OFFICIAL
77.2
pretty good |
|
Content
|
| Quality : |
16.0 / 20 |
| Quantity : |
12.0 / 15 |
| Entertain : |
12.5 / 15 |
| Updates : |
7.0 / 10 |
| Exclusive : |
5.0 / 05 |
| Download : |
2.0 / 05 |
| sub-total : |
54.5 / 70 |
| Navigation |
| Easy : |
7.0 / 10 |
| Features : |
3.5 / 05 |
| Design : |
4.5 / 05 |
| sub-total : |
15.0 / 20 |
| Other |
| Temp Fill : |
7.7 / 10 |
| sub-total : |
7.7 / 10 |
Scoring Criteria
|
|
| Editor: Spencer |
Initial Review: 08-16-06 |
|
1. Site looks nice.
2. Exclusive content.
3. Site does update of course.
1. Very confusing overall.
2. WMV vids are DRM protected.
3. Small pictures.
4. Too many confusing join options.
"What looks like it could be a great site is hurt bad by all the small problems you find." |
|
|
So I wasn't too sure what to expect at Bel Ami Online, but I had no idea that it would be a gay site for sure. But yes, hit up the tour and you'll see some dudes getting it on without a woman in sight. I noticed they had different levels of membership, and hit their join page up to check it out (which was too difficult to find for my liking). It turns out the membership options are pretty confusing, as you get access to more material depending on how many months you join for at once. The monthly (or trial) members get the least amount which kinda sucks if you ask me, and wasn't the best way to start the review off. We're reviewing the "platinum" edition of the site, which you can only get access to after you've been a member for a full year.
The goods:
- Site looks nice overall. Sure, it's a bit bright compared to most sites out there, but I like the look in the end. It's clean and crisp, and even more so it's unique which is pretty rare to find.
- Exclusive content. They say they shoot all this stuff themselves, and it looks like that's the case to me. It's mostly European-based content from what I can tell, but in the end if they guys are hot and you like the content, it's all good!
- Site does update obviously. While they don't date their material, when their base membership gets you access to some section's content from the last 30 days, you know they are adding material here. Some places let you browse by content from the last month as well so you can get an idea of how much they actually add.
The bads:
- Confusing site to get around. It starts in the tour where I was automatically logged in as a preview user, and continues on the member's side. It's very tough to figure out where to head first just to see some pictures or videos. They provide a few ways to browse the site which is nice, but I was stuck for several minutes just clicking around which is never a good sign.
- WMV videos are all DRM protected. You can stream them too, but if you choose to download them you're stuck with DRM videos which isn't good. Mac users will get Quicktime videos which us lowly Windows users are not privy to seeing, so the situation may be different there.
- Pictures are pretty small. I thought I was looking at a middle-sized thumbnail at first when an older gallery had a 500x333 picture up. The newer ones have both small and large versions of the image, but even then the best I could get was 443x667 or 800x550 depending on the orientation of the photo.
- Updates aren't dated. It's tough to get a grasp for how often they update, though you can view the last 30 day's updates in some sections. At first I was browsing through photos and didn't realize I had clicked on such an old photo gallery and almost freaked out at how small the pics were.
- Confusing join options. I understand wanting to provide more to your loyal members, but their options just go too far with too many choices which ends up making it confusing. I say offer a trial membership, a monthly (regular) membership, and maybe one upgraded membership to see more if you really want to do that.
Conclusion:
So in the end it's okay, but I thought it was going to be better. The nice-looking site and photography couldn't help the lack of quality at times, confusing navigation, confusing join options, restricted video downloads, etc. I wanted to like this one, and it's not too bad, but it just wasn't as great as I had hoped.
|
