Welcome to the 4th Reader Blog Critique. Last weeks critique of SlyVisions went well so thanks to all who took part, in particular Rarst and Banji who left long detailed replies.
This weeks critque is Let’s Sermo, a blog which covers a range of topics including technology, search engine optimisation, humour and more.
I asked the owner Farrhad, a student from India, what he thought needs to be done to improve the blog. Here’s what he had to say :
- The blog is a mixed bag and I mainly want ideas from people on what would they to read on my blog.
- What changes would you like to see on the blog? What turns you off?
- Where can I improve?
- I just got the blog redesigned so I would love some comments on that.
- Do you have any ideas of what I could add to the design to make it more ‘cool’. Is there anything else I can improve to make it both attractive and easy on the eye?
In addition I welcome commenters to talk about the blogs content and design and any suggestions you have for promoting the blog.
The most helpful and constructive commenter will get $10. Alternatively, if you prefer, I can register a domain for you at eNom and push it to your account 
Farrhad will decide who the best commenter was.
As usual, I remind everyone that positive or negative, all feedback should be constructive.
If you have any questions about any of this please let me know in this thread
Blog to be Reviewed : Let’s Sermo
I'd say the design seems nice and clean
First of all, that big 'subscribe today' badge seems connected to the ad. So, a person could misjudge the ad for the subscribe option and vice versa. Also, it doesn't really symbolize anything. I mean, subscriptions are generally shown by an RSS icon, so any newbie (or even an experienced person) could get confused so as to the purpose of this badge. I'd suggest separating the badge and the add, and add a description to the subscribe option, like : "Subscribe to the RSS feed!" or something
Second of all, I thought the font size is too small. I had to squint my eyes and read… but that just might be me
Third of all, that WordPress logo looks out of place (or it shouldn't be there). I mean, your blog isn't specifically about WordPress, is it? It's spread out over many niches (humour, tech, etc): so, I think it should be removed, but then again, that just might be me!
Fourth-ly, I think your homepage might be a little too long. The left side of the page seems a lot heavier than the right(sidebar). I vote you either decrease the number of posts on the homepage, or make the sidebar a little more heavy (which is dangerous, because you could increase clutter).
That's my two cents
First impression – looks so cool. Feels bright and original.
Second impression – cool slaughtered usability.
Going from top to bottom, usual routine for me by now.
0. Not using permalinks. Bad.
0. 404 page totally sucks.
0. No archives or sitemap. XML sitemap is empty.
0. ~2Mb images on front page. Way too heavy… Wait…
760Kb bitmap image on home page?! Fix it immediately and say that I had hallucination. That's like super-lame.
1. Top navigation nice but can be easily confised with categories that sit and look where navigation often sits.
1a. Links page. And the purpose of it is?.. Saying "go to contact page" ?
1b. Advertise page. Inconsistent title – page title after blog title. Backwards than rest of pages.
1c. Contact page. Only contact form. There are twitter and email mentioned in other places but not here. List all means of contact, that's what contact page is for. Also I am not sure I want to "help spread the word" about advertise page.
Include social buttons where it it meaningful only.
1d. Subscription. Inconsistent – main feed is feedburner but comment feed isn't. Not using RSS acronym or icon greatly lowers visibility. People react to common stuff better.
2. Logo. Carries zero information and tag line is way to the left. There is no way to quickly understand what blog is about.
3. Search form. When you click away from empty search form "Enter search keyword" doesn't reappear.
4. Subscribe thing sucks. Blends with banner (as mentioned above), doesn't use RSS symbols.
5. Posts on home page. Too many full post displayed – makes page very long. Not good font/background contrast. Not using any sub-headings or separators – text blends. "Continue reading" doesn't have much sense on full posts and blends into page. Big image in Firefox post breaks out of column. "Older entries" sucks – make it proper page number navigation block.
6. Single post page. Blog has single author? Than why display author below each post? Without gravatar as well? "Related posts" block is empty. Fix it or lose it.
7. Sidebar. Confusing – tabbed block is nice to save space but has zero indication what tab is active. Technorati/Stumble are not aligned properly.
8. Footer. WordPress link is broken. Two theme links that point so same place.
Overall. Very cool looks but hard to determine what it's all about and the way posts are formatted is not pleasantly readable (contrast, dividers).
I have a feeling I am missing something so I'll stare bit more later and may add stuff.
PS understood what was really bugging me.
No subscription links under post – they are really must have there.
Personally, ( I am not a techie) I find the blog pleasant.However,
It is my belief, that you should right more original or informative posts.
Rarst has covered a lot of great points so to add to what he has said.
* The home page image is very large. Not something that concerns me but anyone with a slow connection will be frustrated by this.
* The links page only has two links. I would either increase the number of links on the page or remove it from the main menu for now.
* Advertise page needs improving. The strikes through the sentences and the update comments make it look kind of unprofessional.
* No archives
* The 'Please help us spread the word!' area in your sidebar should include your twitter too. Perhaps it should be called labelled something else as well such as 'Social' or 'Follow me'or whatever.
* No Permalinks
* Text font is a little small and it this makes it difficult to read posts.
* At the end of each post you have 'If you enjoyed reading this article Please Stumble It!''. The 'Please Stumble It' should be a stumble link.
* The 'This post was written by' part at the end of each post isn't needed if there's only one author.
* Related Posts on the sidebar doesn't seem to be working.
* I think you're posts need brought to life. Most technology blogs have loads of images but there doesn't seem to be any in your posts.
* On some posts paragraphs seem really long but on others there are 4 or 5 paragraphs which are only one sentence long. I think you should be more consistent. Long paragraphs make it harder for readers to digest the information. There are times when you can write short paragraphs to break the post up however if you have 4 or 5 short paragraphs in a row I think bullet points would be much better.
I don't see my comment showing up, probably eaten by filter…
Wanted to add that there are plenty of markup errors.
I have to say that is one very nice theme. However I agree that the wordpress icon is out of place since you are not writing about WordPress. The theme itself is very fresh and it successfully makes me want to have a look at your blog and not just leave.
1) First question I asked, is what's sermo? I am not familiar with the word. Even though I can guess that it means "get talking", I would recommend you put up a link that says "What is Sermo?" and put your "about" content there. People will want to know the meaning of the word and when they were forwarded to your about page, you can further entice your readers by highlighting your best entries there. It's all about strategically directing your readers.
2) You will need to come up with better headlines for your entries. I looked at your most popular entries and even though I'm sure that the entries are very good, the headlines doesn't attract me to have a read. You might want to avoid these types of headlines
- Totally pointless trivia
- Funny jokes
- pointless trivia.. once again
It's such a waste that great entries get buried just because the headlines don't do them justice
3) Your theme is very nice to the eyes. It will be complementary if your entries have a few images as well. It will make your blog more memorable.
4) Your "Continue Reading" is very confusing. I find that a lot of your entries are shown in full in the home page. There's no need to put "continue reading" unless you're only showing an excerpt of your entries. It is better to change it to "Add comments"
5) Permalinks – try to change the link to "title" instead of "post #". You will be amazed with the traffic from search engine immediately after you make the change. Be sure to redirect your previous permalinks to new one by installing this Redirection Plugin
Now you can change those permalinks to perfectly SEO'd permalinks without having to do anything else, or worry about the search engine consequences.
6) Try to make it a habit that when you say "comment here", put a link on the words to your commenting area. And if you say "Stumble", put a link to your stumble link. Readers are very supportive, but the more steps they need to do to support you, the higher the chances are they are just going to leave.
Do leave me a message if you need any other clarification or help.
Well, the first thing I see, and this is a design no-no, is that you should never have anything above the logo. I got to the site, went, "Ok, what is this site about?", but I couldn't find it.
And everyone else pretty much nailed it.
Can we get a before and after of the sites to see what they have changed? I looked at this site and the last one, and it doesn't look like they took any of the criticism and made changes to their blog.
I have been going through, taking everything that has been said, and tweaking my blog like crazy.
Thanks everyone!
I have started making the changes