Leslie, your font is too big man. Consider making your fonts smaller, especially those categories and snippets of comments at the sidebars. It is staring at me gigantically while I browse through, kinda like raping my eyes. Try to minimize it. If i need to scroll a few page to see what features you have on your site, then it is not very user friendly. Go to any website, news or whatever, everything should fit into 1-2 page of scrolling. But yours stretch to 15 pages. Either you squeeze them or decrease the font at the side. Quite difficult to distinguish wordings on this page.
For example look at this site http://www.hungzai.com or http://www.nytimes.com/ or http://www.ameinfo.com/
Every snippets or excerpts of anything at the sidebar should be smaller font so readers can look at the whole thing with a glance or otherwise scroll just 1 page down and selectively click those that interest them.
Just a little suggestion if you want to take it further. If I were you, it's time to work on your presentation to give it a professional look. I will even upgrade to wordpress engine - the mercedes of blogging platform. Blogger is like a Nissan March! Of course you feel comfortable with a March because you haven't driven the merc! Try ask any wordpress users, they don't look back. If blogger can walk, wordpress can teleport you.
My opinion is that if you are trying to grow a community, you should change the layout from a personal blog to something like an online food magazine. Here is one website to inspire you > www.askmen.com. It's a men's online magazine with all related articles listed in relevant topics(which you call labels in blogger platform and others call categories). Basically whether you wanna call it blog or magazine or whatever, it's the same thing, the only difference is in the layout which will decide the potential to grow. Just like you like farming but whether you plant it in your garden or road side or buy a plot of land to plant on a bigger scale.
Some suggestions I can think of for your site.
1. Reduce your font size. Web 2.0 don't have all the big fonts raping reader's eyes. The website must be as user friendly and easily accessible to all features as possible.(for those who prefer large fonts, there is an option in the browser to enlarge everything)
2. Change categories to sections. We can tell you're trying to list all the locations at the top hence the numbering of your labels before the name. It looked awful to be honest. In other engines like wordpress or geeklog, you can just put all locations into a parent category called LOCATION and you can list it easily at any part of your website. Bloggers cannot do that as they do not allow child-parent relationship between categories(which blogger call labels).
3) Change your entire layout to become a online food news review website.
To be honest, according to your stats, you only receive roughly 2 pageviews per readers. That is very low for a blog. This is a sign that readers only come here to read your latest post and that's it. You haven't got enough features to tempt them to read other posts. Meaning you haven't promoted your other categories enough so they dont know what's hiding inside your database other than looking at your categories which doesnt tell them more than what they already know. You should have a static front page(which wordpress allow you to) where you can showcase your other pictures and food etc etc. Wordpress is king in this area. Blogger forget it, can't do much.
4. Entice people all over your blog to subscribe to your feed. Call it 'Read latest by Email', 'Get notified of latest reviews'. Whatever you wanna call it, coin the terms and plant it everywhere in your blog. This can help you boost your reputation if you can get a high feed count.
5. Allow user's registration(wordpress), so they all won't come in as whatever profile from livejournal or elsewhere. You can control your readers by getting them to register, offer them some nice reading features like no ads etc. Can also create a member's profile page where they can PM each other or find out more about other user. All these, bloggers can't do. Look at this website, they done it very well to control it's readers. www.talkingcock.com
A lot of those i mentioned, you can only rock it out with other engines like drupal, geeklog or wordpress. It's true that you started this as a blog but since now you're receiving media attention, i guess that is enough reason for you to make this into a beautiful site. Do it right and with wordpress you wont look back!
Web 2.0 means fundamental shift from architecting web-applications.
Think about accessibility and mass featuring. It's about using technology to enrich the lives of users. Allowing readers to reach out to the deepest part of your content buried deep inside.
Web 2.0 is like a 'carnival of funfair games' instead of a boring tikam game inside a shop.
Web 2.0? You gotta be kidding. Welcome to Web 3.0. Web 2.0 will soon be yesterday's news. The cutting edge in today's web development is in the trend of "web fashion". Think of what value you can provide for readers that your competitors cannot. How is what you do(service or product) better, and how do you want to position/relate that message to your readers. It's like you sells chicken rice and your competitor sells chicken rice, what makes you different that people come to you? That is the much talked about Web 3.0.
In the beginning of the web, people(designers/developers/marketers) wanted to get it up quick by putting up a site, do what the big boys were doing. Nice site, good content. But that theory is expired. Now internet users had moved from 'poverty' to 'cash rich' readers where there are an abundance of choices. So the next phase is decided by value.
9 comments:
Leslie, your font is too big man. Consider making your fonts smaller, especially those categories and snippets of comments at the sidebars. It is staring at me gigantically while I browse through, kinda like raping my eyes. Try to minimize it. If i need to scroll a few page to see what features you have on your site, then it is not very user friendly. Go to any website, news or whatever, everything should fit into 1-2 page of scrolling. But yours stretch to 15 pages. Either you squeeze them or decrease the font at the side. Quite difficult to distinguish wordings on this page.
For example look at this site http://www.hungzai.com or http://www.nytimes.com/ or http://www.ameinfo.com/
Every snippets or excerpts of anything at the sidebar should be smaller font so readers can look at the whole thing with a glance or otherwise scroll just 1 page down and selectively click those that interest them.
Just a little suggestion if you want to take it further. If I were you, it's time to work on your presentation to give it a professional look. I will even upgrade to wordpress engine - the mercedes of blogging platform. Blogger is like a Nissan March! Of course you feel comfortable with a March because you haven't driven the merc! Try ask any wordpress users, they don't look back. If blogger can walk, wordpress can teleport you.
Yes I am looking into it. Know anyone who can help me?
I think the font sizes are alright. I may be getting old though, and bigger font are easier to read. Many blogs are also very very long.
Yes yes yes! Please upgrade to wordpress engine. : )
I can help you to migrate if you want.
My opinion is that if you are trying to grow a community, you should change the layout from a personal blog to something like an online food magazine. Here is one website to inspire you > www.askmen.com. It's a men's online magazine with all related articles listed in relevant topics(which you call labels in blogger platform and others call categories). Basically whether you wanna call it blog or magazine or whatever, it's the same thing, the only difference is in the layout which will decide the potential to grow. Just like you like farming but whether you plant it in your garden or road side or buy a plot of land to plant on a bigger scale.
Some suggestions I can think of for your site.
1. Reduce your font size.
Web 2.0 don't have all the big fonts raping reader's eyes. The website must be as user friendly and easily accessible to all features as possible.(for those who prefer large fonts, there is an option in the browser to enlarge everything)
2. Change categories to sections.
We can tell you're trying to list all the locations at the top hence the numbering of your labels before the name. It looked awful to be honest. In other engines like wordpress or geeklog, you can just put all locations into a parent category called LOCATION and you can list it easily at any part of your website. Bloggers cannot do that as they do not allow child-parent relationship between categories(which blogger call labels).
3) Change your entire layout to become a online food news review website.
To be honest, according to your stats, you only receive roughly 2 pageviews per readers. That is very low for a blog. This is a sign that readers only come here to read your latest post and that's it. You haven't got enough features to tempt them to read other posts. Meaning you haven't promoted your other categories enough so they dont know what's hiding inside your database other than looking at your categories which doesnt tell them more than what they already know. You should have a static front page(which wordpress allow you to) where you can showcase your other pictures and food etc etc. Wordpress is king in this area. Blogger forget it, can't do much.
4. Entice people all over your blog to subscribe to your feed. Call it 'Read latest by Email', 'Get notified of latest reviews'. Whatever you wanna call it, coin the terms and plant it everywhere in your blog. This can help you boost your reputation if you can get a high feed count.
5. Allow user's registration(wordpress), so they all won't come in as whatever profile from livejournal or elsewhere. You can control your readers by getting them to register, offer them some nice reading features like no ads etc. Can also create a member's profile page where they can PM each other or find out more about other user. All these, bloggers can't do. Look at this website, they done it very well to control it's readers. www.talkingcock.com
A lot of those i mentioned, you can only rock it out with other engines like drupal, geeklog or wordpress. It's true that you started this as a blog but since now you're receiving media attention, i guess that is enough reason for you to make this into a beautiful site. Do it right and with wordpress you wont look back!
I agree. It's time you strive for web 2.0.
Web 2.0 means fundamental shift from architecting web-applications.
Think about accessibility and mass featuring. It's about using technology to enrich the lives of users. Allowing readers to reach out to the deepest part of your content buried deep inside.
Web 2.0 is like a 'carnival of funfair games' instead of a boring tikam game inside a shop.
Web 2.0? You gotta be kidding. Welcome to Web 3.0. Web 2.0 will soon be yesterday's news. The cutting edge in today's web development is in the trend of "web fashion". Think of what value you can provide for readers that your competitors cannot. How is what you do(service or product) better, and how do you want to position/relate that message to your readers. It's like you sells chicken rice and your competitor sells chicken rice, what makes you different that people come to you? That is the much talked about Web 3.0.
In the beginning of the web, people(designers/developers/marketers) wanted to get it up quick by putting up a site, do what the big boys were doing. Nice site, good content. But that theory is expired. Now internet users had moved from 'poverty' to 'cash rich' readers where there are an abundance of choices. So the next phase is decided by value.
Things come and go. Web 2.0 will soon be old hat.
OK Bernard, please write to my email leslie.tay@gmail.com to move forward on this.
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