Drive-by-Shooting Sundays: Simplistic Thoughts

“I’ll be so glad to just stretch out and sleep all week,” James sighed as he stepped off the elevator of the hotel.

“Me too,” Harry agreed. “This little travel problem is probably the best thing that’s happened lately. I’m looking forward to hiding out.”

The explosion from last week’s hit had made some splashy front-page news, and the men were stuck laying low for a while or their involvement would be discovered.

Plus, they didn’t know who’d set the bomb yet. Until they did…

Checking into a local hotel for a small vacation while the fuzz died down would hit the spot. Or at least it seemed that way until they’d opened the door to their room.

Today’s hit is for Simplistic Thoughts, the blog of… of… um… Well, we’ll get to that in a minute. In the meantime, here’s what the site looked like when we drove by:

“Get a load of the wallpaper.” Harry dropped his bags and just stood in the doorway, wishing he hadn’t taken off his sunglasses.

“I would if you moved out of the way,” James pushed past his partner but he too stopped short when he took a look. “Oh god… This is worthy of being on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.”

“More like What Not to Wear,” Harry shook his head sadly. “Reminds me of a beach towel someone wrapped around to cover things up.

The stripes splashing across the top of the banner is the element that hits visitors in the face the moment they land on the site. It’s just too much, regardless of whether the colors match the tropical theme of the site or not. The stripes make the site’s banner visually difficult to take in with all the clutter going on.

The background would look far more appealing with a solid color or a subtly textured background. A background is just that: in the back. It shouldn’t compete for attention with the main purpose of the page.

The tagline is redundant and repeats the site title. It also doesn’t tell us as a visitor why we should stick around. Personal development, okay – so what? Give people a reason to read more and tell them at a glance why they need this site, such as “Simple personal development for a better way of life.” (Just an example.)

“Hey, nice view, though, eh?” Jamie twitched back the curtains and showed off the scenery, a beautiful tropical beach begging for his presence. “Want to go hang out there in the sun and have some drinks?”

The photos in the middle of the banner area are nice and we like the way they overlap on each other. There’s a lot of text on either side, though, and this may also create some visual confusion. Do we look at the pictures first? The text on the left? The stuff on the right? Oh, wait, should we look at the title of the site?

The site lacks a clear visual path, a guided tour for visitors. There’s too much going on up top to make it easy to read and thus, not interesting to stay longer. One idea may be to push the images to the right and have text on the left only. Give that area some space and less clutter.

“Check it.” James opened a door to the left of the window, showing off a hallway. Then he went to the right of the window where there was another door. “Door number one or door number two,” he grinned, dancing back to offer Harry the first door before trotting over to the other door.

“Stop it, you’re making me dizzy.” But Harry couldn’t help grinning back.

This is how the broken navigation comes off to us. On the left, we have choices of where to click. Then the images break it up and the navigation starts again on the right. Which way? Which side? Which one?

By putting the images to the right, you’ll not only create some visual space and a better path for the eye, but you’ll put your navigation back together as it should be for easier usability.

The navigation titles are nice and clear. We know what we’ll get when we click through. Well done on that.

Of course… um… it’s good to have something on the pages when people *do* click through, which is not the case of the About Us.

“Did you hear that?” James froze, one hand stopping Harry from moving and all senses on alert. He reached slowly for his bag, unzipping so quietly it was almost inaudible. “I hear someone.”

“Who?” Harry made a face. “Probably room service-…”

“No, no… shhhh…” James crept to the door, sliding up against the wall with the Glock held ready.

Here’s your first shot. You have a personal site written in the first person, but there’s no About Us information at all. Who are you? What’s your name? It’s nowhere on the site at all, not even that we can see in posts. Anonymity is fine, if that’s what you’re aiming for – but a blank About page? Put something in there or take it down off the navigation. Period.

After waiting for a long few minutes, Harry finally broke the silence. “You’re too tense. Come on.” He wasn’t worried about someone coming after them. Bring it on.

He convinced James to at least put the Glock in a shoulder holster and hide it, and then they headed down to the bar outside by the pool.

“What the hell are you drinking?” James squinted, beer in hand.

Harry looked his drink, complete with a little umbrella and a slice of citrus fruit. “A blue Margarita.” He shrugged. “What? It tastes good.” If James made a smart-assed remark about girlie drinks, Harry would deck him.

He frowned and plucked the orange wedge from the lip of the glass. “Huh. Look at that. I found the RSS button.”

That RSS button is very clever, and we haven’t seen one like that anywhere else yet, so kudos for being unique. However, the RSS orange wedge is so clever it blends right in.

It’s also in the wrong location below the fold, and it just looks like another pretty image. Why not move that RSS up to the top right corner and show it off? Also, add a little text that shows it’s an RSS button – new net users won’t know that it is.

The Stumble and Del.ici.ous buttons are impressive – a little too much so. They’re huge and scream at visitors. Not only that, they’re just unnecessary clutter. Make them smaller and put them at the bottom of blog posts where they belong. That lets the sidebar content move up and gives the theme some space.

Harry gave some signs posted up on the beach a skeptical look. “Advertising,” he muttered. “Can’t get away from it, can you.”

“Nope.” James sipped his beer and eyed the flashy, tacky signs. “I wish people would put ads that were more appealing, though. These are just stacked like a brick house, you know?”

Stacked is right. Those ads are already tacky enough – take a few away. More options are not great, and the tackier ads probably aren’t doing much in the way of revenue anyways. We suggest two vertical rows of three ads each or a square of four ads.

Ditch the RSS links in your sidebar as well. Put “Recent Posts” there, something that means more to site visitors. Also, get rid of the long list of categories. There are way too many there and it makes selection impossible. Cut the list down to five, organize your content in a better hierarchy or at least get a plugin that allows you to have a drop down menu there. We also suggest having categories in the navigation bar as well to help people read more of what’s on your site.

“You know what? This place is tacky.” James set down his beer and sat up, looking disgruntled. “It reminds me of one of those big tourist attractions with people hawking their wares. Why can’t people enjoy some peace?” He looked back at the hotel’s sign. “Simplistic thoughts… I don’t see much simplicity around here,” he stood and unholstered his gun.

“What are you doing?” Harry’s wide eyes cast around the area. “James, someone is going to see you.”

“Good. Then at least we’ll have a reason to run and get the hell home.” He took the safety off and started stalking around. “See this?” He pointed to a leaflet posted on the wall. “I can’t read this. The words are so small it hurts my eyes.”

That’s one major problem with all the text on the side – the content text and the sidebar text are so tiny that they’re difficult to read and we needed to strain. Increase that font size so that people don’t have to work so hard to read the stories that are there.

From nearly point blank range, James shot at the leaflet and it exploded into tattered bits. Someone down the beach yelled, and he yelled back. “Yeah, I feel the same way too, buddy!”

The home page only has one post displayed and a rather short one at that, which leaves a gaping hole of white. For blogs with shorter posts, having three on the home page is a good idea.

James took another shot and now people started panicking, running away.

“James, for god’s sake, can’t I once finish a drink?” Harry peered at the shattered glass he held in his hand. “I was enjoying this, you know.”

“It’s a girlie drink.” Tongue stuck out at the corner, James squinted at the striped curtains at the window of their hotel room above and aimed carefully. “Be a man. Drink beer.” He let off another few shots, and the curtains began sporting holes.

“Hola, senor! Senor!” Some man ran down the beach, looking panicked and waving his arms. “No shoot hotel, por favor!”

“Come on, let’s go!” Harry wasn’t sticking around any longer. He started running away from the beach towards a row of taxis nearby. “You’re going to get us thrown in jail!”

James was right behind him, scrambling through the soft sand. “Maybe… but not today!”

Want more? You got it. Check out the lineup of upcoming hit jobs:

November 2 – Positioning Strategy
November 9 – Sushi Day
November 16 – The D Spot Redux
November 23 – The Antisocial Social Worker
November 30 – Writer Dad
December 7 – Deaf Mom World
December 14 – Linkers Blog

Note: We’ve closed requests for free drive-bys and will start taking names again in December for January’s hits. Thanks everyone!

Want your blog shot down? Hit us up for a professional private drive-by via email. It’s only $30, and you’ll get your shoot-out within a week. Come on. You know you wanna.

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