I’ve had this blog redesign for a few years now, and it may start to show its cracks. For some, they like the simple layout and design, easy to scroll, for others, they may want a more updated look and feel.
I’ve noticed quite a few blogs have been changing their designs lately, they are more media centric, have more of a front page newspaper look, esp for high volume blogs. Who’s done it? Techcrunch, Scoble, Teresa Valdez Klein, Shel Israel, I think I first noticed this a few months ago from Ars Technica. In fact last night I was evaluating quite a few premium wordpress themes that are available for purchase.
Curt Monash of Network World reviewed a few blogs, and gave me some feedback when I asked how I can improve, (read comments) then extended it to his own personal blog with practical recommendations. He gives me and other bloggers some food for thought on effective blog design for 2008.
I believe in full feedback loop (part of the reason I ask so many questions), and in fact have done surveys’ before to find out what folks want (I now know the majority of my readers are interactive marketers). I keep in mind that I write for a business audience, often a corporate, that’s making decisions about how to use web tools.
Perhaps one of the most important thing about user experience is to remember the users, so I’d like to turn it over to you:
Do you think I need a redesign? If so, what should change? Any examples of blogs that you like?
I’d update design a bit.
Check http://www.favbrowser.com/short-information-for-web-developers/ for compatibility issues.
You can’t go wrong with animated gif’s…
Seriously… IMO you need to go a little wider and maybe incorporate 3 columns. Use the columns to display more small sections that allow readers to see past content. You have no recent posts, or popular posts, or related posts, etc…
BTW, with all you social tools, I know you have some really good ideas about how to integrate different forms of content into you blog. For example, connect your flickr account to return images based on blog content. Return related twitter posts to blog post, etc…
Actually now that I think about it, your blog is fine, just leave it.
I think the current design looks simple and quite fine for both type of readers – using PCs or mobile devices. BTW i bet that your core followers do pay attention to the content rather than the visual design.
I agree with others – a bigger font size would do my eyes well.
I like the length of your posts, they are perfect, but it would be nice if your homepage posts included the title plus the first paragraph or so. Since you write so much it would be nice to scroll through the articles a bit faster looking for the ones I want. Just bit more user friendly for my reading preferences.