Hi, I've just posted in the intro section and as I've said I'm on a steep learning curve here. The site is called RIP.ie - End of Life Matters, and we are aiming to be the first point of reference for all matters related to death and dying in Ireland.

We went live in July, and have had to initially concentrate on going around meeting the funeral directors to encourage them to use the system - they have all unique IDs that allows them access to input details themselves. The death notices are currently the main driver of traffic, however we are starting to develop the information side of the site, by getting relevent experts to write articles.

If you could have a look at the site and suggest any shortcomings or improvements it would be a huge help. I've no problem with any criticism - only way to improve, but please be patient if I need to clarify any technical points. Thanks in advance.

It's nice and fast to load - which is always a good thing

Navigation - not bad, though I'd always expect the logo to link back to the main page

Your privacy policy looks a bit incomplete. Compare it to this one:

Irish ISP Test Website Privacy Policy - check your broadband provider's speed

If you could use ISAPI_Rewrite - URL Rewrite engine for IIS, ISAPI Filter for URL Rewriting, mod_rewrite for IIS it might help with the search engines.

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Thanks for that - the privacy is a huge issue with us, that seems fairly comprehensive.

I will have a look at the rewrite program also - to clarify, this will look at the language used by to classify and rank the page, and therefore only unseen items will be modified?

The RIP icon should be a live link - will get this sorted tomorrow.

Thank you

Nice site.

I couldn't figure out how to sign up or prices (for funeral directors).

I would fix up the cononical URL issue also (RIP.ie - Death Notices Ireland and rip.ie).

Grrr.... xxx.rip.ie versus rip.ie

And you are linking internally to index.asp for the homepage - I would just link to RIP.ie - Death Notices Ireland

Bloody auto title retrieval... link to xxx.rip.ie/

Interesting site. With all respect, there's always money to be made from death. Death and taxes as they say.

How are you monetising the site? (if you are)

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jemmi this is a nice site and also a great idea. When I was in the States I had so many Irish Americans ask me where they could find death notices of family members in Ireland. I had trouble actually finding a site that provided that information.

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Thanks for the replies. I had a reply written earlier but lost it so sorry for the delay!
RedCardinal – there is a protected section for Funeral Directors, they use their unique pass and ID and they can access articles, links and suppliers to their industry. In this section they can also add/edit (only their) notices, in real time.
I hadn’t noticed the various versions of the URL and I’m unsure as to the effect of different ones – love to know why they should all be same, but in the meantime I’ll work on getting them all as you suggested.
As for monetizing the site, we don’t charge for the death notice, and never intend to. We feel the site can give a death notice the requisite dignity whilst personalizing it by adding the functionality of photos, condolence books etc. We hope to cover our costs through advertising, [subtlety through the service directory] but we’re aware that we need to drive up the traffic figures first.
Cormac, thanks for the support and now you know where to redirect your Irish mates abroad! We have had a [relatively] large amount of traffic from abroad, but we are developing a section for this group and we will target them when we have it up and running.
Thanks for all the feedback.
Jay

I see you're now charging €200 p.a. for a one county directory listing?

Bit steep I would have thought? And just for the record, stating 30k HITS per day (as per AWstats) is not going to cut much ice with anyone who knows what that means. Visits or page views would probably be more appropriate, and I would say divide by 3 if your using AWstats data.

The nice chart
image001.jpg
would probably look better if you took it from some other stats program and left out March (which makes it look like your on a downward trend).

I think it is quite a tasteful site and I recently had to look it up for arrangement details (unfortunately).

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Thanks for the feedback Redcardinal.
We always offered the option of the €200 pa advert, but we had a full listing of all suppliers on the site which was free. There have been some questions as to the perceived benefit of an ad whilst all other competitors are listed (from those who have paid), so we are now looking to redress that.
I assume we must have sent you an email as a potential advertiser and I'm sure if there were a full listing of your competitors you would be less likely to take a placing on the site.
As regards pricing - I think that €200 is fair - considering it is for a year and to a highly targetted audience - each advertiser in practice has different needs and we end up adapting to this. I honestly don't think that price has been an issue for anyone that has expressed an interest in advertising with us. Saying that, we'd love to have you advertising on the site, so if you contact me, we won't fall out over price!! Pitch, Pitch!!
As regards the image - I agree with your comments, and of course we want to look as attractive an option as possible [who wouldn't!]. We may look at removing March - but essentially it was just a quick visual aid for someone to see the ballpark traffic figures for the site.
David, thank you for your feedback also. I'm glad you found the site tasteful, that really is central to what we are trying to do.

lovely site, the ndp and eu logos need anti aliasing tho, good job!