kuvopolis

With all due respect, Kevin, I did mention previously that I made a few quick fixes. I never implied that I revamped the site. Unfortunately, I had a lot of fires to put out in the past couple of weeks, both related to the website and not. I will concede to you that the landing page still has issues, but to say that "all of the problems" remain is inaccurate and demoralizing. I had the "how to use" stuff on the homepage, and I was advised by someone outside the forum to shunt it to an auxiliary page. So I do explain how to use it, perhaps not well enough, but it is there. I could work on more of the "why to use it". I have actually read Smashing Design, and I am starting to read the other 2 after you posted the links. I have looked at popular sites for inspiration. The current golden child, Pinterest, actually has a pretty bad UI, with its 6 columns, non-standard header, miniscule links, etc. . Reddit, as Mahngiel recommended, is pretty horrible as well (for example, the content has no room to breathe). But I will peruse more sites like Smashing Design and perhaps they will have some better examples. And JohnSmith, why do you think my site "looks like shit"?

You basically said "Your site sucks" and ran away. That was not a valid critique. At least now you gave me something to work with. The red border thing I should fix. The color palate was taken from Colour Lovers, and was rated one of the best, http://www.colourlovers.com/palette/580974/Adrift_in_Dreams No typography? Any site with text has a typography. Now maybe mine is not good... The icons make perfect sense. A movie reel means movie, Facebook icon means use Facebook, etc. There are plenty of sites with "lackluster" user interfaces that do quite well (Facebook, Google). I am skeptical that adding more bells and whistles are going to convert users. An personally, I have read the other website critique threads and they were not nearly as scathing. The sites I saw were no great shakes either.

Thanks for the constructive criticism, troll somewhere else

Jesirose: on May 4, I used Google URL builder to create a custom URL. Before that, all the Facebook traffic was mixed together. As far as I know, my page loads pretty fast. And I cannot imagine that about 3/4 of the people who click on my ad are so disgusted with the site that they are clicking away so quickly (like 3 seconds). Regardless of whether or not it is fraud, Facebook's customer service is horrible. I cannot speak to anyone on the phone. The email response time is horrible and the answers are lifted directly from a script or help page. And now they essentially ignored my issue. I was spending $300/month on Facebook advertising. With a $100/month cable package I could get much better customer service. I need to find a better advertising network. Unfortunately, Google Adsense is too expensive for my keywords (like $2 a click).

Adam, from May 1 to 9 Google Analytics reported 92 hits from Facebook, where AWStats reported 134. Meanwhile, Facebook reported 166 clicks on my ads. But please consider that the Google Analytics and AWStats figures include many clicks that I received from friends on Facebook that accessed my site from other parts of Facebook (not the ads). So there is still a large overcount on the part of Facebook.

Thanks, scootsah, that may explain why I could not for the life of me get the JQuery UI stuff to work on the page.

Yes, www.mediashindig.com The site never hangs on me on either my work or home computer. I clicked on my ad to see if the ad was messing it up, but nothing extraordinary occurred. I will ask my friends if they have such a problem. I believe my home page is free of script errors on the newer browsers, I need to look into the same for older browsers. I will check my logs on AWstats. Thank you for the advice.

I made some quick fixes based on your input, I will begin to rethink the header and other stuff. When you say "Facebook profile bit", do you mean the Facebook Like Box on the right? I am considering moving the site description/directions off to another page, thoughts? The stock photos are getting a lot of flack, I should probably just remove them.

Google Analytics.

Facebook says that I get about 20 clicks a day on my ads, whereas Google puts the number closer to about 5. I would call 15 of those clicks fraudulent. To make matters worse, some of these clicks come from Colombia, France, Italy, Mexico, etc, where I target the United States only. There was an article 3 years ago that addressed this, and said "Often the fraudsters have their art down to a science and their software clicks ads so fast and moves on to the next one that it doesn’t even hang around long enough for the underlying URL to resolve. Facebook still sees (and charges for) the click, but the advertiser’s server never registers a page view.". This is what I suspect is happening to me.

I currently advertise with Facebook Ads. I have been noticing a gross discrepancy between the number of clicks on my ads according to Facebook and what Google Analytics reports. Google advised me to use the URL builder to create custom URLs, but it has not solved the problem. I contacted Facebook regarding this. After a couple of incompetent replies on their part, I finally got someone to tell me to provide them my logs and screenshots of the Facebook/Google reports. I provided these. After 4 days and a follow-up, I have received no further response from them. Either Facebook commits click fraud, or others use Facebook to commit click fraud. I believe the latter is the more likely option, but it is up to Facebook to keep this at bay (Google does). I suspect many others are having Facebook click fraud issues, but it seems like few are speaking up. Their BBB rating is A+, which I find laughable given my struggles. I figured this would be bigger news, especially with their IPO coming up. I do not know what recourse I have. I already spoke to a lawyer but I am too small of a potato for him ($10/day spent on Ads). If I twist Facebook's arms they might give me a credit for the fraudulent clicks, but then those clicks will likely be fraudulent as well.

12 days ago I launched my new website, Media Shindig. The goal of my website is to provide movie, TV show, and music recommendations to users. Users can get these recommendations by selecting their and/or their friends' Facebook profiles. The system grabs their likes and bases the recommendations off of that. Alternately, they can enter movie/tv show titles and music artists manually. Unfortunately, I have been suffering a bounce rate in the mid 90s, no clicks on the Facebook "Like" button (except for friends), and no one has used the Facebook method (which requires user permission), not even my own friends who I asked to critique the site. I suspect it is because of a combination of aesthetic issues and trust. I know people are skittish about Facebook applications, especially on an external site. Though I had a karaoke site a few years ago that did not look great and had a bounce rate in the 30s and 40s. I am using Facebook ads to get clicks. There are some bugs in the whole site that I need to work out, but I am really focused right now on the landing page, because frankly almost no one is getting past it. I developed and designed this website myself. It took many hours, I cannot say how much. www.mediashindig.com