Feedback Welcomed - iGaming News Website

eReid

Hi there,
We recently launched a website that covers the latest news in the gaming industry. The website also includes detailed reviews of online casino operators and guides to some of the most common casino games.

We would love to get the group's feedback on the concept and the site. Please visit <a href="http://www.casinogamespro.com/">http://www.casinogamespro.com</a> and let us know:

1. What was your first impression when you entered the website?
2. Overall, how easy to use do you find the website?
3. What do you like the most and the least about our website?
4. Would you recommend the website to a friend or colleague?
5. What improvements would you suggest to the site?

Thanks for your time! Looking forward to your replies :smile:

Ryan O'Bleness

Hello, @eReid. 

Here is a clickable link to your website: http://www.casinogamespro.com 

1. My first impression of the website is that the color scheme is pretty simple, and clean cut, which it should be. But my second impression is confusion. If your website is about news and ratings of casinos and online gaming, but is not actually online gaming, why is it called Casino Games Pro and the SEO title start out as "Play Casino Games," which is misleading. I think something like Casino and Gaming News makes more sense. 

2. 8/10 for ease of use. 

3. What I like most about the site is sections are clearly labeled, identified and described to find what I'm looking for. What I like least is, again, the branding and the name doesn't equate to me with what your site actually is. 

4. I would recommend to friends if they were into casino games, but am less likely to it as it currently stands with the name "Casino Games Pro." 

5. A few suggestions. Rethink your branding. Obviously you've already purchased this domain name and everything, but it just doesn't resonate with me. Make sure your SEO tactics are all up to date. It looks like you're only rating online casinos, which is your niche. But consider expanding and rate physical casinos that people actually want to travel to (Las Vegas, Atlantic City, etc.). That will help you draw in more traffic. It's a great idea for SEO and for top of the funnel marketing strategy to have a blog like you do. Put fresh content in their as often as possible, daily if you can. 

I like the general idea, and I like that this is not an online gambling site, but I think a lot of work needs to be down from a branding and strategy aspect. 

@Randi Miller is one of the best in the business at critiquing websites and digging into the technical aspects. 

eReid

Hi @RyanOBleness ,

Thank you for your feedback. We appreciate you taking the time to review!

Your suggestion is noted and we will change the title.

Randi Miller

Hey @eReid,

Interesting. By day, I am the CTO of a video game company which was one of the leaders that started the online Casino stuff. Before laws got really strict and basically made it impossible to run one inside the US.

I'm usually the juggernaut of website reviews. I actually think that you have done yours fairly well. I would consider only using red for call-to-actions. Red is a color that actually pulls your eye towards it. When red is everywhere then your eye flutters all over without catching anything.

Turn on caching for your images. You could use something like the mod_expires if using Apache. Here is a snippet of what I usually add the .htaccess file or the apache .conf file for the server. Need to turn on the expires mod for this to work.

<IfModule mod_expires.c>ExpiresActive OnExpiresByType image/jpg "access 2 week"ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access 2 week"ExpiresByType image/gif "access 2 week"ExpiresByType image/png "access 2 week"ExpiresByType text/css "access 2 week"ExpiresByType application/pdf "access 2 week"ExpiresByType text/x-javascript "access 2 week"ExpiresByType application/x-shockwave-flash "access 2 week"ExpiresByType image/x-icon "access 2 week"ExpiresDefault "access 2 week"</IfModule>

Optimize thy images. Use something like tinypng.com or an image compression plugin to reduce the size of your images. I can see from one page that the data consumption used could be reduced by at least 19%.

Consider using a Minification/caching plugin. Most of your files (CSS, JS, etc) could be minified and cached to speed up pagespeed time.

If you are using Apache, adding gzip would be pretty easy too. Make sure to add the deflate module. Then add this snippet to your .htaccess file for the project.

## BEGIN Enable GZIP Compression ##<IfModule mod_deflate.c>AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/plainAddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/htmlAddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/xmlAddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/cssAddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xmlAddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xhtml+xmlAddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/rss+xmlAddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/javascriptAddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-javascriptAddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-httpd-phpAddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-httpd-fastphpAddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE image/svg+xmlSetOutputFilter DEFLATE</IfModule>## END Enable GZIP Compression ##

Randi Miller

Sorry about the horrible code snippets being on a single line. @RyanOBleness know how to post multi-line code snippets?

Ryan O'Bleness

I don not not at @Randi Miller, however, when i first looked at your post on mobile, it appeared to include the full snippet.