I need a serious review for our project-in-development.Gambling/betting related

[petrosc]

Together with another 4 associates, we have hired a small team of professional coders and graphic designers to develop one of our projects.

This specific project, is a Football(soccer) Betting/Gambling portal, which is supposed to make a revenue from affiliating with casinos, poker rooms and sports bookmakers.
I will try to provide some basic info on this website(to get you in our spirit) and at the end I will explain what kind of advice I need from more experiensed developers in the forum.

For the content side, we will be providing the following FREE services:
1. Expert betting strategies, match previews and betting tips for the weekly football matches of the major leagues.
2. Reviews of the 15 Best Bookmakers online along with links to their free bets offers.
3. Expert gambling advice for BlackJack, Roulette, Craps and Slots, mainly focusing on BlackJack and Roulette strategies. We are writing our own series of publications in the form of ebooks about various gambling strategies. We have the BlackJack ebook ready, we are working on the roulette eBook now.
4. Reviews of the best 14 online casinos, along with links to free cash offers.
5. With time, we will add a poker tutorial but for now we will only provide poker articles along with a basic "How to play" guide.
6. Reviews of the 15 best Poker Rooms online, with the free cash offers.
7. Monthly newsletters with new free bets/cash offers from our affiliate companies.
8. Other related info.

About the designing side:
There was a long discussion with my assiciates about what kinf of theme we would give to our site, at the end we decided to give our website a touch of humor and named it BetLoonies.com. We hired a professional cartoonist to create a mascot for our site, which would be also used for the logo and I must say that he did a very good job. Through this design, we tried to give the impression to the visitor that we are "crazy about betting".

Although this website is not online yet, I have two layouts as a draft example of what it should look like.

Layout 1:
This is the main page

Layout 2:
This is how the reviews page will look like. At the left hand side next to the reviews, there will be a list with the casinos/bookmakers reviewed, where the visitor can click for fast navigation. On the right hand site, next to the reviews, there will be a banner(replacing the current ones) next to each casino reviewed.

What I need from fellow members, is a review and general advice. For example, advice and opinion on the content, what can be changed, added, or removed. Or about the design, how does it look like? Can you provide me with some advice how to imrove the looks and feel of the site?

I will appreciate your honest opinion, thank you
Petros

p.s. Very sorry for the long thread, but it was necessary to give you a good idea of what this site is about

 

[petrosc]

nobody?

 

[petrosc]

bump

 

[LeetPCUser]

Although the graphic at the top is good and all I don't feel it matches your site quite right. You are gambling and associating with soccer. I just look at that and think of some drunk soccer hooligan. Also, the main page has way too much text. I would revise the banner and add some pictures to the overall content.

Hope This Helps,

 

[petrosc]

Although the graphic at the top is good and all I don't feel it matches your site quite right. You are gambling and associating with soccer. I just look at that and think of some drunk soccer hooligan. Also, the main page has way too much text. I would revise the banner and add some pictures to the overall content.

Hope This Helps,

Thank you for the remarks. There has been a long discussion between me and my associates about the theme of the website. At the start, we were going to create a very serious look with a way more serious domain name. At the end, we thought that using some humor(without this affecting our professional service) could result in a better looking and more memorable website. We also wanted to create a more pleasant enviroment for the visitors by adding a touch of humor. I believe, that a visitor will remember our mascot and website better that way, than a site with the standard serious theme. It just wouldn't be unique otherwise. Our slogan is "We're crazy about betting" and that's what the crazy banner is all about. I must agree with you though, that the banner does not have much to do with gambling, but our main concentration is football betting in the first place, and then casino and poker. I will talk with my team and try to do something about the banner, in order to give the feeling that we have something to do with the casino too.

About the excess text, I will try to reduce it to the minimum and add more pictures and banners to the site.

Thank you very much for your remarks, I hope more people will express their opinion in the next days

 

[petrosc]

anyone else?

 

[LeetPCUser]

The new look is very good except you can't really read the text in the goal. I like how you tied in the cards and cash, but the text in the banner is impossible to read.

btw new name.

 

[petrosc]

About the banner, I know, but unfortunately I can't do anything about it now, I cannot afford to have the cartoonist re-design it. Maybe it doesn't really matter i though, since the name will be written under the logo(see layout 2).

Thank you for your remarks, I will let you all know as soon as the site is up and running...

anyone else who would like to share his opinion with us?

 

[LeetPCUser]

Just have him take out the name from that image. If he does any good work it should be on one layer...that should be easy enough. Then have both copies and post a pic of each. It will probably look great without any text in it.

 

[petrosc]

thanks for the advice, I will try it and see how it looks. In the mean time, have a look at the final look of the main page.
Of course the banners will be replaced by real ads and the ones that are not ads will be replaced with better graphics. But in general, this is how the page will look like. What do you think? Isn't it better now?

http://www.betloonies.com/home.jpg

p.s don't mind the spelling errors they will not be there when the site will be launched