The "Freeola Customer Forum" forum, which includes Retro Game Reviews, has been archived and is now read-only. You cannot post here or create a new thread or review on this forum.
Greetings once more - your favourite supplemental GAD fest is back again, taunting you with prizes you probably won't win like a carrot in front of a donkey. If you didn't love it, you wouldn't keep coming back.
Something a little different this time, in that this competition actually requires you to think a little rather than splatter your 'artistic' daubings on a banner :) What we'd like you to do is come up with some ways in which Special Reserve could promote themselves effectively. Bear in mind we haven't exactly got the backing of the Sultan of Brunei, we'd like you to drop us a few ideas on how best to get across the fact that Special Reserve are cheap, reliable and have a wide product range.
This could be improvements to ways we currently run things, new product ranges you think would appeal to our customers (bear in mind we currently sell rather a lot of stuff - see left sidestrip), new exciting ways to advertise our existing offers or just any ideas that have been floating round your head. Is there some range of products you just can't get hold of that would be perfect for us to sell? Let us know!
Post your ideas in this thread and we'll announce a winner at around the end of February, let's say the 27th. The best suggestions will win whatever prizes we give them, most probably yer standard £25/£50 GAD prize.
(And before anyone brings it up, yes we do think about this stuff ourselves, but we wanted to see what you lot think as well. So button it!)
---------------------------------------------------------
And the winner is..... phi11ip, for the following suggestion:
"Here's an idea, and if carried out correctly could be very beneficial. I've got a nice example too just to prove to you just how beneficial it is. www.staghosting.com was a free hosting service set up last year with the intention of boosting the ratings of a a few sites belonging to a company, one of these sites was www.actiondays.co.uk. Basically, unlike your free hosting, this hosting only offered hosting to domain names, you get 200MB disk space and 4 Gig bandwidth a month, you can upload from any connection unlike Freeola. So basically the company which has nothing to do with hosting has just set up a hosting site, sounds stupid doesn't it? What the requirements of this free hosting are though is that you must display a couple of small text links on your site, on mine you can see them on the links section on the side of the page. Google counts each link as a 'vote' and increases the pagerank of the site in question meaning that it shows up higher in searches, I see you've got 'cheap games' pretty much sorted but you don't show up anywhere when 'PS2 games' is typed in. If people were to display these text links on their sites it would soon make you appear high up on the search results. www.actiondays.co.uk was absolutely nowhere when it started, it had a low pagerank and didn't appear on searches. Have a look now though and you'll see that searching for 'corporate event' on Google.com returns the site as number 2 out of 6,500,000. Think about it. You've already got the hosting capabilities, all it would require is a server and someone to monitor the sites every now and then to make sure the links are there."
Congratulations and well done to everyone who entered.
Something a little different this time, in that this competition actually requires you to think a little rather than splatter your 'artistic' daubings on a banner :) What we'd like you to do is come up with some ways in which Special Reserve could promote themselves effectively. Bear in mind we haven't exactly got the backing of the Sultan of Brunei, we'd like you to drop us a few ideas on how best to get across the fact that Special Reserve are cheap, reliable and have a wide product range.
This could be improvements to ways we currently run things, new product ranges you think would appeal to our customers (bear in mind we currently sell rather a lot of stuff - see left sidestrip), new exciting ways to advertise our existing offers or just any ideas that have been floating round your head. Is there some range of products you just can't get hold of that would be perfect for us to sell? Let us know!
Post your ideas in this thread and we'll announce a winner at around the end of February, let's say the 27th. The best suggestions will win whatever prizes we give them, most probably yer standard £25/£50 GAD prize.
(And before anyone brings it up, yes we do think about this stuff ourselves, but we wanted to see what you lot think as well. So button it!)
---------------------------------------------------------
And the winner is..... phi11ip, for the following suggestion:
"Here's an idea, and if carried out correctly could be very beneficial. I've got a nice example too just to prove to you just how beneficial it is. www.staghosting.com was a free hosting service set up last year with the intention of boosting the ratings of a a few sites belonging to a company, one of these sites was www.actiondays.co.uk. Basically, unlike your free hosting, this hosting only offered hosting to domain names, you get 200MB disk space and 4 Gig bandwidth a month, you can upload from any connection unlike Freeola. So basically the company which has nothing to do with hosting has just set up a hosting site, sounds stupid doesn't it? What the requirements of this free hosting are though is that you must display a couple of small text links on your site, on mine you can see them on the links section on the side of the page. Google counts each link as a 'vote' and increases the pagerank of the site in question meaning that it shows up higher in searches, I see you've got 'cheap games' pretty much sorted but you don't show up anywhere when 'PS2 games' is typed in. If people were to display these text links on their sites it would soon make you appear high up on the search results. www.actiondays.co.uk was absolutely nowhere when it started, it had a low pagerank and didn't appear on searches. Have a look now though and you'll see that searching for 'corporate event' on Google.com returns the site as number 2 out of 6,500,000. Think about it. You've already got the hosting capabilities, all it would require is a server and someone to monitor the sites every now and then to make sure the links are there."
Congratulations and well done to everyone who entered.
Page:
I cant be bothered searching through all the ideas so far so if ive stepped on someones idea then im sorry.
But apparently radio advertising is highly effective.
But apparently radio advertising is highly effective.
Littlest Brother wrote:
> I like the idea of sponsoring a football team, you could sponsor ours
> if you wanted, we need a sponsor :cD.
Dee Dubs is going to kill you If he see's that!
> I like the idea of sponsoring a football team, you could sponsor ours
> if you wanted, we need a sponsor :cD.
Dee Dubs is going to kill you If he see's that!
Littlest Brother wrote:
> You know how they have those revolving adverts around football
> pitches? Well pay someone to have 'SR' revolving round and round,
> they get so annoying that I always turn to look at them.
That costs buckets. You need a sponsorship deal for those....
> Thanks all I can think of for now.
Thats?
> You know how they have those revolving adverts around football
> pitches? Well pay someone to have 'SR' revolving round and round,
> they get so annoying that I always turn to look at them.
That costs buckets. You need a sponsorship deal for those....
> Thanks all I can think of for now.
Thats?
I like the idea of sponsoring a football team, you could sponsor ours if you wanted, we need a sponsor :cD.
Also magazines that all gamers read, get one to recommend you with great prices for the game, it will cost a bit but surely bring in many more people. Do this for newspapers as well.
Get a celebrity to wear a t-shirt with 'SR' printed on the front with a website below.
Give people t-shirts keyrings etc, word will get round as people see these items, and it'll cost what pennies to make. Get someone to stand outside your stores and give them out. OR even as people buy thinigs fromy our stores, give them free things they will use and get seen.
You know how they have those revolving adverts around football pitches? Well pay someone to have 'SR' revolving round and round, they get so annoying that I always turn to look at them.
Get members here with popularish sites to advertise, pay them a bit, even if it only brings in a few people.
Someone said a minute ago, have a 'how did you hear of us' box. If they click 'a friend told me' tell them to enter the friends details and give the friend a reward of some sort. If they get 'x' number of people, then they get a free game or something. This will give people a reason to help you advertise.
Thanks all I can think of for now.
Also magazines that all gamers read, get one to recommend you with great prices for the game, it will cost a bit but surely bring in many more people. Do this for newspapers as well.
Get a celebrity to wear a t-shirt with 'SR' printed on the front with a website below.
Give people t-shirts keyrings etc, word will get round as people see these items, and it'll cost what pennies to make. Get someone to stand outside your stores and give them out. OR even as people buy thinigs fromy our stores, give them free things they will use and get seen.
You know how they have those revolving adverts around football pitches? Well pay someone to have 'SR' revolving round and round, they get so annoying that I always turn to look at them.
Get members here with popularish sites to advertise, pay them a bit, even if it only brings in a few people.
Someone said a minute ago, have a 'how did you hear of us' box. If they click 'a friend told me' tell them to enter the friends details and give the friend a reward of some sort. If they get 'x' number of people, then they get a free game or something. This will give people a reason to help you advertise.
Thanks all I can think of for now.
cool
Just one TV advert during kiddies time advertising Gameaday will attract thousands of people. OK, maybe about 10 of them will be able to do something good but it will bring them here.
Gameaday needs more advertising, try a national newpaper advert telling people about it, free games will attract more people than cheap games.
In fact, I'm telling you that's a good idea. Not enough people know about it, you get an advert onto TV or a magazine and loads of people will join here.
It's the strongest part of the site and if you advertise it properly you could get sooooo many more people here.
As monkeyman said, advertise a football team with it. Just get the name around!
UKgames won't sell as well as Gameaday.com purely because it involves parting with money. Get people here for the free stuff first, they'll then get bored and buy it.
Plus when people sign up, have you got one of those, "Where did you find us" boxes?
I could go on for hours...
Gameaday needs more advertising, try a national newpaper advert telling people about it, free games will attract more people than cheap games.
In fact, I'm telling you that's a good idea. Not enough people know about it, you get an advert onto TV or a magazine and loads of people will join here.
It's the strongest part of the site and if you advertise it properly you could get sooooo many more people here.
As monkeyman said, advertise a football team with it. Just get the name around!
UKgames won't sell as well as Gameaday.com purely because it involves parting with money. Get people here for the free stuff first, they'll then get bored and buy it.
Plus when people sign up, have you got one of those, "Where did you find us" boxes?
I could go on for hours...
Firstly, and most importantly the promotion of your "supserstores" are the main focal point in my opinion. Most people I know have "heard" of Special Reserve but they have no idea where the shop is. I believe there could be some way of getting your superstores out to the masses, and obviously thats in the form of advertising. Theres about 9 stores in total right? How about advertising your company in the local newspapers? Or how about making glossy and attractive leaflets? As a consumer I like to look at things, and leaflets are a good way to start. You could print out say, 10,000 of them and deliver them to houses in a 10 mile radius of the store?
I know this might sound stupid and "I want another EGAD compo" type thing, but you could always set a "Design a leaflet" one and choose a winner :P
On the sales front of things, I think you are pretty much sorted in everything you sell thats technology based, but I believe it would be nice to see a wider range of PC hardware, especially in the motherboard department, as it is rather lacking at the moment. Obviously different people want different things, but SR on a whole puts itself out as a "Games shop", but you sell a wide range of other things, so how about changing the whole "Games shop" suffix to a more "Home entertainment" type label? You could do this by selling music CD's and books, and specially adapted "Meda centre" PC's. You've seen em, those PC's that you can build which record TV and stuff. You sell Maxx PC's so a media version can't be that hard to make, surely?
Now I don't mean to be rude, but the whole Maxx PC range is a bit expensive for people who just want a computer to run say, Office and light internet browsing. How about selling "Less powerful PC's at cheaper prices" kind of thing. It'll work as long as you sell it right.
And finally I believe the website should be revamped totally, I think its stayed in the same format for the last 3 years i've seen it as. It needs a fresh update if you want those customers, The new "shop" system is good enough but the website and product information area's on a whole could do with a fresh update. Maybe a new color scheme or design?
Anyway, That is all i'm gonna say. I hope you take mine, and many other's ideas into consideration.
I know this might sound stupid and "I want another EGAD compo" type thing, but you could always set a "Design a leaflet" one and choose a winner :P
On the sales front of things, I think you are pretty much sorted in everything you sell thats technology based, but I believe it would be nice to see a wider range of PC hardware, especially in the motherboard department, as it is rather lacking at the moment. Obviously different people want different things, but SR on a whole puts itself out as a "Games shop", but you sell a wide range of other things, so how about changing the whole "Games shop" suffix to a more "Home entertainment" type label? You could do this by selling music CD's and books, and specially adapted "Meda centre" PC's. You've seen em, those PC's that you can build which record TV and stuff. You sell Maxx PC's so a media version can't be that hard to make, surely?
Now I don't mean to be rude, but the whole Maxx PC range is a bit expensive for people who just want a computer to run say, Office and light internet browsing. How about selling "Less powerful PC's at cheaper prices" kind of thing. It'll work as long as you sell it right.
And finally I believe the website should be revamped totally, I think its stayed in the same format for the last 3 years i've seen it as. It needs a fresh update if you want those customers, The new "shop" system is good enough but the website and product information area's on a whole could do with a fresh update. Maybe a new color scheme or design?
Anyway, That is all i'm gonna say. I hope you take mine, and many other's ideas into consideration.
Ooooooh, Kelkoo is usually very useful for me.
And maybe set up a membership points system, each time someone refers someone to actually join the club they get a point, get 10 points and get a free something... All you would need would be a box for them to enter the number into when signing up. It may help persuade people to join...
Sponsor a taxi in central London! Make it bright blue, then everyone will flock here to see, "The Bar."
And maybe set up a membership points system, each time someone refers someone to actually join the club they get a point, get 10 points and get a free something... All you would need would be a box for them to enter the number into when signing up. It may help persuade people to join...
Sponsor a taxi in central London! Make it bright blue, then everyone will flock here to see, "The Bar."
Or you could have to be an SR Platinum member to view scripts.
Just a quick idea, but perhaps an alright one.
In a similar way to posting walkthroughs/reviews/etc, you could have some sort of user input site for online scripts and the like? The web design forum is great for people who need a hand, but something you can just search through is much more accessible. Again, it may not really make you money by itself, but people who search for certain scripts may well go onto your site, then have a bit more of a look around to find the brand new graphics card they've been wanting for ten years, or something like that anyway.
Surely it wouldn't be too hard to do - just write out the scripts in one input box and the readme's into another. All you'd have to do is get a domain like ukscripts.com, or whatever's available.
In a similar way to posting walkthroughs/reviews/etc, you could have some sort of user input site for online scripts and the like? The web design forum is great for people who need a hand, but something you can just search through is much more accessible. Again, it may not really make you money by itself, but people who search for certain scripts may well go onto your site, then have a bit more of a look around to find the brand new graphics card they've been wanting for ten years, or something like that anyway.
Surely it wouldn't be too hard to do - just write out the scripts in one input box and the readme's into another. All you'd have to do is get a domain like ukscripts.com, or whatever's available.
Page: