I’ve need a quick answer from you. I promise it’ll take less than five minutes of your time…
As I mentioned in Tuesday’s post about “Zero Basing” your life, I’m going to do a complete overhaul of many different aspects of my life. One of these areas is my online businesses…specifically my blog.
To be honest, I feel the design of the Steve Scott Site is pretty bland, so I’m formulating a plan to make it a little more stylish and even (dare I say) professional.
What I’m trying to figure out is if I should keep the standard single column format that you see here. Ie: The most recent news item being at the top. Or should I reconfigure my site to fit a more “magazine” 2-column style you see with other blogs:
(Click on the image to get a larger version)
Here’s where I need your help. In this poll below, I want you to voice your opinion.
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I don’t really see anything wrong with the current design. It is clean and straight to the point.
Hi Steve,
I second Sean, I like your current design. If you change it I voted for the single column format. I feel that it’s easier to read.
Enjoy your weekend.
Ryan
Good morning Steve:
So I voted for the style. Change is always good, it brings new horizons and new horizons bring advancement 99% of the time. So keep up the good work.
However, be very careful, professionalism and style do mix very carefully. It is not easy to find both at the same time.
I know some blogs where I get lost finding a place to write a comment. But I know you you are an exceptional. You know the difference.
So have a wonderful day
Fran Aslam
Yeah, overall I really like the current design – you could always touch it up a bit but I’m a big fan of single column layouts because it’s less distracting.
I think magazines are great for exactly that – a magazine type website such as news. Although, like anything, I’d say if you wanted to try it out do a test run for a week and see the response then 🙂
Hi Steve,
I like your current style. It is very clean and easy to read.
As Murlu has mentioned you can always touch it up bit. Plus, I find that single column blogs are easier to read and follow.
Hi Scott,
N’thing the current design. I think it’s easy to read and still looks professional. Why mess with something that’s working?
Hey Steve,
I voted for magazine style and I like your current design.
It looks really good.
Have a great weekend scott.
~Dev
@ everyone
So far it looks like the votes have it for the single column. Of course still tweeking seems in order. If anyone has any specific ideas they think would be useful for redesign let me know.
For instance I feel that my current, “archives” are hard to navigate and was thinking of making it a “favorite post” section instead. Or at least redesigning it.
Just in the “collecting data” stage now, so let me know any ideas you might have to make this place really “rock”
The Theme looks great but at the same time this should be a personal choice i like this layout and i like magazine layou also a tough question steve. but follow your heart
Hi Steve — I like the single column (although technically it’s a 2 column site but who’s splitting hairs?). In fact, I just switched my own site to a single column two or three weeks ago. Much cleaner. Easier to read.
Give this a quick try: Change the width of your content column to 600px and your sidebar to 195px… or just play around with it. If you make the content area wider you might find a cleaner look.
What’s your goal? You mentioned more stylish, more professional. Originally I tried a couple of magazines themes and I wasn’t happy with any of them.
I totally get how it feels to want to make some changes tho. That’s a good thing.
~Theresa
I’d vote for the magazine style, but to be honest, your current style, although not stylish is simple and gets the job done. If you can change it to magazine style w/o a lot of money/investment, i’d go for it tho
Hi Steve, I use the Magazine theme but with one column. I like this theme, but sometimes it’s good to mix things up. Even your regular readers might get a kick out of seeing something new and out of the ordinary. With the two columns you can put more content on the front page and possibly reduce your bounce rate.
Testing is a good thing.
Btw – thanks for asking what we think. That’s pretty cool of you.
For a one writer blog.. .single column is better I think… In fact, on some of my personal blogs I remove the side bar completely
http://howtokeepaconversationgoing.com/
Of course, it all depends on the object of your blog… I use it as lead generation.. so the less options i give readers the better…
Steve,
I am leaning toward the “magazine style” 2-column blog. But I don’t really know if that server the readers better (I was also thinking if I can apply the magazine-style to my blog). Let us know what you’d find out 🙂
Single column – no magazine format – be true to a blogging format. I already voted too.
@ everyone: Thank you all for your comments and your vote. I appreciate your input. ATM the single column is winning, but it is a fairly close race about 60:40.
I will definitely be making style changes when I have the time in November. But maybe keeping the basic single column design. We shall see. I appreciate all of the input I received, it really does help.
Sorry I said neither but essentially I meant that I really like your site now, im unsure why you feel the need to change it. How long have you had it like this for? Are you just bored with it?
cheers
Nat
I’ve had it like this since the beginning (January 2010). I’m changing it to turn it into a more “optimized” manner. I won’t change the level of content, but I want to maximize certain areas and increase the number of RSS and Email subscribers.
Hi Steve,
This is really interesting because, as you know, I have a 2 column magazine style format.
What I have found is that the page views per visitor have increased. One commentator wrote the imortal comment ‘popped over to read this article and have just spent 1.5 hours on the site’. I think it’s easier to draw more people in to the bowels with 2 columns, than 1 but that’s my opinion.
One thing I think you could do is widen the viewable screen a bit. Maybe it’s the black borders but they, to me narrow the field of focus.
The other thing is that 41 Hot Internet Marketing Niches it’s not clear that it’s free…
Excellent comments Matthew…they definitely gave me some good ideas. I’m glad I asked this question because you and a few others gave me feedback about increasing the viewing area, which I’ll definitely implement when I redesign the site.
I’m late to the party, but I prefer reading the one column blogs because I can focus on the content that brought me to the site. However, I am guilty of being like the commenter that Matthew mentioned in getting myself lost in a site that had two columns of content or related content links below the main blog post.
The only changes I would make are perhaps adjusting the background image in the header so that the header links (Home, Steve Recommends, etc) are a little clearer to read. I like the idea of widening the content portion, too. And perhaps bump the Twitter and RSS icons closer to the top? Not a big deal, but I prefer having ready access to those buttons on new blogs I go to.
Otherwise, I’m jealous of the design you have going here. Looks good in my opinion.
James,
Thanks for some great comments. You definitely pointed out some small changes that I think will be useful. No worry about being “late” am not making any changes at all til November when I get back to the sates. I want to do things “right” and not worry about it again for a long long time