My personal critique of Marc Rapp’s blog
A few weeks ago I asked you how can I improve my blog? I thought the response was superb!
As a small token of appreciation I mentioned how the person who offered up the most useful comments would receive a critique from me. It was tough choosing just one person, so I’ve offered up a review for any of my commenters and regular readers. All I ask is for a little mention on your blog or site. A review would be even more well received!
The person I did choose, however, was Marc Rapp with his Uniquely the Epitome blog, and here’s my personal critique.
Marc’s blog is similar to mine in that it has some emphasis on creative advertising throughout the world. It’s also quite a simplistic design which gets my thumbs up.
At first glance there’s one major issue with the content, and that’s the type size. It’s not the easiest to read in the left and right columns and I’d much rather see it a couple of point sizes larger. The body text in the central column isn’t too bad at all. Perhaps just a slight increase would help. I do enjoy how Marc keeps the dark text on a white background. Too many blogs and websites show the main body text on a dark background which I’m not a big fan of.
The second thing that’s drawn to my attention is the absence of a ‘categories’ section. It’s not immediately apparent what Marc likes to write about without scrolling down through the posts. There is a ‘recent posts’ section at the top of the page which is helpful, and is actually quite unique in its placement. Most blogs I read have a large header filling this spot so it’s a nice difference.
At the time of writing there were five ‘recent posts’ listed on Marc’s blog. The first four spanned just two days yet the fifth most recent post was around one month before these. It’s not easy to post on a regular basis, but if possible, by staggering these five posts over a period of one month there’d be over one post per week, rather than having an absence of four weeks.
It would be interesting to know what Marc wants to achieve through his blog. Does he want to build a subscriber base? Promote his skills for employment opportunities? Make money? Perhaps he simply wants to document some of the things that appeal to his creative side. Maybe he can tell us. It’s a good question to ask yourself now and again so that you can evaluate what you’re actually doing with your blog. Setting specific targets is also a good idea.
Does Marc own his blog? I notice that Marc’s blog is run through Blogger. Perhaps switching your blog from its current location to one where you can host it yourself would offer more control.
You might notice on the Uniquely the Epitome blog that the ‘older posts’ section dates back to May 2006. However, with no sections for specific categories, and no search facility on the site, I worry that Marc’s great content is becoming buried in the depths of the blogosphere with few people getting to see it. By adding a search box or categories section (above the fold i.e. towards the top of the main page) older content would be within easier reach and findability. Also, no-one likes to read ‘old news’. How about renaming it ‘archives’ or ‘past posts’?
Shown in the diagram below, Marc has a great spread of readers across the globe.
This makes me wonder if I should add a language translator to my own blog. Marc allows readers to choose between English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Chinese and Arabic. I know automatic text translators are far from perfect, but I do believe that it’s helping his global reach.
There’s a ‘future posts’ section at the top right of the blog. If I’ve seen this on another blog I can’t remember where. It’s nice to see what Marc plans on discussing. This is a good way of helping visitors decide whether or not to subscribe to his RSS feed. Speaking of which, I’d like to see the RSS icon further up the page. I’m currently viewing the blog on my laptop (1200 x 800 resolution) and the RSS icon is just below the fold. People shouldn’t have to look very far if they want to subscribe.
The future posts section is the only element that occupies the right hand column, making it look quite bare in comparison to the left. Why not shift a few elements from left to right, adding more interest to the upper section of the blog? Either that, or switch to a two column layout, allocating more space to the post content.
In summary
- Add a search feature
- Increase the type size on left and right columns
- Increase leading for the body text
- Label posts with category tags and display the categories
- Think about switching to a self-hosted domain
- Make RSS icon more prominent
- Don’t advertise ‘old news’
- Add some interest to the right hand column
If you have any comments or additions about Marc’s blog I’m sure he’d greatly appreciated it. He seems like a very decent bloke (finishing with some praise so Marc doesn’t black-list me).
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That’s a great in depth review. I checked out his site too. What he has I think looks awesome for using Blogger. I’ve noticed some limits with them ad will be changing over to wordpress soon myself :).
Anyways, awesome review! You seem to have covered everything and more.
David, I think you (and Marc) are onto something that could make your sites *very* popular. Those of us in the “design-challenged” community could benefit enormously from having input from professional designers with sites we admire offer critiques and design recommendations.
Maybe do a random site each week. Or target specific platforms, like Wordpress. I’ve already picked up good tips from your posts, including the one about the importance of validation. I tested my site and had to smoke a cigarette when I saw how many errors came back…
David-
I totally have to agree about the font size. I’m old and can’t read type that small anymore. Sure, I can always bump up the font size with Firefox but I really shouldn’t have to.
I think you’ve pretty much hit everything on the head. Personally, though it is unique to have the recent posts at the top of the page, I’m not sure I like it. It really lacks focus and is kinda confusing for the eye.
I like it.. actually I was thinking of writing a post about you David! (Just never made it off the drafts)
Sprague, I can empathise with you over the validation issue. It’d mean a big overhaul and dropping thrid party content if I was to get my own house in order! I’m glad my content holds something of interest to you.
Jen, that’s a good point about the ‘recent posts’ section being a little confusing. Just by looking at Marc’s screenshot (above) there does appear to be quite a bit of competition for eye focus.
ilker, that’s okay, I can excuse you for thinking and not doing. If your blog was titled ‘the doing blog’ however, that’d be a different story. ;)
What I’ve noticed about Blogger that I don’t like are the default layout choices. I guess they can’t offer too much but, what they do offer are kinda ugly and unappealing. I’ve tried customizing mine but, eventually gave up. I’ve seen some really good Blogger blogs though, so maybe it’s just me lol.
I’ve actually just installed a Wordpress blog last night but haven’t got a chance to mess around with it. But, I’ve read reviews and from what I’ve heard they make it very simple to integrate other ad services into your blog and allow more and easier customization of your blog.
Also, Wordpress seems to have some really neat plug-ins to help further customize the blog.
That’s all I can think of now…once I mess with Wordpress more I’ll remember to do a little review ;)
Dinner, I think you’ll be pleased with your Wordpress installation. If you do a Google search for Wordpress Themes, you’ll find some specifically created for running ads. Of course you can still customize the way these templates work but at least the framework is where you want it.
Thanks! I’m hoping it all works out for me having my own domain and worpress blog. I love this theme by the way ;).
I’ll surely be doing some googling then hopefully designing my own :).
[...] I wrote a personal critique of Marc Rapp’s blog I mentioned his language translator, and how Marc’s audience spanned across countries that [...]
If Marc wants some free web hosting, I’ll give him some – nice guy with a great blog – it’s pretty easy to migrate from Blogger to WordPress too. If you read this, Marc, and you’re interested, just shout.
Do you run your own server(s)?
I can not, for the life of my memory, remember why I did not respond to this post. –wow.
None-the-less, thanks for this input.
A new site should be up soon.
*rattles head and clutches temples between thumbs*
Marc Rapp’s last blog post…FLORIDA CREATIVES: JACKSONVILLE
Looking forward to the new site!
Been reading up on all the related links and its a great idea implemented and followed through. Now I need to implement on my blog too.