Hey Shane,
I've noticed a few users mention ways to improve the sites performance, whether it be removal of registration pages or improving visibility of site navigation, colour scheme etc.
Couple of things I'll bring up really quickly that could go a long way in helping:
1. Right off the bat, there is an issue with your sites load performance. I ran your site through Google's site testing tool and returned back the following:
Loading time: Poor
Visitor Loss: 32%
Industry Top Performers Loading Speed; 3 seconds
You can view these results for yourself using Google's tool here:
https://testmysite.thinkwithgoogle.com/
What your current users tell you in regards to performance should be irrelevant. Google accounts for the baseline on page performance, not the top tier. For poor page loading speeds, Google will actually make your site
harder to find on search results. Push back on your developer to solve these issues ASAP, as you're likely losing a large majority of users.
2. You have Google Analytics on site. How is this being leveraged at the moment? You should be able to get a fair idea of what your bounce rate looks like, and work out
where in the conversion process users are being lead astray. Page load speed will result in a higher than average bounce rate. How about when users hit registration forms? Are there too many steps involved in the registration process? Are they being met with registration pages too frequently? (these can be extremely frustrating for the end-user).
3. From an SEO perspective, how is this being leveraged right now? Doing a search on Google for 'gaming search aggregators', Gamer'sPost is sitting in position 1 for that search term, followed by 'Best News'. For that particular search term, Siftd isn't appearing at all. What keywords are you trying to build SEO around? That will help significantly with organic search queries.
4. Leverage cross-marketing wherever possible, and ideally as cost-efficiently as possible. Google have a number of platforms you can make use of, to help track users when they're coming from AdWords Promotions/Facebook/Youtube etc. that will allow you to re-engage potential clients.
5. You should have a list of potential clients from running 3 day promotions and the like. Re-target these audiences!! If E-mail doesn't work, trial with other channels. You can use Gmail e-mail addresses you've acquired, for re-marketing purposes across Google channels (provided they're signed in). Provided you've let users know their e-mail can be used for marketing purposes, there shouldn't be an issue.
Hope some of that makes sense. Drop me a PM if you need to some pointers.