That Layout Just doesn't Look Right

I came to realize how the patterns of the submissions we get are closely related to the layouts and the familiarity with the anime and or person we feature. It's true. I think visitors are more open to submitting their sites when they have a familiarity with something and they start with the layout. Is it welcoming or not? Is it familiar or not? Can I submit to this site even though it's unfamiliar to me? For example, our layouts that featured popular anime like Cardcaptor Sakura, Fruits Basket and EA's layout of Lantis from Magic Knight Rayearth gave Yume tons of reviews to do. My Fruits Basket layout wasn't even something to be proud of but because the anime/manga is familiar to many people we would be getting up to four submissions a day. Imagine how long our queue was during that month. But at least we managed to get through it all. EA's Lantis layout and my doujinshi layout of Sakura and Syaoran was also pretty popular in the submissions department. And Mizuki's layout of Rivers Cuomo garnered a lot of personal site submissions. It's strange. Do some visitors really just go for the eye candy and or familiarity and not the content?

One of my favorites out of all our layouts was Daimira's "Yami no Matsuei" and Asuka's "Boys Be..." layout. These layouts weren't very popular in the submissions department because the anime/manga wasn't well known and a lot of people never heard of these stories before until later on. So maybe many were unsure to submit? I don't know. It's just strange. And it's a pattern I've been seeing lately. I don't know if many other WPR owners see it too. But here at Yume, this is what we see.

It's because of this reason that I made Asuka make the Kimagure Orange Road layout look like what it looked like (yes, I made her do it ^_^). The color scheme, an old anime, a story that no one it seems, is that familiar with... It all added up to submissions slowing down. And believe me, it slowed down a lot. Which helped us a lot because our queue was getting huge and thank goodness it's gotten smaller and smaller.

I don't know... maybe I'm wrong about all this but for Yume's case it's true. I guess in the end it just all comes down to familiarity. Yes, I've been repeating it many times. Familiarity is the key and a welcoming personality of a site is what makes people submit to your WPR. So I guess, if your queue is piling up, then make a very obsure layout but if the submissions are slow... make a layout that's welcoming to everybody. The color scheme, the welcome message, the layout structure, all add up to it too.

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