In-Depth Review
Site Name:Mario Forums
Site Type: Gaming
Age: 15 months
Section Reviewed:All
We felt the overall theme fitted in well with the idea of a Mario Forum, there were no complaints about the images/banners on the forum as a good amount of effort has been put in here, so well done. You also have a favicon, a lot of forum owners forget about this simple but effective image. That said there are one or two little things, firstly the birthday icon is still the standard ZetaBoard icon, change this to fit in with the rest of the theme. The other issue we had was that the forum just felt too blue. None of the Mario games are actually all blue, they are warm, colourful and inviting, the forum feels a little cold, try adding in some warmer colours to give the forum a more welcoming feel. The welcome box you have chosen is good because it gives people a little information about some of the benefits you offer after signing-up, however, the box is just too big. I’d suggest removing it completely or having it re-sized.
In terms of the activity and statistics you have, they are quite impressive for a forum of this age. Take the total number of posts divided by the total members and it works out at 364 posts per member which sounds really good on paper. However, a little bit of digging reveals that almost half of the total posts made are by staff, less than 10% of the total members have over 100 posts on your forum, it means you have a good core posting set-up but now you need to encourage those with under 200 posts to increase their posting and those with under 100 posts, to come back to the forum. Sometimes a good way to do this is by setting up an interesting posting competition.
The first thing we noticed about the forum is that there is actually a decent amount of content for a forum of this size and age. We also noticed a significant lack of on-topic boards, the niche content is restricted to 2 boards, which equates to less than a tenth of the board being dedicated to the actual niche of the forum. This area needs some expansion, perhaps by adding a walkthrough/guide section or a cheats section? I’m not too sure how the game goes, so im not sure what to suggest here. The board descriptions and titles are all a bit short and boring, this isn’t a bad thing as people will know exactly what each is about, we are just suggesting trying to be a little more creative, isn’t that what Mario is all about after all? In regard to the amount of off-topic content you have compared to on-topic content, you need to work on this to increase the amount of on-topic content you have/receive.
First impressions of the forum are not exactly brilliant. The blue just looks cold and uninviting for potential members, it put most of the review team off for a start. With a lack of forums relevant to your niche, it suggests to me there isn’t much there for members to discuss or chat about, thus proven by the people who have signed up but failed to post, suggesting there has been little there to take their interest. Try making it look more inviting rather than cold and hostile.
SEO is pretty poor for this forum, it appears you have no DMOZ listing, no Yahoo listings either, I know Yahoo can be hard to get listed on, but it can help. For a domain that is showing as over 15 months old, PR 2 is quite poor, however poor SEO isn’t really helping the situation, if you get that sorted then it should start to improve. Your Alexa ranking is also pretty poor. It seems you have a long way to go in this area, if you don’t feel comfortable dealing with SEO and improving page ranks etc, perhaps ask your staff if they are? Or hire a specialist who has proven experience in helping forums sort out their SEO.
Words from the Reviewer
On first glance this forum appears to be doing really well considering its age. You have a high post count but then most of them are off-topic, you have very little content on your niche, staff make most of the posts and the theme doesn't exactly welcome potential members. Work on these issues and I think you could be on to a winner.
Star Rating
After reading your review, please click here to rate your review.
