Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

The writing is good but the design is a mess.  Rather than going item by item to find fixes you might be better off using a premade template.  There are sites like templatemonster.com where you can buy a template. You may also want to think about doing your site in wordpress.  There are loads of free templates out there for it.  You can just search wordpress template.


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I thought about word press but I could not find a side by side lay out and I think I want to keep that part of the web site.

Try http://warpspire.com/hemingway




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Make your marketing more effective. Work with a cross-promotion partner. Visit www.brandtorrent.com to find out how.

I think the side by side is part of your problem. The web typically doesn`t read that way ... people don`t go back up to the top and re-read the same page. I think you would be better off stacking them, and then in some way distinguishing one person`s answer from the other. Look at blogs with multiple entries ... they don`t go side by side, they go one after the other. I don`t even know how that layout would look in a feed ... (Do you have a feed? I didn`t notice one.)

You have the top articles - the incentive for people to read more than one page which is crucial to increase page views and income - sandwiched somewhere in the middle where it would be largely ignored.

The typography makes it so that my eye doesn`t know where to go on the page, so you get a bit lost in the oversized-ness of it.

The typos in the text bother me ... but I think that is because the writer in me wants to mentally correct everything as I go along. I`m not sure most people would notice them, but I don`t know.

I would not try "Hemingway" as a template ... In fact I would never, ever, EVER make a content site with a black background and white text unless I enjoyed giving my readers headaches.

On my screen, you have so much wasted space in your header area ... I don`t even see the text until I scroll down ... it`s "below the fold" for me.

I think that you are wasting your time with AdWords ... I think you would be making a lot more with targeted CPM advertising with the kind of traffic that you mentioned in your other post.

Sorry ... I know I come across as harsh sometimes ... just trying to help. I think you may hit a roadblock at some point in terms of getting new users until you find a more modern design and utilize social media functionality to take yourself to the next level.

I don`t have an 800 x 600. I actually have 1280 x 800 on a nice, new MacBook screen. And I still don`t see anything other than your header ... so consider that.

You can get side by side perhaps if you stagger them a bit. It just needs something. Sorry I can`t be more descriptive ... I pay an artist to figure out how to make it work on the page. I just know usability problems when I see them.

A feed, updates by email or feed, a newsletter, and social media capabilities like "StumbleUpon" would all help you.

If you can market your book in bridal stores, why can`t you market bridal stores in ads on your site? I mean, if you have the traffic, you might as well use it for the advertising!

I remember this site, and I still think it`s a great idea! To that end, the side-by-side *does* matter, and I think is more important than usual or typical viewing/reading habits for online Web content. After all, this is a debate and controversy situation, with two sides to each issue.

The colors are a problem when they`re carried over from the main pink-and-blue theme of the discussions themselves. In those arguments, the pink or blue serves a purpose of keeping the reader aware of the male or female perspective.

However; you have to use colors entirely different from the "containing" shell of the site itself. Otherwise, people will get confused and think your tabs are for women, and your menus could be for men....if you get my meaning. I know, you don`t do it that way exactly, but here`s an example.

Your "Past Topics" are all on pink, with red descriptions. Aside from it being very hard to read, we`d get the impression that past topics are "female" oriented because of the pink.

As for font size, it`s better (in my opinion) to choose a browser-type size like "large, medium, small" rather than a font size or percentage. I tend to use "small" which renders the font in the typical size the browser thinks is good for a particular monitor. The computer owner can then make it larger or smaller, per their own vision and taste. Pixel size is too specific and gets translated oddly in many cases.

Where I think there may be an issue of visibility is in the amount of content. I can`t remember when you first brought this site out, but it was quite a while back. Now, seeing it again, there are only 11 topics. That`s not very much content for a content site that`s like a weekly (or daily) column in a newspaper.

From what I read, one of the important aspects of search-engine visibility is changing content. If there`s always new content, the SEs tend to look at it more closely. That, and the inbound links.

So I think it`ll help if you develop a "site" color scheme, and make that completely different from the pink-and-blue dialog theme. Increase your amount of content to at least once a week. Build some linking through Web rings (or what, "social networking" as it`s now called?) and other forum participation.

It`s still a great idea, and you can worry about making money with it later. :-)

CraigL,

Thanks for you feed back. We did take a month off from the site right after we put it up. I had to have my galblader out and had a little fight with colon cancer but were back up and running. We are posting two articles a week now. I will work on the color sceam of the site and see what I can come up with there.

Thanks again for the feed back.

Robert

Sorry to hear about the gallbladder. I had mine out a couple of years ago, and it sucked. Meanwhile, now you`re back up and running, so let us know when you`ve messed with the site a bit. :-) I really do like the idea of the gender debate, and think it could become pretty popular.