Guest Post: Blog Feedback #6

Greetings! My name is Brian Purkiss and I’m doing a guest post for Kevin over here at Review Bunker. I’m an freelance designer, writer, and web consultant for hire. If you like my post, check out my blog - plainbeta.
Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy this review!

My first review here shall be of twelve year old Meghna’s blog, Meghna’s Pages.

First Impression: Girls’ blog. New to blogging. Elegant. About blogging.

Upon closer inspection I realize that I’m partly true, partly false.
The author is indeed a girl (as I said, 12 years old), she’s new to blogging, and going for a more elegant feel.
However, where I was wrong was about her topic.

To put it in her words, her blog is “an attempt on creative writing and contains humor, stories, poetry, fiction, fantasy, bizarre, oddities, school, children, books, reading and the like.”

Ok, this is my biggest flag.
Meghna, you have about three seconds to keep your visitors from leaving your blog and about ten seconds to get them to start reading your content.

You need to grab your reader’s attention.

Ok, how do you do that?
Well, many ways.

Your title needs to be your web site’s title.
Would you be confused if a web site’s title was “Sophisticated Essays on the Nature of Man” and the url was http://IlovePuppies.com? Yeah, that would be confusing.
While that is a bit of an exaggeration, you get my point.
If your URL is MeghansPages.blogspot.com then your title needs to be Meghan’s Pages.

Similarly, your tagline needs to be concise and powerful.
Your current tagline is very explanatory, but it also long for a tagline.
Consider my blog’s tagline: design & blogging
Instantly you know what my blog is about - design and blogging.
While yours doesn’t need to be as short as mine, it should be a little shorter. Remember, you have three seconds to capture your reader’s attention before he/she does a Google search and has access to another million web sites.

Before I branch away from the attention grabbing topic, let’s examine your layout.
Your layout is one of the most influential parts of your blog.
While it is not the most important part of your blog, your layout can keep visitors just as easy as driving them away.
While I think it fits you, I think you could do a little better.
It seems a little too peach - it’s slightly overwhelming and the contrast between the white content area and the peach background is a little too hard on the eye.

Personally, I think you should switch to Wordpress.
You can have free hosting via Wordpress.com, but self hosting throuh Wordpress.org will be best.
But that is not the purpose of this review. But hey, if you want you can contact me and I’ll be happy to share my reasons.

Ok, back to the layout.
I think you have too many widgets.
Lemme go down the list.

About Me
Eh… Alright, ‘About Me’ is needed. But you need to have an individual page for your About info that sticks with your layout (which I don’t think you can do with Blogger). You should tell about your blog, and then about yourself.

AdSense Ad
I realize that you want to make money, but you don’t want to devalue your site.
The colors in your AdSense Ad and the colors in your layout clash too much.
I just recently got a new layout for plainbeta, and in it I removed all of my AdSense ads (Read about it). Why? Because AdSense often detracts from your blog (More thoughts on AdSense)
While that doesn’t make AdSense evil, you should think about including it.
If anything, make it work with your site more.

As I Say…
?
Yep. I’m confused, but that doesn’t make me want to stay. While I find it humorous, it just clutters up your sidebar.

Technorati
Ditch it.
If someone wants to check your Technorati Authority, they’ll do it themselves. The colors don’t work with your layout and they just clutter up your sidebar.

Label Cloud
Keep it.
Tag Clouds are great ways of getting your visitors deeper into your content.
Just don’t let it get too cluttered.

Blog Archive
Eh… I’d get rid of it.

Trend Watch
Is your site about shoes? Nope.
So why are you trying to sell them?
You’ll be a lot more effective using that space on something related to your web site.

Search
VERY IMPORTANT.
But you don’t need that large ‘google’ - that’s something Wordpress would fix. ;-)
It should also be moved further up and have your web site as the default field to search.

Best Posts
Excellent. Very nice to have.

Recent Posts…
Get rid of it.
People don’t need that widget to see your recent posts.

RSS
Again, excellent. You need that.
But make it more prominent and above the scroll.

I Like to Read…
If you want that, then have a unique page for it.
Although, again, I don’t think you can do that with Blogger. (but you can with Wordpress!)

Follow Me
Put that in your about page.

My Awards
Nice!
Congrats on the awards!
But that should be in your about page. Don’t clutter your sidebar.

‘my motivators’
There is a lot of discrepancy on these, but I think they shouldn’t be there.
If you want, create a ‘community page’ (like on binh.name).

Ok, let’s move away from the sidebars.

Your Content

Not bad!
You have some nice content in there.
Your writing could be improved, but hey, couldn’t everybodys?
I don’t see too many blogs along these lines - you have some potential.

I like the use of images - very nice.
Although, you should float them.
You can learn about floats here.
If you can’t figure it out, I could create a simple float script for you and teach you how to use it.

I also like the use of Related Posts.
That will help drive your visitors further into your blog.

Three things I’d change in your content though.

Get rid of the Digg widget.
Unless you’re expecting to get to the front page of Digg, they’re useless and detract from your web site.
I would also get rid of the AddThis widget for similar reasons. If someone is using any of those services, they don’t need your widget for it. Again, it detracts from your web site.
And finally, I’d get rid of the guitar with Meghna on it.
It gets repetitive and a little annoying. :-/

My Conclusion

Your blog has some potential.
You mainly need to refine the look.
Clean up the blog and make it less ’spammy.’
Make the purpose of the site clear.

Props Meghna for starting young.
I hope you make it big one day!

-Brian Purkiss

Thanks Brian for your guest post, I’ve enjoyed having another person’s perspective and style in the blog feedback section, and I hope we see more from you in the future.  To read more from Brian make sure to check out his blog,  plainbeta.

-Kevin 

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