One of the first things besides your domain and load times that can impact whether or not someone ever comes back to your site is definitely your theme. You know the layout and color scheme. These easy to make combinations of errors can make a good site go awfully wrong and in a dam hurry. I wish that we could incorporate into our editors and image creation software a little head. On this head if we made bad choices in color for contrast or just decent taste it would change into a really upset looking bloke and let us know what we are about to do.
Alas this is not the way it is, unless of course your a developer for eve-online and happen to work on ccp’s design team. Yea their design software actually has the head of the lead guy and when they use unfriendly color combos determined by god knows what it gets really mad and wont allow them to publish the content until its fixed. Although a novel idea it is really not workable as we all use a plethora of different types of software to create every aspect of our site.
That being said we can all avoid the majority dark color schemes and bright pinks, greens and yellows are the enemy. Unless your having babies please avoid using these. Dark schemes are cool in theory but very few actually get the content 100% across in a clear and concise method. Try as you might you may lose many viewers to this fact right off the bat. Try switching to your second or third favorite theme and watch your analytics for a few days to see what happens.
Fonts must be easy to read and make sure your testing in more than just the browser you happen to use as their are more than just one. Generally stick with the smallest font size being 12 points. This will for most be readable enough with out having to manually adjust the font larger even on todays higher resolution panels.
While most blogs are in order and lack clutter their is an equal contigent which is in complete chaos. This works for some, but for the majority organize. This is something I was very guilty of when I first started out. As you can tell I have cut the clutter out almost completely. I am fighting for Entrecard to stay on my main page, but that is for another post and another day.
You can still make a unique and interesting site which is content driven and not gimmicks and clutter which is hard to read and be happy. Trust me it will not happen over night. It honestly took me a little more than month to get this blog layout and design wise and lacking in clutter as it is. For others depending on the theme could be much much worse or even much better.
What are some things you notice when surfing the blogosphere that just make you want to pull out your hair out? Even if its me lets hear it.
I agree Ben, I think it also depends on the blog in question. If one is focused more on content, and, actually providing good info, then clutter is the enemy, at the same time, a little bit of eye candy can go a long way.
For sites like yours, where your blog is an extension of you and not just a niche site…..then the less clutter the better. Readers expect a little ads and promo, but, if you have ads after each paragraph, at the top of each post, and all the way down your side bar, plus a little floaty ad on the other side….I think it’s time to rethink the layout
I too started with a whole lot of clutter, not just ads, but the little gimmicky plugin widgets and stuff, and, I just didn’t like how the site was looking. At first, you try to model the blogs you see as being a success…but, the more you do it, the more you come into your own, and realize what you’d like in a blog…..so, you give that to your readers.
I love your layout, it’s easy to navigate, it’s clean, and you still give your ads their 15 minutes of fame. I think the layout of a blog is probably even more important than the domain.
I want mine to be unique, so first I used the fluidytrys theme, but it was white on black. I changed the background, with some different grays instead of blacks. I realized that was crappy too. I then changed it to some greens, which looks good but I know there is still something lacking. I am lacking web 2.0. The greens are just plain greens, the theme is just a plain theme, and it has no web 2.0. So what I need is to make the green completely transparent in some places and around the edges it can be darker. The only problem is that I can’t do that, due to problems with photoshop. I do agree that the site needs to be very organized, and I think you have mastered that by far.
Btw have you sent the contest prizes out yet?
As soon as I am live at the house which is suppose to be some time tomorrow I will be getting in touch with everyone who has not yet recieved their prizes and for the wait I am throwing in something extra as well