Category_Review Team>Review Spotlights - August 20, 2014

3DS Pedia (Full Review) – Review Spotlight

3DS Pedia Full Review by Jadster

You can access 3DS Pedia to see for yourself what it looks like, by clicking here.

Scoring:

First Impressions & Appearance – (14 out of 20) Upon first visiting 3DS Pedia a few months ago, I was very into the site due to the fact that I was a huge nerd and loved the nintendo 3DS. Now, revisiting the website, I am a bit disappointed with the change of the logo and a few other things that have changed but anyways, looking at the appearance of your website, I would have to say the theme is quite basic. The theme is just a few slight changes that can be made quite easily by anybody with coding & design knowledge. Personally, I feel that to make your site successful and to really stick out among the rest of the gaming related forums, you need to look into getting a custom theme for 3DS Pedia. Something that sticks out and is unique to your site alone. Something that when your visitors see it, they won't be able to stop coming back. I feel that your site design is just very basic and the theme as well as the logo seem to be more related around Mario when the 3DS was nintendo, not just mario. Why not get your logo to be a 3DS with a stylis going sideways that has the site name engraved into it? Something that is a bit more out there and shows a bit more of what your site is about. 3DS Pedia is a nice site and looks very good and has potential, but if you wish to continue growing, then I would look into remaking your design. Overall, the design is still good enough to work for now but I still recommend looking into fixing it up.

Site Layout – (17 out of 20) Looking at the layout of your site, one of the biggest things I like is how you organized your boards and changed the icons next to them. I also like how you organized them with specific games and such. This really keeps things organized and really makes it easy to find threads that I would want to read about a specific game title. I also like how you named each board with a unique name. Some of them I have seen but many of them are new and very creatively named and that was one of the main things that stood out to me. Another thing I like is your Member of the Week & Game reviews that you have set up on the side of your board. As well as the Today's Birthdays widget. Many of your widgets you have added to the site are very creative and seem to fit very well with your website. So I do not see much else that is needing to be discussed about the layout of your site. It has good organization and a very creative design with the widgets and placement. So overall, keep up the great work with your layout!

Statistics and Activity – (14 out of 20) Looking at the statistics of 3DS Pedia, you have 5,243 threads, 82,553 posts and 1,347 members. Your site has also been online for a full year now. So with that in mind, I feel that the stats are actually lacking to be honest. If you dedicated enough time to the site, I feel that you would have many more members then what you have. The 3DS is a very popular item and is widely known and a very hot topic when brought up because there is so much about them that is changing and always being added. So with a site being based around such a hot item today, I feel that your stats should be much higher then what they are really. If you are looking to get a boost on your stats, why not hold a referral contest and the winner gets some sort of prize that they could use either at 3DS Pedia or the Nintendo 3shop. Something that they would be interested in and would want to get their hands on without spending a penny from their own pockets. You could also host tournaments such as a Pokemon or Mario Kart tournament. Of which the winner earns some sort of prize. These are just a few ideas that you could do to get your current members and even viewers interested in and give them a reason to be apart of the community more. So overall, your stats are decent but I feel there is a lot you could do to improve after having the site up and running for a full year already.

Content – (16 out of 20) As mentioned above, you have a lot of content, but the fact of the mater is that you need to make sure that the content you are posting and the content that your community is posting is not just quantity, it needs to be quality. People don't want to read short sentences about a game or about a product, they want to know facts, opinions, reviews, things that they can really get into. I am not saying your content you have now is not quality, I am saying this as a reminder because many people believe it is quantity over quality when in reality, it is the opposite. With there being so many 3DS consoles and games for each, there is no reason why you couldn't get great quality posts about them. The better the quality you post on the community, the more your members will enjoy it. They want to know details, not small little teasers or thoughts. Overall, I read a bit of the content and a lot of it seems good, well spelled and very intriguing but be sure to continue making each thread & post quality.

Spelling/Grammar & Professionalism – (18 out of 20) As I had mentioned above, after reading some of the posts & content, many of the posts were properly spelled & had great grammar except for a few errors here and there but that was it.. So that wasn't an issue at all. Looking at the professionalism of 3DS Pedia, the design is decent, the layout is great, the stats are still needing to be worked on but the content & spelling / grammar are fantastic. So looking at that, each of those can both benefit but also hurt the professional look of your site. But you have a very good site growing so far and just how your members act as far as I could see, they were very professional so I do not see an issue with your site professionalism. So overall, your site has great spelling & grammar, just a few errors here and there but other then that it was fine. And with all the other aspects, your site is very professional, the staff are nice and the members seem alright. So let's wrap up this review with my final remarks.

Total Score - (79 out of 100)

Final Remarks: As a 3DS fan, I found it a great experience to get to review 3DS Pedia because the site was something I was interested in and I also enjoyed getting to read some of the content posted around. But looking back on the review, I still would recommend taking a look at your site design and banner, but needless to say, the site was a great site to get to review and I do hope you enjoyed reading the review. I hope to be able to review your site again in the future!