7 replies to this topic

[relosmot]

I have started working with the MD2 skin and I have to say, Alex - you are the man. Huge inspiration.

Webpage Journey is my blog to post the cool stuff I learn while I pursue my entrepreneurial dream.

I have a ton of work left before I will be satisfied but the MD2 skin has made life A LOT easier. Thanks Alex!

-Tom

[Alex Mangini]

Tom,

That's so awesome, I love it! My suggestion is to make the headlines for posts larger, and use an easier to read font. You want them to stand out more than blend in, and right now they blend in quite a bit.

Other than that, I think you did a great job with the design!

[Bret Wagner]

Tom-

Great work with the site design. You do a great job highlighting your best content in your menus as quicklinks. You also have some great visuals to support the content - I keyed in specifically on the AWeber how-to series as you have some great images in there showing the reader what you are talking about.

I also like how your banner advertising is below the fold. I recently heard that Google has started penalizing for advertising that is too high up on the page - maybe this was adsense-specific, but in any case, I think a good rule of thumb is to keep advertising below the fold as much as possible and let your content shine through. Let your readers discover your sponsors as they read through the content and have started to trust your advice.

A suggestion - opt-in forms on about pages tend to convert well.

Cheers
Bret

[relosmot]

Bret,

Thank you so much for the kind words and advice. I definitely agree with you about letting your content shine thorough, especially in the blogging/internet marketing niche where readers often understand the concepts of banner advertising themselves so they MUST be convinced before clicking anything.

I will try using an op-in form on my about page and see how conversions go.

Thank you again for the advice!
-Tom

p.s. Madison is an awesome place, I live in Minnesota and visit friends in school there once and awhile.

[ngee key]

Hi Tom,

What a great site you have. I just love the mixture of the colors on the homepage.
Feel warm and cozy. I was trying to play with colors, but it was a tough nut for me.

I like the feature box, very prominent to ask people to subscribe for blog medicine.
Building email list is one of the most important strategy for online marketers like us.

I like the right widget of introducing yourself. The round image of you is bigger than
the one that comes with the skin.
Below that widget, you may want to add a opt in form too.
I like the blog articles where you have pictures visible to the reader. I try to have
that feature picture, but couldn't.

At the bottom, I like the layout with all the information intact. But it is a bit small
and a bit cluttered. Perhaps you might want to streamline those important ones.
And also you may want to add in a opt in mail list as well.

Overall the site is well done and I am sure you have put in a lot of effort in making
it come true.

Cheers,
Ngee Key

[relosmot]

Hey Ngee,

Thank you so much for checking out my site and giving feedback. I am going to work on the footer and adding a nice optin form to my about section at the top of my sidebar.

You will get the hang of changing colors and anything else you want to customize with time and practice.

I recommend you check out two resources. The first is a post written by Alex on Blogussion and the second is about customizing your custiom.css file.

• 4 Ways to Customize Your Thesis Theme (By Alex)
  
• Customizing your thesis custom.css file

Thanks again!

-Tom

[Sean Davis]

I agree with everyone... the site looks great. I was actually admiring your site a few days ago. The color combination is one of my favorites.

What I like the most is that you don't depend on the skin to do everything for you. You stepped outside of MD2 and put your own touch on everything. That's how it should be done. The about me widget is wonderful and the footer is just awesome.

The only thing I would suggest is a little something more to make the logo memorable. Not that it's not a good logo, but all the way down to the orange portion of it gets drowned out by how much brighter the orange is everywhere else. When i leave your site, I remember the site... but not your brand or the name of your site. So that could hurt retention.

[ngee key]

My pleasure Tom. It is always great to share and learn from each other. It is the support of this community that inspire us to have a great website to engage the readers and have a better retention rate to influence people to take action.
I would like to know more about the technical stuff, but it seems like a huge hurdle for me. So it is a reason why I decided to outsource some experts to do it in relate to some customization. I will be putting my website for review and hope to get feedback to improve further. Thanks a lot to Sean and Alex for their awesome support