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I had an interesting experience recently and thought that this
was relevant to blogging. Actually it’s something that I have been
mulling over for quite sometime but it really struck home while I was
out with my girlfriend at a pool bar called tail gators oh about a month ago or so.

As an advance warning this post is going to cover a few areas, so bear with me.

A
mutual friend of ours had his grand opening for his pool bar tail gators some time ago and it was packed to the rafters, but what was surprising about
it was that it didn’t have the look or buzz of just opening, know what
I mean.

Our friend has been running pool tournaments for years and owns
or owned another pool hall bar- the broken cue. Not sure if he still owns it or not.

He has 38 tables at his newest venture.
Very upscale pool sports bar, spacious, modern looking but comfortable at the same time. Not cramped considering the number of pool tables he has.

When I grabbed his "attention" (post topic here)  - he looked like a deer in the headlights, expected on opening day !! for a very few moments
I asked him if he did any sort of marketing, or press release radio
that sort of thing, he replied that he didn’t, because he didn’t have
the time, nor the budget.

That struck me as interesting.

Why
because pool is a very small but saturated niche in this city, with a
few bigger competitors, who have the budget for local radio and
television. And Tailgators was just packed.

SO I asked him how did he spread the word, he said
through word of mouth and generally just talking about what he was
going to be doing, hes a very laid back sort of guy not prone to hype
or marketing flair. (i’ll get to the downside of that in a moment) I’m sure that had alot to do with it. On top of
that he’s an authority in the pool bar niche. According to his girlfriend (she
really should be his PR person) he knows the who’s and what’s in this
niche.

What’s even more interesting about this is that Tail gators pool
hall was 3 months late in opening. (anticipation and added buzz, in the
form of mystery)

He is in a very competitive niche in a very saturated market.
But with the added bonus that he caters more specifically to the pool
tournament players. Very specialized niche.

For the last few
years he has been running pool tournaments out of his smaller other
pool hall and it is small in comparison to his newest pool hall.

Negative Press 

Whats
even more interesting and I’m sure this is the sort of buzz that got
him some added attention and attraction, is that prior to his opening
this new bar it was previously owned by a sort of shady character and
during the summer someone was beaten to death there and so was closed
down. That and it is in a somewhat residential neighborhood, though it
is attached to the upper level of a mall, so noise travels down and out
into the neighborhood. All very bad for him. So he gets or got pestered by the locals and the community, and all the other non-sense involved with opening a bar in that sort of neighborhood.

To cap it off he has a patio which the city has been giving him endless B.S about. You see patios are noisy, people go out on them and enjoy themselves. Imagine that huh!!

Over the past few months, since the summer really his girlfriend has been talking on and off about this and was
going on, mostly the comments were in the negative surrounding the hassles
of opening the bar, getting permits, noise by laws parking by laws and
other non-sense dealings with the city to just start a new business. I
know this has been talked up and is a big bone of contention with both
him and his girlfriend. But again it has created Buzz in the community that he circulates in. SO when it came to open there was a pent desire that had to be fulfilled by him, talk about pressure.

In our industry you might call this link bait or negative attention. Again getting back to the attention topic.

It’s
been hard to spend any time with him or his girlfriend over the past
few months solely because he has been devoting all his time to giving
birth to his new baby (pool bar) "attention deficit".

And to be honest because of my own conflicting other interests, causing my attention units to wane I
actually forgot about the opening until my girlfriend mentioned it (she works with his girlfriend).

Again because he was low
key about it I hadn’t any interest or reason to keep it in mind, but I
also don’t surf in that niche, I don’t play pool or follow whats going
on in that niche. So I’m not a prospect other than being an interested
on-looker on the behalf of a friend. I went as support. and will
probably go more often now that I have seen it and experienced it, He has big screen flat
panels and comfy leather couches. (two thumbs up). SO I could comfortably watch the Sens play hockey from there.

So what has this got to do with attention?

Simply
this everyone is busy these days, attending to their own personal niche
markets, be it pool in-door soccer, hockey or what ever floats everyone
else’s boat.

Now how does all this play out.

This may seem or sound harsh but it is true, and I am going to lay the blame at the door step of "ignorance" Curtis isn’t web savvy, should he be, depends on what he’s trying to achieve with his website. He’s a busy guy like we all are, specially so considering the fact the he has so much on his plate, being a working manager, owner, operator, organizer,promoter and all the many other functions he has to do just to keep his new venture afloat and profitable.

I’ll also lay the blame on the door step of his web designer. Because other than the pretty web 2.0-ish design it really doesnt grab my attention as being a pool bar.

 

There isnt anything on this page that if I didnt know any better would lead me to believe it was a website for a pool hall, pool bar.
Your webmaster should be slapped upside the head.

I get the impression that it’s a sports bar,restaurant yeah. But beyond that not much more. It’s not until I click through to the about link (good to have one) that I find out what exactly tail gators is. But the point is this information should be on the front page. It should grab me by the eyeball and slap me hard.

"I’m a pool hall" and you want to come here because I am the best damned pool hall you’ll ever come to"

"heres where I am get over here now"

Basically what I am getting at is that there are no visual clues to indicate that this is a pool hall, pool bar, place for pool tournaments, pool leagues. At the very least there could be a pool ball, cue, people playing pool and enjoying themselves doing it

From the about page the emphasis is more on it being just a sports bar with 30 pool tables. Correct me if I am wrong here but how many sports bars have 30 plus pool tables. Is this a sports bar or a pool hall, someone please make up my mind for me.

So what could be done differently?

Focus on one objective: define what the objective is here then drive the attention on the page to it.

do you want people to visit the bar.

register for an email newsltter

subscribe to an RSS feed

Sign up for a league.

Make a reservation.

get a map to your location

Why should I visit your bar as opposed to Dooley’s or Maclaren’s (competitors)

Is this the landing page?

Many companies fail to recognize that their "homepage" is not
necessarily the first or even the most visited page on their website. A
"landing page" is the first page a customer lands on when they click
through to your website. Your "primary landing page" is the landing
page that gets the most incoming traffic. - optimizing landing pages

You’d have to check your site stats to figure this one out.

Some objectives need to be defined

The main objective on the home page as it stands is to force me into the horizontal nav panel under the image graphic (should be text and using an H1 tag by the way, or at the very least have an alt tag or title attribute attached to the image so when I hover the image I know what I am looking at - good spider fodder as well, SE’s eat this sort of thing up)

Use visual elements (size, motion, color, position, and shape) to draw attention toward the call to action

 

The home page call to action lets me know it’s open, Whats open? that’s not enough
of an objective. My first initial response was to click the now open
text, it. WHY because it is front and center. and is the call to action I want to click
something, see something, So include a picture of the bar at the very
least (image branding). I need to know what it is you are. Here is how humans in the western world read; left to right. My eye scans down the left to the right.

What I’d like to see here is a slick video from the bar of people doing what you want them to be doing when they come to Tail Gators or at least an image of what you ant them to be doing.

Remember you want people to come to your bar to play pool watch sports and eat RIGHT?

You need visual cues that tell them to do this. We want to be told what to do and you have just under a minute to do it.

Seriously, that’s how long you have to make that first impression

You have just that long to do all this:

• Capture attention
• Create interest
• Inspire desire
• Encourage action

check your server logs and you’ll see what I am telling you is Gospel truth (i see you don’t have any stats tracking software on your site ie: google analytics)

I’m not a restaurant owner but I could Imagine that what you want is to have people call to book a table (food or Pool) RIGHT

Eliminate elements that may distract eye path from flow toward the objective.
If page elements such as photos and graphic images don’t move your
visitor briskly to taking the desired action, dump them. Every element
on the page has to work in concert toward the same goal. Getting Bookings

I don’t get any visual cues leading to another call to action other than the right side bar, This is called landing page confusion which are RSS feeds from sports sites. Nice idea!! not on the home page unless you want to have people exit your site that quick without booking a table or lead them to thinking that this is what this site is for, sports feeds.

Which leads to the last tip avoid using off site links: Bury them on an inner page called sports news or something, don’t put them front and center.

Your precious real Estate needs to maximize that space to generate revenue, bookings, or what ever your desired goals and objectives are.

Everything on that page has but one objective and it needs to be done in a hurry.

GET Bookings. MAKE MONEY 

Links to help you out.

Keep it simple stupid applies to your landing pages too 

Landing page confusion 

I’ll follow up with another post or video.

 You need another webmaster someone who understands marketing and optimizing websites for it.

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