Your feedback would be greatfully appreciated

DanJacobs

Member
Hello Everyone,

I'm hoping to get some feedback as to 'what you would change' in order to make my website more useable?

The lessons are only £1 each and it took hundreds of hours and thousands of pounds worth of equipment to record/edit etc but only a few are purchased.

If i give them all away for free lots of people said they would definately use the site more often but then i'd be out of pocket due to hosting/promotion etc

If you were running www.dansdrumlessons.com "what would you do to make it more of a success?"

Many Thanks in advance
Dan
 
I think I'm getting it right away. I visited your site with the eyes of a guy who's hungry for info, & I tried to think from a younger guys perspective too. There's no examples of the lessons or any video clips to offer an idea of quality. The home page is your shop window, & it's about as stimulating as an evening with the mother in law. You need an exciting video stream to auto start as soon as the page opens. Then, you need say 3 or 4 clip choices that give a sneek preview of each catagory of lesson. e.g. split into beginner, ontermediate, advanced & maybe a few different genre clips. I know you have free example lessons to download, but with the huge choice available out there, visitors just don't have the desire to go through a shopping process to get a flavour of the goods on offer. I don't think price is an issue.

Other things that cheapen the deal;

A generous commission payment offer to those who resell your lessons. Now that smacks of money grabbing sales guy pushy crap that most drummers could do without, & it gives the impression it's more of a sales sight than something with real credibility. If you want to encourage trade interest, have a specific trade link. That's enough.

Gear links to Ebay. That's just padding, & it shows.

Sorry I'm harsh here, but I'm playing devil's advocate to help you out. If I'm saying it, you can bet others are thinking it.

I wish you luck, especially as you've clearly put in a lot of work & money.
 
I think that what you've missed is that you're not really selling drum lessons, you're selling yourself. Why should I want what Dan Jacobs is selling? Who is he? Can he play? Why would I want a drum lesson from him? You have to get that message across to sell the lessons. The first thing visible on your splash page is a bunch of products, not a person, brand or something your user/consumer can relate to. Some free material/info (a blog with an exercise or two, a sample lesson video) that was immediately accessible would go a long way to drawing people in. Some kind of content other than stuff you want me to pay for. People need to see you in action; playing, teaching or both so they can say, "yeah, I want some of what that guy has!"

Being the UK, I'm sure you're aware of Colin Woolway and Drumsense: http://www.drumsense.com/

This isn't even the best website, but it does well at drawing the user in. As soon as you connect to his site, you see a video of him playing. Right away you can validate his claims by seeing him in action. Sure, being able to play doesn't make one a great teacher, but in the end, it goes a long way to building up a sense of trust and quality in your brand.
 
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There's no examples of the lessons or any video clips to offer an idea of quality.


Some kind of content other than stuff you want me to pay for. People need to see you in action; playing, teaching or both so they can say, "yeah, I want some of what that guy has!"

If you listen to nothing else, then listen to that mate.

I don't need a full half hour lesson, but I do need to see you can actually deliver what you say you can. I'm not buying drum lessons sight unseen.........if you want my money, you've gotta convince me it's worth the cash.
 
Thanks All,

I will have a think about even more changes, the things is, i didn't used to have any ebay links or book/dvds etc and didn't very much at all even though the lessons are all great.

We do have a biog of each teacher and a free video on the homepage, although this is just below the fold.

Our youtube channel has all 180 odd video samples as well as quite a few whole lessons for free which should be enough to give potential customers an idea of what the site offers.

We made the changes a couple of months ago to add-in the ebay affiliate section and also the drum directory etc as they are other 'possible' sales streams, i was advised by a web optimisation professional to do this.

So you think i should get rid of the ebay section, affiliate offering 50% section?

A video that instantly starts when the website opens will definately put people off who are using multi browsers - i've asked a few people this already.

The drum sites i have looked at, well most of them, offer radiculous claims i.e. 'use our system and you only need to practice for 2 mins a day' - we all know practicing the right things is the key and it takes a hell of a lot of effort - playing on your xbox all day won't get you playing like Buddy Rich or Dave Weckl.

I'll copy this thread to my web developer in Malta, hes also a drummer so has good understanding of what a tuition website should look like.

Thanks for your observations
Dan
 
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one thing i noticed right away is the drum lessons are just one of the many things accessible through the home page. that's ok, but if you want it to be mostly a drum lesson site, then i think the drum lesson part of it needs more screen real estate than everything else. right now it looks like a whole grocery store full of drumming related stuff, of which lessons are one small thing.
 
I am going to give it a chance and buy the intermediate or advanced package.... is it a download or whats the deal since I live in the USA?
 
Didnt really do anything but scan it and check out the you-tube clip and I dont know how good you are but that Josh guy is frickin awesome!!! maybe promote yourself a little more....again this was just a glance..
 
I am going to give it a chance and buy the intermediate or advanced package.... is it a download or whats the deal since I live in the USA?

Hi, It's either really as you can download the intermediate package of 42 lessons and each lesson with have the PDF to open OR you can order the DVD in either PAL or NTSC with free delivery worldwide. I'll let you decide and i hope you enjoy them.

other feedback i've had is that the lesson images are all the same so look very 'bland' so i'm working on colour coding each one i.e. a colour for Jazz and a different one for Blues etc, with a snapshot of the video instead of our logo.
 
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