Website Review: Mommy Meryl
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I have decided that I will now do blog reviews on a weekly basis, to help bloggers understand what I think is good and what I think is bad in terms of blog design. I will be reviewing the blogs of people who subscribe to ProTycoon.com via email, so to be in with a shout, Subscribe to ProTycoon.com via Email and then drop me a message via the Contact page letting me know your email address and Blog address.
This weeks blog review is about Mommy Meryl:
Before we look at the blog let me in introduce you to Meryl, this is an extract from her ‘About’ page:
I’m Meryl and I’m a thirty-something stay-at-home (SAHM) but sometimes part-time working mom to a 5 1/2 year old daughter. I have been married 13 years to a wonderfully supportive husband and 2 dogs complete our family for the moment. . . I began this blog as a supplement to my website - Chit Chat for Mommies.
If you don’t have an about page on your blog then I suggest you read: Writing an About page.
Here is a quick screenshot of the blog for reference:
The first thing that I noticed about the blog is that it took a long time to load, I think there are two main reasons for this:
- The blogs header image is very large.
- There are 15 Full posts on the homepage
I am a firm believer that every blog should have a unique header image/logo, but I think that they should be no taller than around 80-90px. My thinking behind this is that larger images take a longer time to load, also by having a larger banner your content is being pushed further down the page and below the fold. When I look at the blog, all I can see is the first posts title and the first few lines of content. If you compare that to my homepage, you can usually see the title and the whole excerpt for my blogs first post. I would suggest a new slightly smaller blog header image.
The homepage also has 15 full posts on it, which means that it is a very long page. There are two options to improve this, the first is to simply reduce the number of posts being shown, my suggestion would be 8 full posts on the blogs homepage. The other option is to only show excerpts on the blogs homepage, this will reduce the size of each post, making the page size smaller, I usually recommend a maximum of 10 posts on the homepage when using excerpts, I use 5 on the ProTycoon.com homepage.
Now we will look at the colour scheme being used, it is very much based around Pink, Purple and Blue. The post titles are orange and the posts content is pink. I find the bright pink very difficult to read, so is not the best choice of color for the blogs content. My suggestion would be to use black text with a slightly darker pink post title. The links on the site are blue, which is the color most people associate with links. On the whole the blogs colours reflect the content of the blog.
The final point I am going to make about Meryl’s blog is the sidebars, the blog currently has two sidebars. The left sidebar is based on the blog, it has the RSS subscribe box, current RSS count and a link to the ‘About’ page which should be on all blogs. My advice about the left sidebar would be to remove the ‘Live Traffic Feed’ as it is not really suited to a blog in this niche.
The right sidebar contains the blogroll, the archives as well as many links to other blogs and directories, many of which are in the form of images, which will slow the page loading times. There is also a ‘Top Spots’ widget which is becoming more common on blogs in recent months. My advice for the right sidebar would be to remove a lot of the image links, they can either be deleted permanently, or replaced with text links in the blogroll. I would then move the archives to the top of the right sidebar, followed by the ‘Top Spots’ widget then the blogroll.
Above I stated what I would do if I was keeping the two sidebars, I always prefer blogs with 2 columns, this could be achieved by moving the RSS subscribe box and current subscriber count to the top of the right sidebar, then create some pages and link to them just underneath the RSS details, these pages can consist of an ‘About’ page, and ‘Link To Us’ page and a ‘Contact’ page. This would take some strain off of the homepage and make the blog look a lot cleaner.
I would like to point out at this point that I am not critising Meryls blog, I think Meryl has a great blog and some interesting content for her niche. I am using the blog reviews to show people how they can improve their blogs, by sharing my viewpoints and the things I have learned through blogging. You may have a blog similar to Meryl’s and may find some of these points relevant.
I would like to know what you think of Meryl’s blog? What would you improve? What are your thoughts on my opinions?
Don’t forget to Subscribe to ProTycoon.com via email to be in with a chance of getting reviewed next week.
Hendry Lee | July 7th, 2008 at 7:06 pm #
“Above the fold” is very important, so I agree, the header should not be that large. It appears artistic, but it doesn’t help readership at all.
A tip: optimize the image, it currently is more than half a meg in size. That slows up the load a lot for dial-up and other slower connection users.
David Shaw | July 7th, 2008 at 9:32 pm #
@Hendry Lee
I love sites with artistic banners but they are alot better if they add to the site and don’t hinder it.
Lucian | July 8th, 2008 at 3:47 am #
Something I’m trying to work into a design on one of my blogs is a banner that takes up a little room up the top and curves down to the side where it integrates with the main nav menu. You can really get creative with these things and more often than not a simple logo and two color title is more than enough.
Debi_zyx | July 8th, 2008 at 6:43 am #
I agree with a lot of your comments, and tried to implement them on my blog. Some of them aren’t easy.
For example, where to split your post, so that it isn’t all displayed on your home page. Obviously the first few lines have to be interesting enough that the reader will bother clicking forward to read the rest. That isn’t so simple! I tried to do it, and was only happy with 3 or 4 posts. For the moment I’ve left most of them complete, but lowered the number displayed to 6.
What I think detracts from Meryl’s content is the fact that there is so much going on in the page, that the eye is distracted from the actual blog content, and away to the sides. The pale color of the content does not help keep you in the middle, either.
So, I guess the moral of the story is that it isn’t enough to have great content, you have to display it so that your visitors want to read it all the way through.
David Shaw | July 8th, 2008 at 8:06 am #
@Lucian
A simple banner can add a lot more to a site than just the standard typed banner. Every blog should have their own unique banner!
@Debi
You content is the most important element of your blog, it has to be easy to find and easy to read. Many blog focus to much on adding useless widget to thier sidebars that distract their readers!
Halim-Belajar SEO | July 8th, 2008 at 9:41 am #
I wonder if I had subscribe using email.. It nice if someone could give them review because we got a lot of good point from different perspectives.
For Mommny Merryl blog, I would to suggest she use a “expand script” for blogspot.
Maybe this can solve a bit about his long post by making it more simple, try to do it using test blog first because I’ll believe it quite complicated, wordpress plugin more easier :).
Although I’m not implementing it for my own blog (because I still no time to test it, still busy with seo contest), I will trying it soon.
Mommy Meryl | July 9th, 2008 at 6:37 am #
Hi David - first of all, thanks for letting me be your guinea pig for your new website review - bad publicity is better than no publicity at all, right?
Anyways, I thought about some of the things you all said and just wanted to respond to a few - perhaps I can share where I am coming from and you guys can give me even better feedback! 
1) Header - I totally hear what you are saying and just contacted the person who designed the header for me to see if she can optomize the image for me - I definitely don’t want a slow loading header/graphic on my site
2) The “click here” to read more - I totally see their use and value on the majority of your blogs - you guys have information and essentially one can see in the first few lines if they are intrested in the rest of the information. But, I don’t blog about information - I guess my posts are more stories. . .but even more importantly, personally, I can’t stand those click heres because I don’t want to have to go back to get to the blog again. This has been a major topic of discussion in the mommy blog world and people have different views, but the majority of mommy bloggers seem to not like the “click here”. But again - I get why people do like it
3) Why does it matter if the page has 15 posts on it? I don’t understand what the issue is - please let me know. My thought is that, if someone is a frequent visitor to my blog, they are only going to look a the most recent post or two. IF someone is new, the first page gives them a lot to read before they have to hit the “older Posts” button. I thought that was a nice touch - again, I just can’t stand hitting the older post button just to get back to the original post again. But if you can explain to me why that is an issue, I can reexamine it.
4) Debi_zyx - I totally appreciate what you are saying. I did ask the person who designed my blogger template (I am able to design my website, but I’m lost when it comes to blogger!) to see if she can widen the post area and narrow the sidebars - for the reason you speak of. She said it was a major pain - but she said she is going to give me a quote to do it. So, we will see what she says. But, with that said, in the meantime, perhaps I’ll enlarge the font and make is a brighter/darker color.
But seriously, I appreciate the advice/comments - you guys appear to know much more than I do and any continuing help would be greatly appreciated!!
David Shaw | July 9th, 2008 at 10:36 am #
@Meryl
This post is just a guide where I can give people my views. Everyone has their own opinions of what works best.
At the end of the day it is your blog, so you can do what you want with it! Dont have to listen to what others tell you.
Mommy Meryl | July 9th, 2008 at 2:46 pm #
Hi David - no, I totally appreciate what you are saying. I only wanted to share my thoughts so others could see where I was coming from - you guys are much more experienced at blogging than I and so I definitely take to heart your comments. I thought if I shared where I was coming from you guys might have other suggestions to address the issues. LIke in my point #3, you had brought that up in your blog - I really want/need to know the answer to that question. Perhaps you took my comments in a sarcastic tone - that wasn’t the intention at all - it really was a genuine question.
David Shaw | July 9th, 2008 at 4:58 pm #
Cheers Meryl.
The new text color is much better and easier to read!
Rachana Shakyawar | July 14th, 2008 at 6:58 pm #
Hi!
You have done an interesting review of the blog, There was a lot to learn from your comments.
I wish if you would review my blog “HUMMING TODAY”. I shall be very glad to know your views and suggestions on my blog.
LINK: http://rachanashakyawar.blogspot.com/
Cheers!
Celebrate life..
David Shaw | July 14th, 2008 at 9:08 pm #
Thanks, will check it out!