Drive-By Shooting Sunday: Deeper Issues

The steady ringing beat of steel on steel echoed through the empty dawn of a cold January morning.

The buildings in the small village shivered in drifts of snow piled against the walls, but one small home sat in the middle of a ring of brown, wet earth, as if the elements themselves were afraid to get too close to the constant heat of the smithy and McLeod’s red-hot forge.

Harry set aside the hammer, picked up a pair of tongs and took the hot piece of steel outside to a barrel of melted snow and oil. The newly crafted sword hissed when it hit the liquid, sending a cloud of warm steam into the brisk winter air.

This one would be a masterpiece, and a sturdy weapon to boot. It had to be first rate; Lord James wouldn’t accept anything less for his troops.

A lone figure approached, riding a chestnut horse up the road. Harry wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of a sooty arm and squinted into the morning sun. Maybe he wouldn’t have to squint so much if Lord James didn’t insist on wearing polished armor…

The weapon was brought back inside, and Harry returned to the street to greet the noble.

“Your Grace.” He held the horse’s head. “What brings you out this way so early? I wasn’t expecting you.”

Lord Chartrand perused his surroundings. “I know. But something I think important came up. Something I think you’re going to like,” he grinned.

Harry knew that look in Chartrand’s eyes, and he’d seen it one too many times before. He and the Lord went back a long way. “What kind of trouble are you getting us into now, James?”

“The best kind of trouble.” James winked and ducked into the smithy, Harry following behind.

“Look at this.” James produced a weathered scroll, spreading it out on one of the work benches.

“What is it?”

James blinked. “Well, it’s a map.”

“I see that,” Harry grunted. “A map of what?”

“A treasure map.” James’ sly smile faded to a frown, “At least, it’s half of one. The other half was stolen a few months ago. I know where it is, but I’ll need your help getting it back.”

Harry mirrored James’ grave expression. “This looks dangerous. You do realize this map leads right into the heart of The Deep, don’t you?”

Into the deep is right. This week’s hit is Deeper Issues, the blog of Dot Hage. Here’s what the site looked like when we drove by:

Harry stared at the map and its large expanse of territory far to the north. It didn’t look like a good adventure. The path seemed to pass right through a large, blue, innocent looking lake… and then disappear into the unknown.

Eye path, that is. After landing and nodding at the soothing blue banner, we find ourselves not knowing where we should look next. To the right where the RSS beckons? To the left, where some text calls for attention? To the middle where the content lies?

We typically dislike any layout that has content sandwiched between left and right sidebars, because it makes it difficult to know where to look first. It’s important to help guide a first-time visitor with a clear eye path, ie, look here, then here, then here. Lead your visitors where you want them to go.

Once we dip just a little lower on the page, there’s little that makes us want to explore. The visual elements stop, and there’s nothing to attract our eye or continue guiding us – it’s just a lot of text. There’s no clear path for the eye to follow or any kind of direction where to go next or what you have to offer.

With all those columns of text (left, right and center) and no color impact or rule lines to separate the areas, the site suddenly mashes together. Bold titles aren’t enough to differentiate between posts or sections in the sidebars.

We suggest finding ways to help break up the sections, box them in, help people stay focused and on track. The line rules between posts are way too pale and the home page seems to display one major long post versus many individual ones.

“Is that water?” Harry picked up the map, holding it close to his face to scrutinize the blue waves.

“Dunno. Looks like silk to me,” James mused, thinking of riches and luxuries and all sorts of wealth he could imagine. Yes, a treasure hunt was just what he needed.

“There’s a water droplet,” Harry pointed out, concerned they’d have to swim across this expanse of blue.

“Yes, but this,” James pointed to the rest, sweeping his index across the page, “Doesn’t look like water. It’s silk.”

“I think it’s water,” Harry muttered.

And that’s a problem with the banner. Is it silk? Is it water? It’s nice, make no mistake, and we like the appeal of it as well as the particular shade of color, but the image itself isn’t as clean as it could be. On an average monitor, people may not notice the graininess, though.

The banner is also too large for the site, taking up too much of the top of the page. Because you have few other visual elements to pull people’s eyes down and ground them, they’ll tend to keep glancing back up at the banner while trying to read the text. We suggest narrowing the height of the banner.

There’s also a viewing problem with the title and banner. The title of the site is visible because the background in that area is darker. However, the middle of the tagline disappears around the word “surface” because the background becomes light, eating up the white font.

It would be a better idea to move the title and tagline up and to the left where the background is darkest. Then you can slice a whole chunk off the bottom of the banner and narrow it up.

“Where is this place, anyways?” Harry walked a slow circle around the map as if it were a beast about to leap up at him. The warnings were clear, the words spread across the top of the map: under the surface.

“I think we have to swim across this lake, then travel over this mountain and then double back through this cave right here,” he pointed to a black spot on the map. “At least, that’s what I figure. It says we need to look under the surface… Unless it’s about the lake…”

James peered at Harry, sizing him up as he rubbed his chin. “You do deep-sea diving, don’t you?”

We have a bit of trouble trying to figure out what the site is all about at a glance. First impressions just aren’t telling us enough. Deeper issues, the title says, so it must be about psychology. What kind of psychology? Troubling issues? It seems that way – as the title sounds a little ominous, the tagline even more so. IS the site even about psychology?

The tagline itself doesn’t help. “A look beneath the surface of things.” Whose look? What things? What’s this place all about? Why should we stay and read? How will this change our life? Is this a personal blog journal or some helpful resource? Clean that up and make it clear who your site is for, what it’s about and how it will change the reader’s life.

James brought the map over to the fire and held it up to the glow, peering through it.

Harry’s eyebrow arched. “What are you doing?”

“Looking for magic.” James turned the map this way and that, hoping some invisible writing would appear in the flickering light. “And trying to see how to travel to that path from where we are now. I need a new map to navigate the map, I think.”

So do we. Big problem. There are some text links in the left sidebar that pass for navigation, but when we wanted to find a page or two to tell us more about the site, we found ourselves looking for a few seconds – and those seconds can cost you readers.

People aren’t patient. They’re creatures of habit. Without a clearly visible navigation area across the top or underneath the banner, it becomes difficult to explore the rest of the site. Take Pages out of the sidebar and put them in a proper navigation bar.

The lack of a navigation bar also means you have no “Home” button. Once navigating off the home page, there’s no easy way to get back to it. If visitors have to think too much about where to click, they’ll leave and not bother to come back.

The rest of the left-hand sidebar is okay, with Recent Posts and Recent Commentators showing. The Top Ten Commentators can stay, too.

The Recommended list, however, is way, way too long. It’s information overload and option paralysis. Given too many choices, people become uncertain and choose nothing at all. Chop it down to less than seven links, or get rid of it completely, as it only drives traffic away from your blog.

Onto the right-hand sidebar…

The RSS and email subscription area is right where it should be. The RSS button could be a bit larger to attract some attention. Also, align the text so that it’s either to the right of the image or centered below it. It’s currently dipping below the button and looks awkward.

While you have a great smiling picture, we feel it doesn’t belong on the home page. The About information shows that if you have to tell people in that section what the blog is about, the site itself hasn’t properly conveyed the message. Also, that About information should go where it belongs – on an About page in a navigation bar.

Below that, we find more lists with lots of links. Option paralysis again, and way, way too many categories. Trim that down, group related subjects together, and get those categories into a manageable list. This is another section that would do well in a main navigation bar.

Archives can go, too. Put them in a navigation bar and get them out of there. It’s just too much choice and work for visitors to scroll and find what they want quickly.

“This isn’t going to be easy, James.” The smith folded his arms across a broad chest and scowled at his Lord. “We can barely read this map. We don’t know where we’re going. There’s that huge lake. How do I know you’re not going to lead us right off the edge of the earth?”

“You don’t trust me?” James gave Harry a woeful look.

“No.”

“Oh, come on, it’s an adventure!” The knight lit up and began pacing the room, hands waving. “Think of the treasures we’ll find! Diamonds… gold… you like gold, don’t you?”

“Too soft to work with,” the smith grunted.

“Alright, steel then,” James promised. “We’ll find you lots of top-quality steel so that you can craft the best swords in the world. And become famous!”

Harry was nonplussed. “I don’t want to be famous.”

“Okay, don’t be. I’ll be famous,” James rolled his eyes. “You can make really nice swords with super-smooth, sharp edges. I’ll sell them and we’ll be famous together, okay?”

It’s hard for Times New Roman to be famous, though. Much as it’s a great font for printed works, it’s just hard to read on a computer monitor. The smoothness of a sans serif font is plain easier on the eyes. Go with a sans serif font like Arial or Verdana and boost the readability of the content.

Some visual confusion occurs with posts because the size and weight of sub-titles is the same as the post title itself. For example, the post “This and That” looks like four separate posts until we scroll down to “Predictions for the Future”.

“Where’s your sense of adventure, Harry?” James’ exuberance held no bounds. “It’ll do you good to get out of this musty old forge. Get some sun! Explore the world! Look, it’s even all about exotic places,” he waved the map at Harry. “La Côte du Squelette! Doesn’t that sound fantastic?”

Harry looked skeptical. “What’s that in English?”

“Uh… well… uh, the Skeleton’s rib,” James mumbled.

But then he rallied, blowing right over the possible message of death. “See here?” A finger jabbed at a small hovel in the center of the map. “I found it – our starting point. La Cabane de l’Ermite.” The Hermit’s Shack. “That has to be this building,” James waved a hand. “I’m telling you, it’s an adventure built for us, a quest worthy of our prowess!”

And your site is worthy too, Dot. It’s clear that you’ve worked hard to make good decisions about having a nice, clutter-free and appealing home for yourself and your readers.

The tweaks we mention are small ones, and all they need is a valiant person ready to face the adventure.

Need a pair of knights to critique your site and tell you exactly what you need to know for better online success?

Book your drive-by-shooting site critique right here. It’s fast, it’s cheap and it’s value packed. It also comes in your choice of fun public or serious private.

Come on. You know you wanna.