Website Review and Suggestions

**kermit4karate** · 12-19-2007, 11:14 PM

My wife and I are looking for feedback on her makeup and beauty product reviews site, www.makeupandbeautyblog.com. It's based on a Wordpress theme with a few minor tweaks.

We're considering hiring a designer to Web 2.0-ify it soon because my design skills are lacking, but overall, what's your first impression? Are there any big problems that jump out or any minor-moderate changes I could make on my own that would greatly improve the readability or design?

Traffic has steadily increased each month since the debut earlier this year. Now up to about 2,000 pageviews/day, about 800 unique visitors/day.

Any and all input is appreciated. Please don't pull any punches, and if you have any advice on how to find a reliable, qualified web designer who won't rip us off, please let me know. Thank you. Regards,
-kermit

**habbotothemax** · 12-20-2007, 04:35 AM

Nice work man

10/10

**kermit4karate** · 12-20-2007, 11:21 AM

Thanks. Can I ask if there's anything you'd change about the site?

**iammarcus** · 12-20-2007, 03:18 PM

Has a nice design to it.
Are the adds on the left because you want to direct more traffic to them?
I am very keen on having main menu to the left. Most people will auto look to left for the navigation. the Home and About dont exactly POP out to the eye either, i wouldnt suggest changing the current tab background color but hmm maybe a step up in font size.

Actually maybe if you leave your main menu how it is on the right, leave the ads on left to draw alot of attention for clicks. BUT center your top navigation, and also add all the catergories you have on your left menu as tabs.
for Example
Home | Catergories | Archives | Subscribe | About | Contact

you might even want to add Members, because the log in is at far bottom right. And the member page would be a log in page.
You could leave the menu you have on the left because really it would give another way to access pages and if you take it away it takes away from the design.

Overall nice site, though i highly recommend thinking about centering the Navigation on the page and including something like my example.

regards,
Marcus

**EViS** · 12-20-2007, 11:07 PM

Definitely change the height (length) of the page, it's massive! Maybe a php next/prev link to track between old/new news would be a good idea?

**remnjava** · 12-20-2007, 11:16 PM

<<Definitely change the height (length) of the page, it's massive!>>

That is the only suggestion I can think of as well. I have to compliment you that as long as it is, it loaded quickly. (And looked nice as well.)

Carol

**kermit4karate** · 12-21-2007, 12:17 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by iammarcus

Has a nice design to it.
Are the adds on the left because you want to direct more traffic to them?
I am very keen on having main menu to the left. Most people will auto look to left for the navigation. the Home and About dont exactly POP out to the eye either, i wouldnt suggest changing the current tab background color but hmm maybe a step up in font size.

Actually maybe if you leave your main menu how it is on the right, leave the ads on left to draw alot of attention for clicks. BUT center your top navigation, and also add all the catergories you have on your left menu as tabs.
for Example
Home | Catergories | Archives | Subscribe | About | Contact

you might even want to add Members, because the log in is at far bottom right. And the member page would be a log in page.
You could leave the menu you have on the left because really it would give another way to access pages and if you take it away it takes away from the design.

Overall nice site, though i highly recommend thinking about centering the Navigation on the page and including something like my example.

regards,
Marcus

Marcus,

Thanks a lot for the suggestions. You know what? I hate to admit it, but I did place the ads to the left on purpose for the exact reason you mentioned, because people seem to look left-right naturally. Advertising revenue wasn't a huge goal for the site at this stage, but we still figured the extra money could be saved to hire a professional designer soon.

You're not the first person to suggest we do something to draw attention to the Home and About links above the left column. You're right. They do seem to get lost over there. I'll try centering first and then try aligning them to the right just to see how that looks too.

Thanks for the help.
-kermit

**kermit4karate** · 12-21-2007, 12:21 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by EViS

Definitely change the height (length) of the page, it's massive! Maybe a php next/prev link to track between old/new news would be a good idea?

Evis,
You're right about the length. That's an inherent problem with blogs. What most blogs do is clip posts, only showing a short summary or the first few lines of a post and then using a <<read the rest of this entry>> link to view the rest of the post.

The advantage of that is it ups your pageviews, since viewers who click that link access another page. The problem, though, is that it asks readers to do something, and sometimes that's all it takes to lose a reader. We've tried it both ways and settled on displaying a full 10 posts on the home page. We could do some testing with fewer than 10 posts on the home page, maybe 5-8 posts. That would shorten the overall page length.

Thank you. Regards,
kermit

**kermit4karate** · 12-21-2007, 12:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by remnjava

<<Definitely change the height (length) of the page, it's massive!>>

That is the only suggestion I can think of as well. I have to compliment you that as long as it is, it loaded quickly. (And looked nice as well.)

Carol

Thanks, Carol. Some of the images are saved off-site using a totally awesome clipboard app called Skitch (www.plasq.com), so that helps take some of the load off the server. The app has a one-click hosting service as well. If you use a Mac, I HIGHLY recommend Skitch.
Regards,
kermit

**kermit4karate** · 12-21-2007, 08:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by iammarcus

Has a nice design to it.
Are the adds on the left because you want to direct more traffic to them?
I am very keen on having main menu to the left. Most people will auto look to left for the navigation. the Home and About dont exactly POP out to the eye either, i wouldnt suggest changing the current tab background color but hmm maybe a step up in font size.

Actually maybe if you leave your main menu how it is on the right, leave the ads on left to draw alot of attention for clicks. BUT center your top navigation, and also add all the catergories you have on your left menu as tabs.
for Example
Home | Catergories | Archives | Subscribe | About | Contact

you might even want to add Members, because the log in is at far bottom right. And the member page would be a log in page.
You could leave the menu you have on the left because really it would give another way to access pages and if you take it away it takes away from the design.

Overall nice site, though i highly recommend thinking about centering the Navigation on the page and including something like my example.

regards,
Marcus

Marcus,

I took your advice and shifted the HOME and ABOUT links from the left to the right in the header navigation area. For now I don't think I'll add any other links there because I don't want to duplicate any navigation already in the right column.

Do you think the two links pop better there on the right than they did on the left?

Thanks again for the help. Much appreciated.

Regards,
kermit