Should You Tell People Their Blog Design is Ugly?

We recently received an anonymous email that had us both cheering – and puzzled.

Readers recently inspired our regular feature of Drive-By-Shooting Sundays after we did a few fast reviews in the comment section of our post on Tips for Creating a Great Theme Design. Readers loved the quick advice and the objective view of professionals blended with the fun of a drive-by analogy.

There is solid advice behind our fun and fast tips. Many new bloggers and website owners don’t have the money or the know-how to pull off a simple, attractive design that helps their business.

We see it every day. Tons of great blogs neglect good looks in favor of great content and dress themselves with ugliness or poor layouts. Content is King, but the Emperor needs good clothes. A nice design can shoot you into better success and sometimes save you from failure.

So that’s why we cheered when we received this anonymous comment:

Wish you had a way to anonymously and gently suggest your Drive-by-Sunday-shootings for well-meaning but UGLY and improvable blogs that we come across while reading the comments of your (and other smart blogs) commentators… without offending anyone.

I mean really, telling the charming person seated next to you at the dinner party that they have BO means you’ll never feel comfortable in THAT crowd again (if you get invited back!).

But YOU GUYS have balls, and it can seem like you’re just passing through and helping… ya know, since you do that.

The author has a very good point. There are many blogs out there that could achieve better success – but their owners don’t ask for help or advice or a quick review. Also, many people have trouble accepting constructive criticism as suggestions for improvement.

Improvement is the point. As the author of the email implied, many blogs are ugly but have good content. Their image is hurting them, but they can be made better. They have a chance. They can achieve stronger readership and higher success… if only owners made the investment.

Most investment doesn’t even involve money. Dropping a widget, moving a column, changing colors… Most bloggers can make these changes. And if they can’t, the cost of hiring someone to help is often far more affordable than people realize.

What I realized is that we have our Comment Luv feature to thank for the issue at hand. This anonymous email proves that Comment Luv works. Readers are clicking through to read more from commentators. Commentators gain traffic and new subscribers or maybe even business.

But what then? How many blog designs cause missed opportunities? How many people click through and then click away? How many potential clients are lost because of an ugly design?

This leaves us in a quandary. The author suggests that, as helpful people (thank you; we do try), we should perhaps contact blog owners in private.

Should we? Is it rude to offer unsolicited advice, even if we send it gently through private email communication? Would we hurt feelings more than we helped people?

And who are we to carry out this suggestion? Is it right for us to be the White Knights of the Blogosphere, slaying ugly sites to allow growth of what we feel is beautiful? Is it right that because we’re ballsy and vocal, we should be the ones to do the dirty job?

Well, I suppose so, yes. Someone has to do it, right?

Then there is the question of our time. We like to help others – but free advice doesn’t feed our families or pay our rent. A drive-by review can take minutes or an hour to write up. That’s lost wages – and we already work many unbillable hours as is.

So what should we do? What do you feel is right and wrong? Should we be the ones to speak up because others cannot? (And we understand that; really, we do.)

If your blog were the ugly one in question, would you appreciate unsolicited and unexpected recommendations, even if they were sent in a private email? Do you feel people have the right to challenge poor designs or suggest improvements?

Let us know. Discuss.