review of lyricallysquared.com

**eMEraLdwPn** · 01-18-2004, 12:43 AM

i've already gotten a lot of help from this site, but i'm still not getting too much traffic... i've redesigned the layout and a few more small things here and there to try to optimize my pages. i think one problem is i still haven't been deep crawled by google, but there's nothing i can do about that i guess.

anyone who has any advice of anything else i could do to improve traffic or anything you notice that's wrong, it would be greatly appreciated...

http://www.lyricallysquared.com/

**lo0ol** · 01-18-2004, 01:07 AM

I'll just speak out of impulse, as that makes the best reviews:

I'm not sure about that weird footer of each section- the scribbley sort of thing. It gives it a somewhat dirty look. It also makes the text on top of it somewhat hard to read. It's not a bad idea, but I think the thing that makes it odd to look at is that it's next to the other gradient headers. I would say either stick with one or the other.

I assume the list of letters in the page header is links to lyrics- you might want to make sure that's known by adding a "Find your lyrics" or such to it. Actually, are those letters for a song or artist? I see that they're for artists, but it isn't clear to the initial user.

I like your Amazon tie-ins at the bottom of the page. You might want to make those more noticeable too; perhaps you might want to add an image. I'm not sure how well you are at coding, but it would really be cool if you could display a link to the CD of the lyrics that the user is browsing. You'll probably see some good results.

**MarkB** · 01-18-2004, 03:01 AM

My thoughts:

Next to the A-Z index, have the words "Quick Browse" or just "Browse Lyrics".

Have a top-ten list of bands that people have searched for (if you can). You could bring it in from the 'fave artists' page, I'm sure. If it's a popular band, then people will be able to find it more easily by clicking that list

Boom - instant gratification!

I like the 'Song Of The Day' bit!

Design-wise I think it needs a little snazzying up... it just seems very flat IMO. And like loOol, I don't really like the 'scribbled' bar/seperator...

**chromate** · 01-18-2004, 04:27 AM

I actually don't mind the scribble bar thing. I think it needs fading a bit into the background color though, so the text on top will stand out a bit more. Generally, I think the whole design needs to be lighter. I find it all extremely dark at the moment. Not enough white

**incka** · 01-18-2004, 04:40 AM

Personally I always prefer lyrics sites with white backgrounds. My all-time favourite is www.lyricstime.com

Also add pictures of the albums in the artist page, and for album which sold 12 million in the US alone (Out Of Time, etc) you should have more than 2 of the 11 tracks, especially as the two you have got are not of the singles from the album...

Edit: Your lyrics are often very inacurrate. I found songs with lyrics for other songs, and songs which just said 'Lyrics' as their lyrics...

**eMEraLdwPn** · 01-18-2004, 01:49 PM

i added "browse by artist" at the top, and used the same script i used on the songs to keep track of the most highly viewed artists... i'll try to come up with something aside from the scribbly image, but i'm extremely, extremely bad at image design (which is why there are virtually no images on the site ;-))

i don't really like sites with white backgrounds, i like darker sites really... just personal preference i guess...

and incka, i believe i'll make something later that allows users to report screwed up lyrics

anything else?

**MarkB** · 01-18-2004, 02:10 PM

Instead of the scribbly image, just use a plain table background (dark grey would be nice).

It's looking good! Although I don't like the bevelled domain much (sorry - being picky again!).

You should hook up with a TABs site and exchange artist-level links!