Re-Designed “Mini Site”

This morning I mentioned that I was re-designing a mini-site, and I wanted some feedback. I am still working out some errors that I couldn’t see before the site went live, but I would love to hear your thoughts on the new look of UniqueInk.com, a tattoo website.

I am a bit concerned about click throughs because of the layout, but I am more interested in growing the site’s traffic before worrying about making money from Adsense.

If anyone wants to post their tattoos or has any suggestions/ideas for the site, please let me know.   I used Mike’s design for this site with a bunch of customizations that I made.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

24 COMMENTS

  1. Looks great.

    Crisp, clear pics. Where did you get the pics?

    You might already be aware of:

    – 404 error on ‘find a tattoo artist’ from the gallery page

    – on the ‘privacy policy’ and ‘contact us’, the link is only live on the first words

    – when I go to the ‘blog’ page, G provides ink toner ads…..not sure if you can tweak the text to make more relevant ads…..or maybe it’s just a matter of time until G updates their data on this page. Relevant ads showed up for me elsewhere.

  2. Looks nice Elliot. The one thing I think most people online look for when it comes to Tattoo’s is Idea’s.. aka Pictures / Designs.

    Maybe a TattooJohnny.com affiliate will help and place a Designs tab for them? Store tab for shirts and that kind of stuff again affiliate based maybe with Amazon, buy.com, shop.com etc?

  3. Elliot, Great pics. Those girls are smokin’ And oh yea the site looks good. A few more girls on the home page and you’d have a negative bounce rate.

  4. This is an eye catching site, attractive. Really like the slide show at top. I think you have done a very good job of creating different areas with pics/visual appeal, history, the blog. Also, as far as a catchy domain name, UniqueInk.com is quite memorable.

    I think you’ve created something, domain + site, that has instant appeal to a large number of tattoo industry buyers. Good luck Elliot.

  5. Elliot,

    A very nice looking site.

    I think the name is good to build a brand, and it could be sold to a tattoo artist once it has traffic.

    However, I think that getting traffic to a mini-site without the exact match keyword in the domain will be a real challenge. Based on what I have read it seems that the extra work in building a site around a brand name rather than a keyword is only justified if you are building a larger authority site rather than a niche site.

    I see that your title metatag is: “Unique Tattoo Design & Art | UniqueInk.com” and that a “site:uniqueink.com” search shows up as “Airbrush Art Tattoo Kits” being the title – I guess the difference is because Google hasn’t picked up yet that you updated the title to that in the metatag?

    If you are going for Tattoo Design as the keyword to rank for it will be a lot of work.

  6. I like what you are doing this time with a nice design along with a good “end user domain name” You are causing targeted traffic to arrive to this site. So all the new owner has to do, is open a phone line and start pumping ink.

    I sold my first domain name today !!!! on this basis as well.
    Had a one page uploaded but the domain was keyword rich which the end users wanted.
    Sold it for 38 times more than what I had brought it for 2 months ago, think I am going to drop the day job soon. 🙂
    Beers are on me,
    All the best for Amsterdam, the place is crazzzzy Elliot.
    Ross

  7. I think that the template is great, the images are good and the editorial content is quality although limited.

    I only question the point of 3 ad units and 3 link units on pages that are barely two screens long. To me, that kind of saturation encourages ad blindness.

    @Jamie – nice catch on the affiliate, there really is one for every market isn’t there?

    • @Kevin

      I will be testing to see how the site performs and may make some changes depending on traffic and revenues. I need to see how things shake out first.

  8. Hi Elliot,

    The site is quite good (aesthetically & functionally)….one question though. I find that mini-sites can sometimes get expensive if you have to buy the rights to good photos….are these photos “rights free”? Just curious.

    • @Harris

      I got them from iStockphoto.com.

      This is the standard rights for web use:

      “Online or electronic publications or uses, including web pages to a maximum image size of 800 x 600 pixels; video image size limitation is 640 x 480. Any size reproduction is acceptable with substantial changes to the content”

  9. Hi Elliot,

    I really liked the site and it seemed very much advanced and with a lot of content. I enjoyed its depth, and felt that there were a lot of compelling links to keep me page turning, as it were. It’s style seem to have a lot of let’s say velocity. It had an energy of the age bracket it will appear to, youth. Also like the use of primary colors on the home page. My only advice, which you may already be considering, is add more photos to the slide show on the banner of the home page, as I wanted to see more examples of tattoos (and the babes that sport them) and eliminate the number guides below them, particularly as it’s a slide show. But then, if there were more, would the viewer spend more time on these and not traveling the site and making purchases? I’m very new to website development, so take these comments in this light. But again, I really liked it and think it will be far bigger than your modest expectations.

    Bob

  10. Under the third feature, Tattoo Removal, it starts off “attoos are desirable” – missing a T, I think.

    If you end up soliciting photos, be sure to specify that you don’t want *brand new* tattoos. I did a website once for some friends with a tattoo parlor, and they sent me pictures for the site, and they were all of brand new tattoos where the flesh was still all swollen and red and frankly, it looked pretty scary.

  11. Putting up adsense on brand new sites is pointless and is counter productive. It is really working backwards.

    You first want to establish yourself. With the search engines and everybody else. Having ads plastered all over a newly launched site = sends all the wrong signals, not to mention cheapens the site x10.

    Nobody will link up to this types of thin sites that has a little bit of content but a lot of ads.

    Under monetize in the beginning… It is worth those few links you will get from others in your niche as well as the SEO boost.

    Monetization really comes a few month’s down the road once you have some decent activity throughout the site… It is the easy part of the entire operation, since it only takes 2 minutes to setup.

    No eyeballs = nobody to serve ads to. I always avoid ads on new sites and so do most of the successful website publishers. It’s really website-duh-101 but many get this wrong unfortunately 🙁

    Live and learn.

    Cheers!

    Mike

  12. Mike – The site was up for several years. I used the same content (and Adsense as before) – in a different site design.

  13. Ahh, ok.

    Well, my original advice = applies to newly launched sites 🙂

    It’s still a bit overkill to use 5 – 6 AdSense units per page, even if there is tons of traffic.

    Nobody really will link up to this types of sites and in general people get a “weird” vibe from seeing this made for adsense types of pages.

    I like aggressive monetization, sure, but as far as the user experience goes… It isn’t the best if you know what I mean.

    Yes, it used to convert really well when you could blend all the ads into the content and gets lots of clicks a few years ago, but nowadays… Things are way different. Users spot it right away and click off.

    You have to be smart… The key is to keep optimizing and experimenting with various monetization strategies. Find the “hot spots” and work with those. One or two 🙂

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