How often do you try to improve your sites?
 

We have weekly meetings for all our major sites. A few weeks ago we noticed that some of our sites had not changed in a while and were stuck waiting on bigger changes that were often delayed and taking forever. As a result we are trying something new with our team. Every week they have to do at least one thing to improve the site from the surfer/members perspective. We are implementing this on both our Free sites and pay sites.

I'm curious how often do you try to improve your sites? Do you set it and forget it? Or are you continually trying to improve?

Every single day, multiple times. Usually for testing or more/better statistics gathering. The only problem is making the change across all my sites, some have the latest code in place while others get neglected a bit and aren't as up to date.

If you keep tweaking a site enough you will triple your join rate with the same amount of traffic. Monetization for the win.

My project, while it's still an alpha and far from first round feature complete, is updated almost daily...

I never consider any site/group of sites/application to be "complete". To me, that would be akin to saying you've reached perfection... and if you actually believe you've reached perfection, well... that's just ridiculous and there's probably no help for you, hahaha.

In all seriousness though, your website should be continually evolving and adapting to market changes; consumer spending habits, competitor offerings, trends, etc...

Do you tweak/change it to convert and make more money? or for the end user as well? Lately I've been pushing my team to make sure we are continually improving for the surfer. I may add in 1 monetizing and 1 surfer improvement per week.

I agree but so few do it (myself included).

So few... in adult, hahaha.

I have never worked for or with a company in mainstream that didn't continually update its website. I'm not saying they don't exist but look at the rate of change in the most popular sites on the web; they are always evolving.

The adage "stand still and die" has proven true on too many counts not to be mentioned here again. The vast majority of pay sites are still nothing more than galleries. :(

everytime I shoot, I try and shoot better than the last shoot

It's terrible. It really is. I think one of the main reasons for that is the size of the average operation. Let's say you have a one or two man operation running a paysite. Updating, promoting, processing content, shooting/receiving content takes up most of your time. If something is working it's tough to justify spending time on it when there are so many other things to worry about.

I do something everyday to improve our site or our sites visibility. There are 365 days in a year and so if over 300 times you do something to improve things each year you eventually gain market share. OK so there are 1440 minutes in a day, spend 5 minutes today and see how it helps. :)

Susan

We did our redesign over the past year, wondering if we went the wrong way considering all the new big sites including Twistys have the large flash pic at the top & then the site very basic with whites & light colours. I wanted to have something original, nothing wrong with this, but obviously then you stand out, which can be taken negative rather than being different :(

I have recently had a new page designed, its similar to the twistys promotion, not exactly a copy, but similar direction. I havent used it yet (not wanting to copy). Its a page for affiliates to use that links to a cheaper entrance fee....
While were chatting about this sort of stuff, would you guys mind if we use it, hit me up anytime so I can give you the url, or I can place it on here :2 cents:

I get bored if I don't constantly update shit.

Shooters may be the one area of the biz where the majority of them try to improve constantly.

For now every 3 to 4 weeks sees new changes. some times it takes longer to gather enough data to make that change. As you Shap have stated many times the Members thoughts need to be considered as an extremely important part of those changes. Some things we have ended up doing were Not what we wanted but what the members wanted.

I think this could be heavily attributed to the lack of VC and Angel funding in the adult space. It's actually something that makes it easier for anyone to be competitive in the adult space, ironically.

In mainstream, there is a wide array of funding available to you and if you have good rapport within your industry you can easily dig up some serious funding to make a large entry into your target market. This, for the most part, doesn't exist in the adult space and so it fosters a system where there are lots of small startups with little to no capital / funding.

For the large companies that are already on top... they don't see the need to push hard into the unexplored functionality territory I mean... who's going to surpass them with better offerings? Most people will tell you the adult space is highly competitive but it's really only competitive in certain areas. As far as tech, website offerings, A/B testing, and about a dozen other things... the adult industry has fallen behind.

Shap, we should talk shop sometime I have some great ideas for Twistys ;)

For all of you saying you try to update daily and multiple times a day how do you track if you made a positive or negative change with so many changes? We limit our changes so we can isolate the positive, neutral and negative changes we make.

email me at mrshap at twistys :winkwink:

Still developing so everyday ;)

AB AB AB AB AB AB, hahahaha.

My preferred method:

Git repository control... if you don't have some sort of source control going on, you're doing it wrong. These next few paragraphs will show some of the advantages of git over svn...

New Features are developed independently / jointly by developers and each new feature is developed in its own git branch. I use Redmine quite a bit for issue tracking so each branch then becomes named using its redmine ticket id and a brief description: 3215-AB-New-Join-Page.

When a commit is made developers can use keywords in the commit message like: resolves #3215 which automatically pushes the Redmine ticket status to Resolved. From there it is deployed to the staging environment and QA can change the ticket from Resolved to Confirmed; meaning it's production ready.

For a site rollout, all branches marked confirmed are combined into a single revision and get tagged... production-20101025-1 That tag is then used to deploy the code base across all production nodes.

A/B results are monitored and then if something needs to be removed, or the A/B test has been decided you can rebase your code by simply removing the commits that were done in a given branch (keeping with our example, 3215-AB-New-Join-Page).

It's a pretty nice workflow and allows you to roll any piece of functionality in and out of deployment very easily. Of course, you need to have a well designed A/B Engine that keeps in mind your development pattern as well as reporting requirements so you can make educated decisions based on accurate results.

My sites are improved constantly.

We have daily meetings to improve our stuff, somewhere next month we will launch a paysite generator so we will offer exclusive webcam performers their own paysite fully integrated with chat features FB and Twitter.

Currently busy with blueprinting an html5 chat platform

We have a constant mission of revisement and upgrade. We involve the membership as well so they feel that they are part of the process. When we do major changes we set up a beta so that members can test, comment, report, etc.

That way we avoid the "wtf" backlash that folks tend to react with when anything changes, and make the members feel that they are contributing to the quality of the experience.

bump for a good business thread :)

A big part of the problem is that adult webmasters tend to buy domain after domain, opening as many mediocre sites as possible, instead of focusing on one property and making it worthwhile.

I remember Ron C. saying in Phoenix years ago, "Think of every domain name as a unique company. How many companies can you successfully run?"

Uber-excellence focused with razor sharpness -- or the widest net you can cast?

You can't have both :2 cents:

Constantly. I have a thing about loading speeds currently, trying to make sure pages come up as fast as I can make them.

I'm always tweaking. It may be small, it may be big, but something is changing.

As for operation size...

Just a few years ago a lot of program owners were investing as little into their business as possible in order to support their huge personal lifestyles (cars, houses, travel, big money at shows, other waste).

What they should have been doing was growing their team so that they could better compete in todays market.

You got it right Shap when so many others got it wrong.

we are always striving to improve our streaming.
clear large videos streaming without buffer time...mobile etc
now ajax tube style is something we are working on.

its a constant process for sure, not to mention configuration of servers, we do our own content distribution...never ending

Continually trying to improve. I have a suggestions link in my member's area. We have had some good feedback. :thumbsup
Piper

we are trying to improve FUBAR on an ongoing basis, but having to depend on others to do work for you, is a nightmare sometimes :2 cents:

Just drink cheap beer......Problem solved.


OH wait!

Wrong thread. Sorry.

You have email.. Great avatar BTW :2 cents:

God Damn possibly the best quote I've ever read on gfy. Thanks for posting it.

No one cares, no one will ever see it, you make 4 sales a month you admited)

It will be shit like everything you have ever done and like everything you will ever do.

You are shit and everything you do is shit

Kill yourself retard :thumbsup

Trollin Sheps thread :Oh crap

Post proof for your sig or remove it. You should be banned. All my models get paid through ccbill payouts.

Do not lie about our sales! Without proof it is also a worthy ban.

Demoralizing slur about retarded people. You really are an idiot :2 cents:

Was nice chatting with you on ICQ and always good to meet people with tech skills! Let me know when you will launch.

you are so very very stupid, seriously, do you have no shame that every post you make proves time and time again how stupid you are?

you are actually more retarded than lawrence conner. You are without doubt the most stupid fucktard ever to have posted on GFY and that is took some doing.

This is a lie. I would like proof which is impossible! I would never admit to something so ridiculous as this is not true. You should be banned.


Stop this trolling now!

Can you guys stop derailing a very decent thread with your pointless bickering at each other? No one cares and you only make yourselves look stupid.

Back on topic, you have a good point Shap about updating so much you can't decipher if they are good or bad changes. Usually each change will turn out for the better or is an obvious improvement but when there is a chance it could go either way I will make sure to do a before/after comparison down the line after things have settled. Sometimes a change will be horribly bad and I'll get mixed up on what I did that was wrong so I'll have to just out everything bad to how it was a few weeks before lol, but I guess that's just the price of moving so fast, the goods far outweigh the bads at least.

On the affiliate side what has worked for me is to just get the surfer to their target sponsor tour as fast and in as few clicks as possible.

great quote, thanks :thumbsup

This has been my approach, but I could never have put it so perfectly :thumbsup

I think I tried just about everything the past 14 years and nothing every helped. now with all the free porn its even tougher.

For my surfer sites once it's online I don't touch it. I move onto the next surfer site.

For webmaster sites they are updated daily and I continue to add features.

I'm amaze with sites you have you haven't done much testing. You'll be amaze as to how much more money you could make if you got it right. Have you ever heard of A/B Testing? This is something you should consider given the fact you own some big pay and free sites.

Did you know big mainstream site like Amazon are constantly doing a/b testing? There was a book I read about it a while back, it something people often overlooked.

I wouldn't tweak my sites daily if you asked me, with a/b testing you would need to give it some time before you know if your changes really works.

If you aren't familiar with a/b testing, I suggest you google it. You'll be surprise as how much more profitable your site can be.

Being just a small website, we upgrade as often as possible, but seriously it's a constant process that I can only imagine gets intense once your a bigger business.

I've been thinking about this quote all day. Do you agree with it?
 

We definitely do a/b testing. just not enough of it

I liked your old avatar Shap. :) lol
Piper