You asked this in a somewhat general way, I'll answer in my area of expertise, design, layout and usability. I like your blog in general, if this post appears critical it is in answering your question and perhaps my editorial style. You have a product worth the time to improve:

1. You have a very large area of white space to the right of your logo. This is important space, because it is the first thing readers' eyes scan across. This would be a good place for menus, rolling news, advertisements, etc. Note this is where Wikipedia put their campaign goal tracker, because it was the first thing viewers saw on every page.

2. "Headline" is redundant, and can be removed, the text's size and position implies this. Likewise "Featured" is insufficient, are they "Featured Cars" "Featured Articles" "Featured Links"?

3. You should consider making your menu bar richer. Add a second level on hover, so you can link directly to significantly more pages. Here's an example on a page with code on how to create one. Note the submenus with the triangles, indicating additional content. http://www.javascriptkit.com/script/script2/csstopmenu.shtml

4. The Browse Categories section is unclear. In general these look like single vehicles. If they are going to be categories, both the category headings ("tata nano" for instance) should be generalized to Tata Motors, Nissan, Chevrolet, etc if those are representative of the categories. In addition, the descriptive text should be broadly inclusive of a category, rather than a specific vehicle. If you are interested only in those vehicles, then you should change the heading from "Categories" to something like "Cars" or "All About..." to make the audience understand you are emphasizing not a category of car, but a specific make and model.

5. The positioning of Browse Categories is difficult, because it seems like a bottom element that should link to other pages, but then the categories seem to continue directly below it. You might want to move that content to individual pages, and leave those categories as links. Alternately, remove Browse Categories or make it a menu off the main menu at the top of the page. Menus and navigation in the middle of content are always jarring.

6. "Recommending" as a heading should be made parallel to the other right hand headings, "Recommendations" or "Recommended Sites" for example.

I hope that provides some helpful points to modify your blog and make it more readable and useful for your readers. Good site in terms of content, good luck.
Source(s):
Years of web design, maintenance and similar editorial review.

Check out "Dont Make Me Think" And other Steve Krug books for a non-artistic common sense guide to design. http://www.sensible.com/

http://www.javascriptkit.com/script/script2/csstopmenu.shtml


Permalink | Report