I posted not long ago on Blogging Brum about a potential new business directory for Birmingham I heard about. It’s now gone live and I hate to say it but I was rather underwhelmed by the online launch.

I’ve had a few comment exchanges with Jamie Morden who is Digital Media Manager for MyBrumTV and he asked for my opinion on the site. Well as I’m always bleating on about the social media phenomenon and I believe the MyBrumTV launch is very closely linked to this I thought why not write a blog critique of the site and allow Jamie a right to reply.

There are two aspects to the critique as I see it. Firstly the actual site, what it achieves and how it achieves it and secondly with regard to the online launch and methods used here.

The website itself it a pleasant design and is pretty simple to navigate. However the filmstrip style menu is going to be outgrown very quickly if this directory takes off – I can’t see people scrolling along 100’s of companies or categories. I’d love to see some kind of AJAX style navigation here to allow you traverse the directories quickly and easily (obviously with some non-AJAX fallback to ensure accessibility isn’t compromised). I feel it just needs some more excitement about it that draws you into the site. The introduction movie on the homepage I really don’t feel is going to be watched by people – if they are coming to a business directory they are just going to search. It’s the same thing for most homepage text people are looking for something specific and therefore don’t read what they just see as promotional blurb.

This brings me onto a search feature which is currently not available. As there aren’t a huge amount of companies online now I can perhaps understand why they haven’t rolled this out as yet but it will be essential in the future.

The company listings rely nearly entirely on the videos produced and although this is MyBrumTV’s selling point I don’t agree that videos should replace other textual content rather it should complement it.

Certainly the video can be used to sell a service but it you can’t impart all the important information about a product or service through a 5 minute video – I believe it’s more of a glossy finish – the final hard sell.

A contact form for each company listing is provided which is good however I’d group contact us (address and telephone) and more information (the actual online contact form) under the same tab “Contact us” as really the form is another way of contacting the company. I was expecting a text description or FAQs under the “More information” tab. I’m not sure how the comments tab is going to work as currently there is no way of posting comments yourself – obviously a function to follow.

Video quality I’ve found to be very good (although this certainly isn’t my speciality) and I’ve had no problem with streaming issues etc. From a brochure perspective I believe they do their job.
Code quality on the MyBrumTV isn’t bad although there are still areas to tighten up with the site currently failing a XHTML validator.

My main issue with the website is the lack of content. I’m talking here about text content which is of the upmost importance to the visitor and essential for accessibility. I don’t think you can assume visitors are going to play every video for every company listing in a category. Therefore the copy should work alongside to give the visitor a taster and entice them to watch the video. As the website is a business directory and therefore going to rely heavily on the World’s most important blind user - Google - this really is a trick they are missing. To this end, in addition to accompanying text copy, I believe the alternative content for the video is essential – each movie has a script so why not provide this in the alternative description for the flash?

Search engine optimisation is virtually nonexistent on the website save some hidden keyword spamming at the bottom of the page – tut tut. I really think a review is needed here as this is only going to get you penalised by Google! The most important element on the page (the page title) is consistently “MyBrumTV” throughout the website not describing the page content at all. The lack of content on the site is going to cause the search engines to see virtually blank pages everywhere.

I understand completely that the work on this website is ongoing and it’s not the finished article. Jamie himself said the site is launching in phases with the main launch in September so please don’t take this as a hatchet job on the website just some suggestions how I feel it could improve.

I’d also like to just mention the launch of the site as I believe this can be vital to building an initial visitor base.

I certainly can’t comment with regard to offline promotion of the MyBrumTV website other than the free newspaper that dropped through my door that alerted me to its existence (I don’t read much traditional press at all). However as this is an online project I was surprised to find that there is virtually nothing happening online at all.

Perhaps this initial launch of MyBrumTV is a beta version to be tested and built on? In which case I could perhaps understand the muted buzz online. However it’s not promoted as such and in any case I really think even websites in beta should try to promote themselves in some way to attract visitors to beta test or start laying the groundwork.

A good example of this Odadeo which is currently in private beta (ask for an invitation) – an excellent idea of a social media site for Dads! Even though in private beta the wheels are already moving with regard to making people aware of the site.

The MyBrumTV website certainly has many sources open to promote itself and improve its offer. Being a local website means it can lean on local community to promote it – it’s the only reason I posted about it in the first place. Having this local community means it makes it easier to promote to this restricted location. Also it’s going to take time to get the site visible online in the meantime why not lean on existing applications available such as YouTube?

Directories are ten a penny online so they need to distinguish themselves online be it with functions not available elsewhere (not sure videos are enough alone) or by attracting a website community.

I’m sure there are other things in the pipeline – Jamie mentions social networking in a way that suggests the site will feature social features in some way. However if this is the case why launch with a site that doesn’t have any of the more flashy features? Web users are fickle so if they don’t find anything on a site that excites them getting them to come back is more difficult than getting them in the first place.

Maybe I’m wrong and the slow burn is the effect they are after but I would try to create as much of a bang for the launch for a site like this…it’s been more of a pop. It feels premature if I’m honest.

Don’t get me wrong I really think if done well a local community business directory could work well (I’m not aware of any that do this well) especially with Google’s move to more and more local results.

At the end of the day there has to be a big carrot to get people to navigate away from their Google homepage to an alternative way of searching for businesses.

Perhaps another sign of a disjointed online and offline approach here is that there is no mention of how to get a business into the directory on the website. Obviously all approaches to businesses has been offline so far.

It’s an online project so why not embrace the many varied online tools to make your life easier and you website more popular? In addition online promotion is so much cheaper than offline – it’s a no brainer really.

Well I’m fresh back from Jamaica (well actually not very fresh at all with the jet lag) which will explain the lack of blog posts for the last couple of weeks. My wife encouraged me to avoid the Internet like the plague while I was away which I thought was very unlikely but the £5 for 30 minutes charge at the hotel managed to dissuade me!

I spent the time relaxing, drinking and reading while I was there soaking up the Caribbean sunshine. One book I was lent by Digikev is Blog Schmog by Bly - a good read and although Bob Bly is by no means popular within the blogging community he speaks a lot of sense with regard to blogs and business. I find myself on a very similar wavelength to him however I do still feel evangelists do have their place in technology otherwise some applications would just never get off the ground (future post to follow).

Anyway I digress. The one main observation I made on holiday was the use of social networking by fellow holidayers (vacationers to our American cousins). I believe this is one area that social networking really has a very high penetration - everyone I met (and I mean everyone) had been on the Internet to research holiday locations and accommodation in particular trip adviser and holidays uncovered came up again and again.

We’re not just talking dipping a toe in the water here either, some have obviously spent a lot of time doing this and it’s amazing the type of information they brought with them from their online travels that really impressed me. For example we were recommended taxi drivers by name and telephone number, told which staff members provided the best service (and were most entertaining) and given insights into where to go to on the island; all originally were suggested by the online community. Every time spot on and really contributed to an excellent holiday by all accounts - Terrance the taxi driver certainly does know all the best jerk centres! Obviously a certain amount of this information is passed around when you talk to people on holiday anyway however coming away prepared means there are so many more heads available.

The thing I found really interesting here was that there seems to be a really small but incredibly popular niche for social networking for holiday research. A great number of the people I talked to did not know what social networking was and didn’t seem to be involved with it in anyway apart from the holiday review and forum websites that kept coming up time and time again.

Thinking about it’s obvious why this is: people spend a few weeks a year and proportionately a large amount of money on their holidaying. Therefore people are bound to spend a large amount of time researching the subject - time that they wouldn’t necessarily reserve for other subjects.

Also having a good holiday is so important to people that having a great or bad holiday will invoke an emotional response. This means they are also more likely to post about it when they get back also.

Both these factors makes social networking boom for travel information even if the activity by users is sporadic.

I do feel perhaps there is a gap here however, these sites are generally review sites in nature but I really think there is a niche here for a specific Facebook style holiday friends/reviews type site. I’ve not got the time myself to take the plunge but if anyone has give me a shout and I’ll pass on my ideas!

So it’s a month since I wrote my first blog post and I’ve got to say I’m surprised at several things I’ve encountered.

Firstly shock of shocks is that I’ve managed to post a decent amount of entries. 34 actually which is quite a few more than I actually thought would be possible. The only way I can really describe how I’m doing this is simple posting whatever is on my mind at any point in a day. The informality of it certainly helps.

It’s also made me much more aware of other blogs (particularly in the Birmingham area) and the different writing styles and subjects - which reminds me I must update my Blogroll accordingly to give credit where it is due.

But the thing that has really amazed me is how quickly a brand new blog on a brand new domain has actually been found by people so quickly. I was ready to be posting for several months before getting any traffic at all. But I’ve had a regular readership it seems which has only encouraged me to spout forth even more! Blog on…

I love Google Analytics and can always be found looking through all the pretty reports it generates for various websites I am involved with. I never cease to be amazed at the various routes people find a website.

One major downside of Google Analytics however is its reliance on JavaScript which makes some things on a website difficult to track. One example of a figure I would love to know is the true number of subscriptions to an RSS feed.

I’ve found a half way house solution to this posted by Hamlet Batista which tracks people clicking on RSS links on a website using the same code I use to track conversions on dynamic pages. For your reference this is:

<a href=http://www.digital-rant.co.uk/feed/ title=”Subscribe to my feed” rel=”alternate” onclick=”javascript:urchinTracker(’/tracking/feed’);”>

Or if you are using the latest Google Analytics code:

<a href=http://www.digital-rant.co.uk/feed/ title=”Subscribe to my feed” rel=”alternate” onclick=”javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview(‘/tracking/feed’);”>

Where “/tracking/feed” is your goal URL setup in Google Analytics.

 However this code makes the following assumptions:

1. Everyone subscribes using the RSS links within the page and not the RSS details in the page header (picked up by various browsers).
2. Everyone that follows an RSS link actually subscribes to the feed.

If anyone has any other suggestions to overcome these problems give me a shout - I’d love to know! In the meantime I’ll have to survive on these approximate figures.

Of course if I had the cash I’d upgrade to Google Analytics’ big brother Urchin 6 which recently came out of beta which sorts these issues but as I don’t have $2995 I’ll have to carry on as I am.