Drive-by-Shooting Sunday: Deaf Mom World

Harry stood outside the small blue house with green shutters and smiled wistfully at the sign on the lawn. “I made that,” he whispered to James as he straightened the board just a touch.

“Why are you whispering?” James whispered back.

“It’s so quiet here.” Harry looked at the house again. He liked quiet, but there was a huge difference between having quiet and living in total silence. It was one of those things that made Harry think and wonder what it would be like if he lost his hearing tomorrow?

He supposed it could be worse. He’d much rather lose his hearing than his sight, or a limb, or never be able to walk again.

“I don’t know if I can do this one, Jamie.”

James looked at his partner. He understood how sensitive Harry could be. Situations like this always made the man introspective, and Harry had been very quiet for days now just thinking about this hit.

“I know.” James patted him on the shoulder. Last week’s hit had been sticky, what with the kids that could’ve been involved in a real mess. “But we have a job to do. And it’s for her own good.”

Harry nodded and followed James up the path.

Today’s hit is for Deaf Mom World, the blog of Karen Putz, a long-time blogger in the deaf community. This is what her site looked like when we drove by:

“Well, it’s a nice sign,” James paused at the door, looking back over his shoulder. “It’s simple, clean, fresh looking and it’s clear what this place is all about.” That was a bonus in itself. He would have inverted the green and blue of the title of the sign for better readability, but beyond that, he liked the globe and the arrow that showed where this woman lived.

Then again, James was biased. And so was Harry.

Still, that doesn’t mean we can’t critique our own work. The drops of water on the globe seem a little out of place, and we would have removed that. The color scheme chosen to match the existing site is a nice choice, though, giving a welcoming effect from the start. Nicely done.

The navigation is really hard to read, though, and the font could be changed to a darker one, sans serif to match the banner and be made larger for easier reading. Right now, the white blends into the green and it’s very difficult to read the titles that are there.

Organization of the title tags could be switched around, too. People tend to place importance from left to right, so having the About and Contact titles to the far left makes them the most important elements of the navigation. Put them on the right, and move the other titles to the left for better impact.

James snuck into the house, taking a long, cautious look before deciding it was empty and moving in. He wandered around a bit, moving over to a table at the far right of the room that had a guest book on it. “Oh, look,” he pointed. “She’ll send us news and updates if we leave our emails. Not sure why it’s over here, though…”

That’s our first thought as we glance at the sidebar. Moving the RSS up to the top of the column fits better with reader expectancy of where to find that opt-in for updates. Having the links above it feels out of place.

Also, we suggest a bigger RSS button to help draw the eye and increase readership. A bit of code-work would also be good – you could fix the Subscribe link to be just under the icon and center everything in the middle of the column.

Centering the ads would be nice, too. They look odd as they are. Even better would be to have them side by side to save real estate space. As they are now, there’s a section to the right that could be used but that becomes wasted space.

“Her name is Karen,” James whispered, pointing to a sign on the wall that shared the woman’s story. “She likes long lists,” he commented, his eyes traveling down the extensive mentions of this work and that.

Long lists of links – not good. The About Us is fine, and so is the Hands and Voices, but after that, our eyes glaze over at the long list of links that follows.

Give the “Karen’s Articles” section a different name. You already have that title in your main navigation, so don’t relist it in your sidebar. Call it Recent Posts or Popular Posts or something different. Then chop that long list down to at most 7 links – 5 is better. Otherwise, there’s just too much to choose.

Then again, there are those links at the top of the sidebar – are those Recent Posts? If they are, pick one section to work with, and get rid of the other. Save space, optimize what you have.

The Memorable Posts section is a nice touch, but again… way too many links going on there. Chop that list down, or create a page of links just for this section and have only one link that goes directly to that.

“I took a ball in the head…” James peered at a live screen showing scrolling text. “My battery went flying… what the hell is this?”

Ah, yes. The Twitter update box, which tends to show completely irrelevant, out-of-context text to readers who first land on your blog. We’re not so sure this incites people to follow. Ditch it. Have a nice little image or logo to click instead inviting people to follow you. You have the Twitter counter on your About page – use that.

More Recent Posts… buh-bye to this one too.

The search box beneath isn’t well done. Extend the length of the field, and make it the proper size for the column. Also tweak the colors so that it matches the blog – that big chunk of grey doesn’t fit the site’s color scheme at all and looks cheap.

Okay, this is about the point we realize that we’re heading into clutterland. Here we go:

Center the ads that you have in the sidebar if they’re going to be alone. Alternatively, have two ads at a time, side by side. They’ll look better and more appealing. Also consider whether people scroll down so far to read and click these ads. It seems to us that they may not, and being selective with what you have in the sidebar helps increase its potential to work for you.

Get rid of the categories in the sidebar, or make room for them in the navigation. There are just too many links going on for us to think having more is a good idea. The same goes for Archives. Give them a page of their own and put them in the main navigation.

Get rid of the section pointing to Chicago Mom’s site. That may be you, that may not be you, but it’s just extra stuff that people don’t need to see. Keep them focused on this site, not traveling away elsewhere.

The visitors widget is neat, but it’s too low to be fun and the image looks cheap. Clean it up and move it up a bit to give it a more visible home in the area.

Recent comments, okay, but again, there’s already a ton of stuff going on.

We feel that being more selective and cleaning up this buffet in your sidebar is going to do some good. You may want to consider moving to a three-column scheme, also, to prevent this long sidebar that stretches on forever.

“Creepy.” James pointed to the screen on the wall. It had just flickered and changed, revealing a prominent “Men with Pens was here” style of marking. “Just creepy. I feel dirty.”

James has never been a fan of the Recent Readers widget. It’s a personal thing, but it makes him feel like he can’t come visit and read in private. We suggest ditching it.

On the content, well done. It’s well formatted, the proper social media buttons are in the right place, as are the links for commenting. We suggest changing the headline title font to match your banner, and the same thing with the headlines in the sidebars.

On the Contact page, remove the “My Fieldset” that shows up.

Harry squinted at a book that had been left open. The Deaf Gene, said the title, and he picked it up. “This is interesting,” he commented, and found himself reading more and more, even though the tiny font and grey fade made it damned hard to read. It was a story worth getting into – he just wished for a bigger, black font.

“You’re not into this, are you.” James bumped his way through the house clutter and made his way over to Harry and his book.

“I am… but all this place needs is a little organization,” Harry looked back. He could see the potential of a nice clean room, with all that clutter packed away and shipped off. Otherwise, the site was welcoming and friendly enough that he didn’t feel he and James should be here. “Let’s go.”

“Okay.” James pulled out the post-it with the hit’s address on it, shrugged and stuck it to the wall. No bloodshed today. No gunshots on the wall, no tables overturned… Besides, their logo was now on the wall in plain view for all to see, clear proof they’d been at the scene of potential crime. Explaining an alibi could’ve been sticky.

And after all, this victim didn’t deserve the shootup. She just needed a maid.

Want more? You got it. Check out our last upcoming hit job of 2008:

December 21 – Linkers Blog

Want your blog shot down? Hit us up for a professional private drive-by via email. It’s only $30 if you book before December 24, and you’ll get your shoot-out within a week.

Come on. You know you wanna.

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