This post is a paid review as part of the Review-Me
David Birch of Hear-Hear.com
has asked
me to write a review of his site.
About the blog
David Birch has created a blog created with software from CityDesk
,
correct me if I am wrong there David. It does not have the usual design
aesthetics that a wordpress or typepad template might have, but it gets the
information across.
The blog has an eclectic collection of articles ranging from software hacks
to life hacks. Clicking through the articles and reading a lot of themthere is some great information in them. The articles are short and to
the point and get the message across which is always a good thing.
Design
Colours on the site: red and black certainly do grab the readers attention
and has become, I suspect, part of the brand of hear-hear.com. For methe colours work and I have used them myself on blog designs. The simplicity
of the design lends itself to these colours.
The design itself is a two column design with a 60/40 design spilt, so the
left column takes up 40% of the fixed width and the right is left for the content. From
a design point of view I would have this as a 75/25 split as the left column
is only housing the basics such as archives, about me, categories, subscribe
me, and Google ads. This would give the reader a better focal point for
the actual content itself.
The headings are very important in a blog and David has opted for, sometimes,
long descriptive titles and has not blended the colours of the headings to
the blog, they are dark grey. I would use a red for the headings and
have the main body black text, like it is. I would also have the headings
in a smaller font and use less but more descriptive words in the heading. This,
I believe, would attract the readers eye more and would be easier on the eye.
Content
As I mentioned before some of the content is good and has some good information.
Some of the posts can be seen here:
To
Rent or to Buy Real Estate? This thingie calculates the answer to that question.
Post
length ranges from 38 words to 330 words. The posts seem to all
have a date of 17th November or 16th January, which I don't quite understand
as when I have clicked through on them the dates change. I would fix
this as it can put readers off. One of the first things I do when checking
out a blog is look at the posting dates so I know if the blog is kept up to
date.
The blog as whole is not focused on any one topic. If you are trying
to attract readers to your blog it might be confusing for them as they don't
really know what your blog is about. Is it a tech blog, is it a personal
development blog, is it a games blog? It's hard to discern. Break
up your topics and focus them more and have 6 blogs on the topics you are passionate
about.
Conclusion
I have to be honest with this and say there are a lot of things that could
be changed on the blog to make it more readable and more user friendly. David,if you are serious about your blog I would look at the following and implement
some changes:
- SEO: to get search engine traffic change your Meta name keywords
- Change your
titles to red and make them shorter and more descriptive - Make your blog more
focused on the topic you are most passionate about - Change the article length
to an average of around 250 words - Again for SEO change your tagline to something
more descriptive
If you would like to comment on this review please leave
a comment. DavidI would welcome your feedback here and thank you for giving me the chance
to review your blog.
Some Amazing Comments
Comments
