for.
I'd pretty-well concluded that it was the "hassle factor" which is
stopping people from buying many of the EVB meters, when ordering is
so much easier from other sellers.
EVB is in the process of simplifying ordering right now. I'd like
to see them succeed, because they've done such a great job of turning
the basic design into a really nice little test instrument.
I'll pass on your comments to the right person.

Regards,
Bob


kaloalex <kaloalexandra@hotmail.com> wrote:

Aloha, Bob.
I bought a DS kit from anatek this past week. I originally intended to
purchase the EVB, but changed horses in mid-stream.

Here's why: Although I am a technically inclined fella, I have no wish
to convert currency values, work through western union, or play
e-mail tag with a merchant. The phrase "The most convenient method is
through the Western Union online payment service." does not make for
happy consumerism. Frankly, by the time surcharges are added, the price
is quite similar to anatek's (with voltage protection) but the hassle
factor is much higher. The only "most convenient method" of payment
that matters is the most convenient method for the consumer. And WU
aint it. One-click ordering, Bob, one-click ordering. That's the big
roadblock (to my mind). Just give me the price and the order form, let
the seller crunch the numbers. Any decent web site designer can make
this simple service fully automatic.

Kalo