Reader Blog Critique : Crenk.com

8 Responses to “Reader Blog Critique : Crenk.com”

Author comments are in a darker gray color for you to easily identify the posts author in the comments

1. Tom - StandOutBlogger.com says:

   December 23, 2008 at 5:45 am

   I noticed that the owner provides to incentive to subscribe to Crenk. I’d create a short ebook, or something to give to new subscribers.
2. Tobias Fransson says:

   December 23, 2008 at 7:01 am

   To increase subscription rates offer some form of freebie, could be a crash course relevant to the blog niche.

   Special offers, discounts etc by growing a e-mail newsletter readership
   the options to monetize increases.

   Also change the design so the eye is more drawn to the subscription option. Right now it “fades in” with the rest of the sidebar. Make it stand out more, i have seen some insanely big RSS buttons but they all had a pretty good amount of RSS Subscribers.

   I love the way that the content is displayed. It is SUPER easy to find and navigate the topic put the sidebar could contain a list of categories if I was interested in a particular type of tech gadget.

   The Category listing could be added below the recent article part of the sidebar.

   I like the “older entries link” at the bottom although I think that the older entries should point to the right and the newer entries point to the left.

   It just sort of felt backwards for me.

   Overall I like the design since it is really easy to find the content and navigate through the articles.

   -Tobias Fransson
3. Mike Panic says:

   December 23, 2008 at 10:52 am

   OK, here goes, it’s a little out of order so bear with me. The sidebar isn’t user friendly because 90% of what users use sidebars for is under the fold on a 1280×1024 monitor, even less on my 1280×800 Macbook. Where the Crenk logo is in red in the upper left corner, there is too much dead space above, below and to the right of it.

   Lijit search box contains way to much dead space around it and there is the better part of 300 pixels high of dead space above it.

   RSS in the top right corner allows me to subscribe to posts / comments / email – but it doesn’t look like you’ve ripped the comments feed to feedburner, so you might have more users than you think. The email is nice, but that text link looks like a Contact email link, not a subscribe by email link to me. Get a form box in there.

   Ditch the recent comments out of the sidebar, the homepage covers so much, I feel it’s a waste to show the same 10 articles. Look for a WP plugin to display your 10 most popular articles, that will help them grow even more. Move this to the top, below the Lijit search.

   Another RSS subscribe option in the sidebar below Lijit search, why two RSS options and a form box? If you use the form box, fill in the text with name@website.com or make it yellow to stand out.

   Job boards – it’s a new feature to Crenk, but the button is too big and doesn’t fit the overall style of the site. That should be integrated into the header to the right of Web Apps.

   Featured sites and tools! text link links to the Job board?

   Install an Archives plugin so that you can create a page to display the archives, no where on the homepage can I access them. It’s way cleaner and looks nicer than putting the archives in “the loop” and showing them on the sidebar.

   No footer navigation, the site generally is pretty long, so having either an Up button or footer nav would help greatly, and give you a place to display some About information, maybe the recent articles down there, top articles, etc. etc.

   On individual posts, there is an option to subscribe to that particular article’s RSS feed, again not ripped through feedburner, so your numbers could be a little off. I’d personally remove that.

   Regarding the desire to get more traffic via social bookmarking and networking sites, there are a dozen really good WP plugins that can help this. You’re heavily promoting the Crenk Twitter account, but there is no “twit this” button on articles, nor an SU button, which I’ve found tends to send more traffic for days and days instead of an instant burst like digg.

   The colors, layout, style and fonts all work really well and make things super easy to read.
4. Shrihari says:

   December 23, 2008 at 10:56 am

   First of all I’d like to tell you that the blog has great Design. And the way the posts appear on the frontpage is also very good. Now, I’ll carry on with my suggestions.

   – The whole design is left-aligned, which doesn’t appear too good. It’d be better if you make the blog center aligned.

   – I’d attribute the low subscriber conversion to the “not-so-visible” Subscribing options. I’d suggest that you place the subscribe form above the search form. And, use a bigger Image for the Feed. And, consider displaying a “enter your email address” in the subscribe form.

   – Separate the “send tips” text from the search form. And make the “send tips” text stand out a bit more.

   – As suggested, it’d be good if a category list of tag cloud was present on the sidebar.

   – The “Featured Sites & Tools” has a problem. Check that one.

   – Regarding your question about Social media sites, you have the “promotion badges” laid out pretty well on the post page. So there is nothing more you can do other than write quality, viral content.

   That ends my comments. Lastly, I’d like to say that you have a nice blog there.

   Regarding what Tobias said above :

   I think that the older entries should point to the right and the newer entries point to the left.

   I think it is correct the present way. Older entries pointing to the right and newer links to the right. Thats how most blog have it.

   –
   Shrihari.S
5. Steven Finch says:

   December 23, 2008 at 11:10 am

   Thanks everyone for the great feedback so far. Im really think about making some key changes to the site after this. Keep the comments coming!!
6. Rarst says:

   December 29, 2008 at 4:42 pm

   New one for me, fresh impressions.

   First impression – nice grunge styling.
   Second – this layout is sooooo weird.

   General notes

   1. Non-centered feels weird indeed.
   2. Doesn’t validate http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://crenk.com/
   3. 45+ JS files? Looots of duplicates. Code really could use cleanup.

   Header

   4. I like navigation block but logo manages to be lost between nav and index.
   5. Judging by about and recent posts web/mobile apps are priority topics, category bar could reflect that.

   Static pages

   6. On about page “big photo > small photo > no photo” feels funny.
   7. I don’t like headlines atached to static pages, makes them cluttered.
   8. Contact us is… minimalistic. More contacts or just move lonely email elsewhere (like to about).

   Index

   9. Loses me. I am not good with magazine layouts in general but this one is especially puzzling.
   10. What is difference between big column and small column?
   11. Category buttons feel wrong. Too big, too prominent, completely break titles from excerpts.
   12. No images at all, wall of text could really use some visual hints. Maybe category icons?

   Single post page

   13. More or less fine.
   14. Including every single social icon is questionable. Not bad but in my opinion it’s better to choose and focus. The more buttons the less clicks they will get.
   15. Posts could use some sub-headings for easier reading.

   Sidebar

   16. Awful. Lots of ads from very top, badly aligned overall, recent articles blog is huge and unreadable because of excessive multicolored details. I hadn’t even recognized subscription link (blogro-what?).

   Footer

   17. Fine.

   Overall

   I feel like content is strong priority here, which is perfectly fine and blog seems to be doing good. Still it could use a weekend or two with code editor, validator and bit of thinking on layout.
7. Marnie Dillon says:

   January 9, 2009 at 8:29 pm

   hi
   w8i8jodkjxsn1r0m
   good luck
8. website information says:

   January 21, 2009 at 12:23 pm

   He needs to consume the wasted web page estate on the sidebar. That space should be placed with something that could entice readers.

Trackbacks

Comments are closed.

Comments are closed since this post is older than 30 days. However, you can continue this discussion in our popular Blogging Forums