How to make an Aviation Website Stand Out?

[Webmaster]

There are literally tons of aviation websites. When only looking at military aviation related websites, there are thousands probably, hundreds if you consider only the quality and non-official sites out there. 

What makes a good military aviation website? What are the qualities that makes one that you visit frequently and is right up on the top of your favourites list?

And more important, what makes a military aviation website stand out from the rest?

How can the webmasters make their website more popular with the common visitors to these kind of websites?

If you have the answers to these questions, or better yet have ideas on how your favourite military aviation source would look, please post them here! 

[Ramon]

Hey Niels,

Nice topic, I can go on for hours on this subject.......
What makes a webite great and outstanding from the rest........well, to be honest I have no clue.

As webmaster of the Scorpion Aviation website, I tried to make the website as easy to navigate as possible.
With a easy and good overview of all the topics, and some unusual topics, that makes the website one of a kind.
With the Pilot and Photographer interviews I tried to make a special that no other aviation website on the internet has online.
Also providing a small number of unusual article's and specials.

About the photograph gallery section  , I trie to make good and high quality photographs, with a good digital camera.
But as allready said, there are allready thousends of websites online, with mostly the same reports and photographs.
So with this, you have to make some rather rarely seen and in different angle photograph shots.

To come to a point, I really don't know how to atract every time more visitors. Or to have a constant flow of high viewers.
I'n my opinion It dosn't matter what you put on your website, and the layout is not very important to everyone.
If I see somethimes other websites online, that have no overview at all, and very bad quality of photographs.......No website in special...... . And they have tons of viewers ervery day. 

I just trie to deliver high quality photographs and reports, to whoever is interested.
And do something else like other websites by providing the Pilot and Photographer interviews.
Hope most of the people that visit my website, have enjoyed their stay, and come back somethimes.

Best Regards, Ramon. 

[Webmaster]

I'n my opinion It dosn't matter what you put on your website, and the layout is not very important to everyone.
If I see somethimes other websites online, that have no overview at all, and very bad quality of photographs.......No website in special...... . And they have tons of viewers ervery day.   

Yup, that's the irritating reality of being a webmaster. And sometimes to make it worse, they even go in against all the search engine optimization rules, have mistakes, broken links & images and lack content. Somehow they get this huge flow of visitors from search engine queries, for regular keywords.

Anyway, I think you are doing a great job, but the problem with your interviews is that reading them makes me feel jealous....hahaha 

[Globetrotter]

Well, I have somethings to say, but since I'm a not knowed "webmaster" with a not knowed "webpage"  :-\  they haven't got much reliability, I think 

Well, to begin with, I think a good aviation website MUST have good aviation photos, a forum and maybe videos; info about airplanes is good too. But what I really like is to read interviwes (like the one of the Viggen pilot) and I find it very cool and fun .

As for the design of the page, I think it must be something easy and clean to navigate, not very farfetched, and easy to get used to. But I think this is not the key of succes, as most of the people that don't design websites don't usually give the importance needed to design or don't value what you've worked to achieve the present results.

In order your site to be known you need one basic and vital thing: adds all over the web
(this is how I new your website while browsing Patrick's Aviation Website.)

In order to your site be frequently visited, you need to have a 'sign up' system, because, from my POV, this gives the visitor ownership, the person feels the site "a little bit of his own" and that will make the person come back, to see how is everything going, if  there are new posts, if his photos have been rated.... and so on

Well this is how I see it and hope to have cooperated with the cause and main objective of the topic. Hope it's useful for you all,

Thomas

PS: if you want people to come back, make it free.

[Ramon]

Hello Thomas and other guys,

It will always be a rare subject to discuss about, can talk for hours about this.
In my opinion, and this is proven if you look around on the internet. It does not
make any difference how professional you make your website, and with the best
and highest quality photographs on it from the best and well known photographers
around. Sorry for the language, but if you see sometimes the "crap" on websites
what they call "photographs", and they have 1000 visitors on a single day. And
websites with high quality stuff on it, can be more than happy to reach 30 visitors
each day? I do not want to look like a angry webmaster, and I also do not care
either, my website is a large hobby from me and takes a lot of my time.

But just want to say that there are no real things on a website which will improve
your website statistics. Adds like banners on other website link pages are indeed
a very good idea, but I really hate websites that are completely covered in adds all
over the place from non-aviation related topics and so on.

Regards, Ramon.

[Webmaster]

Thomas, the point about the signup is a good one, if it means interactivity. That's key I suppose, see this forum, or looks at Amazon.com's success. Getting visitors can be achieved in a number of ways, all related: links, p2p referrals, advertising and SEO (search engine optimization). Luckily search engine are getting better and better, so they also value content and have image searching.

But that's about how people find your site, I am wondering how one site is better than the other, and what makes people return often. A forum can work, content is king, unique/rare/exclusive content/photos even better, and of course often updated. With exception of the forum, it means hard work. But even then, there are some concepts that work better than others... some things I noticed are:

Sharing (airliners.net, patrickaviation)
Video (youtube, patrick)
Large Community (fencecheck)
Large Database (scramble)
Updated News (alert5.com, air-attack.com)

Thomas, about the aircraft information. I start to wonder how big that market actually is? I have a feeling most people searching for aircraft information are just webmasters of aviation sites? The rest is just here to find some pics and specs?

[Globetrotter]

Yes, you're right, not much people look at info about planes.

About a forum, just a few of the ones that sign up stay active in the forum, without going any further, just take a look at here. I see there are 359 users sgned up. But only a handful of us take part on the forums. And that is OK, I like it, I love the forum to chat with people, discuss interesting things with them, and the foum keeps alive the whole site.

Appart from the above exposed, photos are difficult to keep updated, and to have good, apealing pictures. You see, a guy like me, I love aviation, I have my "site" of aviation, but unfortunately, I don't get to see a lot of military airplanes, only a few photos of commercial aircrafts...

And it is difficult to be known,at least for me. People that know my site, guys from here, and PAW, don't usualy visit my site, I believe, and I don't blame them at all! What happens is that again, the lack of forums makes it boring. I only added a link to a blog I made, what is what I could do. I don't know how to put a forum in my site

Conclussion: I think the forum keeps people active in your site, even if they are not many. I see it as a must.

Thomas

[Webmaster]

Well, luckily my site gets more visitors than the forum's 360 members. 

I think I'll just have to keep adding more and better contents.

[Gripen]

I reckon the forum is the best part of the whole website.. i have the forum home page in favourites.. not the milavia main page..

[Ramon]

Hello guys,

My point exactly, in almost every reply, I read that the content and photographs
are a main part or even maybe main topic of a website to get more visitors.
I'm not trying to blame other websites, and point the finger to other websites.
But I think that with reports and the latest photographs from well known
photographers like Rick Llinares, Tyson V. Rininger and so on, and interviews
with a lot of display team pilots, I would have a killer website. But the opposite
is shown with only 60 to 70 visitors.

So it will be a very difficult and not to explain topic these visitors 

Regards, Ramon.

[Webmaster]

But Ramon, how much promoting, link exchanges and SEO have you done?

[Ramon]

But Ramon, how much promoting, link exchanges and SEO have you done?

Hello Niels,

- Promoting is in my opinion only mouth to mouth, for example large companies like
Boeing and some airliners can find their way to my website. As they have already
asked for air-to-air photoshoots.

- Link exchange: Take a look at my link page, almost every website on there has a
link to my website.

- SEO: my website has almost on every page the word aviation, so should find his way.
Also the names from Rick, Tyson etc are found via search engines. And to make on
every page a line with words that should make it easier to find, will give me 5 visitors ??

Any more tips are more than welcome.
Regards, Ramon.