[Simon]

I ahve been undertaking some analysis of the groups listed here on Amdram.net | Amateur Theatre Community and it struck me as a little concerning that 167 of them currently don't have forthcoming productions listed.

I'm keen to get these groups on board such that we can help them promote their productions.. any ideas?

[gabbs]

Simon, on 03 August 2009 - 10:41 PM, said:

I ahve been undertaking some analysis of the groups listed here on Amdram.net | Amateur Theatre Community and it struck me as a little concerning that 167 of them currently don't have forthcoming productions listed.

I'm keen to get these groups on board such that we can help them promote their productions.. any ideas?

Show them how to prove that promoting their event on the site will work by generating more traffic to their site. Also it seems to be a little overly complicated to add a production and I can't seem to edit a production after its been added?

Also you could try optimising the site a bit to be a bit more search engine friendly. For example:

http://www.amdram.ne...s/595/view.aspx

The URL isn't very "search engine friendly" something like the following would be better:

http://www.amdram.ne...ream-Lancashire

The title of the page is:

Amdram.net | Amateur Theatre Community | Events | Productions | A Midsummer Night s Dream by William Shakespeare

Google will only pick the first couple of keywords. I'm never going to search for amdram.net amateur theatre community in google maybe better as a title:

A Midsummer Night s Dream by William Shakespeare - Lancashire Production | Amdram.net Amateur Theatre Community

Now if I search "shakespeare lancashire" its more chance of coming to this site and in turn funnelling traffic to that theatres website.

Do a training post on how people can see how many referrers they get through from the site to theirs so they can see the benefit of adding information to this site? I'm only going to add events/productions regularly to the sites I know I'm getting regular referrers from, if I don't I'm not going to bother doing it.

[Simon]

Gabbs, Thank you for taking the time to provide feedback.

"I can't seem to edit a production after its been added?"
If you "View Details" on the production then there is an option to "Edit Production" at the bottom of the screen

"http://www.amdram.net/events/productions/595/view.aspx"
I have been looking at ways to improve search engine friendliness and I have already completed most of the work to change the page titles to be constructed as follows: PRODUCTION NAME | EVENTS | Amdram.net | Amateur Theatre Community

"Do a training post on how people can see how many referrers they get through from the site to theirs so they can see the benefit of adding information to this site?"
I am looking at the possibility of creating instructional videos but I am in the process of making a large number of changes to the site therefore want to get those tested and implemented first.

"I'm only going to add events/productions regularly to the sites I know I'm getting regular referrers from, if I don't I'm not going to bother doing it."
I can't argue with your comment, I'll do my best to increase the number of hits you get.

I appreciate your comments around driving traffic to groups website and this is something I actively try to do but I do hope that I can do other things for groups such as provide free online booking facilities.

One of the other things I am keen to maintain at Amdram.net | Amateur Theatre Community is the ability to link Groups with Productions and Productions with Auditions so I can really maintain a community feel.

Amdram.net is my hobby and I'll continue to invest as much time as I can in improving it.

Future work I can consider:
I can have a look at whether or not there is a better way to construct the urls, we need to keep them unique but I appreciate
that search engine friendliness is important.

I appreciate there is a whole piece to do around user friendliness and member journey, I've been investigating improvements to
the menu but there is quite a lot of work involved in this and it will take some time to develop... watch this space!

[Simon]

I am progressing work on reworking the URLs.... This should shortly be in test! Just productions at the moment but if that proves a success then we'll roll out across the site!

[wesleyplayers]

Simon, on 03 August 2009 - 10:41 PM, said:

I ahve been undertaking some analysis of the groups listed here on Amdram.net | Amateur Theatre Community and it struck me as a little concerning that 167 of them currently don't have forthcoming productions listed.

I'm keen to get these groups on board such that we can help them promote their productions.. any ideas?

Hi Simon,
another small thought is that you can't load an audition without first loading the production. Our group does a number of activities for fund raisers in the area so the actual production is not under ourt control but we still need to put up auditions. Also we like to give plenty of notice for our regular auditions at which point we may not even know what we are going to perform! I can see that it would be a good idea to use the Audition part of the forum as weel but thought I would point out the issue with the main site as well.

[Simon]

wesleyplayers, on 21 September 2009 - 10:55 AM, said:

Hi Simon,
another small thought is that you can't load an audition without first loading the production. Our group does a number of activities for fund raisers in the area so the actual production is not under ourt control but we still need to put up auditions. Also we like to give plenty of notice for our regular auditions at which point we may not even know what we are going to perform! I can see that it would be a good idea to use the Audition part of the forum as weel but thought I would point out the issue with the main site as well.

I'll have a look at how easy I could change the functionality, the idea of linking them together is so that potential new members get a complete view of a group but I am sure I can think of a way round this.

We have been planning th extend the linking functionality from productions to auditions but were first trialling it with auditions.

Many thanks for taking the time to provide feedback

[Simon]

Gabbi,

Just to confirm I have addressed many of the feedback items you provided with the latest release of the site

"Also it seems to be a little overly complicated to add a production and I can't seem to edit a production after its been added?"
There are new links both on the Home Page and on the Production Page which should make this a lot easier.

"Also you could try optimising the site a bit to be a bit more search engine friendly. For example:
http://www.amdram.ne...s/595/view.aspx"

The URL isn't very "search engine friendly" something like the following would be better:
http://www.amdram.ne...ream-Lancashire
There is a limit to the improvements we can make in this area, it's debatable what is "search engine friendly" and what isn't but we think its a good idea to make our URLs more friendly so we're trialling this with productions currently.

The title of the page is:
Amdram.net | Amateur Theatre Community | Events | Productions | A Midsummer Night s Dream by William Shakespeare

Google will only pick the first couple of keywords. I'm never going to search for amdram.net amateur theatre community in google maybe better as a title:

A Midsummer Night s Dream by William Shakespeare - Lancashire Production | Amdram.net Amateur Theatre Community
We already had plans to make this amendment and this is included in the new release.

Now if I search "shakespeare lancashire" its more chance of coming to this site and in turn funnelling traffic to that theatres website
Interestingly... Google doesn't quite agree... Whilst "shakespeare lancashire" doesn't quite get you here "shakespeare lancashire amdram" does That's before the new URLs and Page Titles too!