ExchangePoint Review
First Impressions & Appearance - (Out of 20)
Immediately the design popped out at me, it's very professional, custom, clean, and neat. It's outstanding due to its customization when I've encountered so many other vBulletin sites who seem content with the mundane, run of the mill, standard default versions that look so bland. I noticed your skin selector and the time you've put into making these skins, and they really make a difference, your effort was well placed.
I noticed some prevalent Facebook affiliation, which I'm rather neutral on. On the one hand it does make you appear more secure having a Facebook base, however, if you overuse it, you'll give off the appearance that you're relying too heavily on Facebook in the stead of independent promotion and quality, so I won't suggest either way, rather keep it balanced as you have it now.
The color scheme is well done, I like the how the blue and green seem to compliment each other (despite blue and orange being true compliments on the color wheel) and contrast nicely. The only problem I had with it is the red text that only appears on user names and forum statistics. This wouldn't be a problem with me had red been incorporated in something more universally representative, like the logo, or maybe a red trim throughout to indicate it's a part of the site's scheme. Otherwise, it looks random, and if you didn't want red to be a permanent part of your design, recolor it to blue or green, as it'd be more fitting with the rest of the site.
The last suggestion I'd like to give is filling up your negative space. What I mean by that is the area below "Link Ads", "Facebook Fan Page", and so on, as well as your background. In those areas are solid colors, they do their job, but they're nothing that sets you apart from anyone else, and it's unused potential to me. I'd recommend putting more featured content, or displaying news of your site to the left of the forum so there isn't an awkward gap. As for the background, any sort of pattern or design would do. Take FP for example, they're simple stripes, yet they add a decent amount of character to the site, a little change can make a big difference. Overall, I really like looking at how clean your design is.
(Scored 18/20)
Site Layout - (Out of 20)
The site layout is from an overall standing simple and easy to use. News, updates, suggestions, feedback and introductions are necessary for any running forum, there's no need to change that.
However, when we reach the community lounge, there's the issue of its sub forums. Forum spam and forum fun could be one in the same, I don't see the need to separate them into two different areas of the site, you could simply create one forum and make specific rules for certain topics to distinguish which are games and which are spam, which shouldn't be that hard to do anyway. Reviewing, forum management, Bing, Google, and Yahoo are fine the way they are considering what your site is made for. However, web development and site maintenance fall too close to the category of forum management. I understand you want your site to cover a lot of topics and be an engaging experience of site discussion, but site maintenance could be done without, merged with forum management, and web development could be moved to the community category, to save index space and confusion.
The commercial category is a bit unorganized for my tastes. For one, the buy, sell, trade forum has so many sub forums it could be a category of its own. I'll explain further after I touch on the other forums. Now I'm not entirely familiar with what eCommerce is, and considering this, any guest viewing your site may or may not know what it is either, in contrast with Google, Bing and Yahoo which are acceptable because it's generally accepted to be a well known service. I would suggest removing or at least merging this forum with another comparable forum of the same purpose. SEO optimization should really be in the search engines category, since, it is in actuality discussing search engines. Domains shouldn't be a stand alone forum since you already have a domains sub forum under buy, sell, trade. Now, back to that forum. Since I just basically suggested that you remove and or merge all the forums from that category except this one, this is where I explain why. The commercial category originally has 4 forums on the index, buy, sell, trade, eCommerce, SEO optimization, and domains. Now, if you take all the sub forums that could do decently well standing on their own, and placed them on the index, you would have a much more organized and interesting place to attract discussion by having buy, sell, trade, forums, free stuff, domains, templates, and advertising, six forums in all, which all serve a distinct conversational point.
Onto marketing. I would suggest that link exchange be a sub forum of link marketing, since link exchange is mentioned in link marketing's description, it'd be fitting. I'd also reconsider the promote your site's title, and renaming it. It doesn't follow the pattern of all the other forums, and comes off as more of a tag line than an actual title. Perhaps something more along the lines of forum promotion or advertising, that would be more professional and better explain itself in a more cohesive manner, rather than giving a command "promote your site". As for the general area, it's pretty much perfect, no complaints here.
(Scored 16/20)
Statistics and Activity - (Out of 20)
Your activity is relatively decent. In 6 weeks you have 36 members who, on average, posted 28 times each to accumulate over a thousand posts, which isn't bad per se, but it could use improvement. The number one thing people want to have in any promotion site, regardless, is activity and statistics. If they see that the site is slow or there isn't much traffic, they don't see why they should go there, and move on. I would suggest keep promoting hard over here, and at other promotion sites, and do your best to invite people, because activity is what's going to drive your entire site. It's not noticeably bad at 6 weeks, but if you continue at this rate, it will be. The more effort you put into increasing activity, the better, try to make as many topics as you can (I mean besides world news) in each forum, so there's more to discuss for your new members and they don't feel so alone or pressured to think of something to talk about, they're already welcomed with topics of discussion.
(Scored 15/20)
Staff Moderation - (Out of 20)
I don't want to make this area personal, but considering that this is a small site at the moment, and there isn't much warrant for a large staff team, I'm going to go off of what I have, which are 3 members and their posts. Now I can't say much because two thirds of your staff do their job, and they do it well. Jordy and Chris Grigg are taking pride in their work, and I like their style of handling their positions. However. Optic vaproiza doesn't seem to me like someone who would be committed, or at least dedicated to upholding the more dignified position of being in the staff, and there are too many reasons for this. OV has only made 5 posts, and all of them have suffered from poor grammar or some form of internet slang while the other two staff members spoke in whole English and actually practiced grammar and punctuation. I can't understand the reason behind promoting OV, and I don't intend to pry, but that would be damaging to the staff's reputation if that goes on.
(Scored 13/20)
Spelling/Grammar & Professionalism - (Out of 20)
Aside from the directly aforementioned, the other members seem to do well in communicating effectively, and there doesn't seem to be any problems in this area, so I'll have to say that you're doing a good enough job at attracting people who care about how they behave in forums, and since there isn't much of a issue here this will be pretty short, but I find the main reason is that you're the one posting most of the time, and if I got a larger pool of material to work with, in other words, more unique visitors posting more frequently, it'd be easier to judge. Still, good work.
(Scored 17/20)
Total Score - (79 Out of 100)
Final Remarks:
What was most liked about the website/forums: The professional skin and feeling of neatness and cleanliness.
What was disliked most about the website/forums: The lacking activity and unprofessional staff member.
How could I get you (the reviewer) to join my website? If you attracted more people, placed more offers and features, and strengthened your layout a bit more, I may join in the future.
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