I’mm looking to do a bit of an overhaul of my website over the summer. I’md be really grateful if you would let me know in the comments any thoughts you have on these quick questions:
- What do you want from my site?
- What things frustrate you on my site?
- What’s wrong with the site?
- What’s right about the site?
- What can be made better?
Thank you, as ever, for all your ideas, criticism and advice…
Hi Al,
A more minimal look would be great. I think the drop down menus with huge lists of things are a little messy – maybe they could be more compact?
but, love the site as a whole!
Tom
Yes – those menus have evolved over time as I added more and more and more stuff to my site!
Do you think I should delete all that stuff, or just bury it a bit?
Maybe a lot could be grouped together? The expeditions for example?
Don’t delete anything! There are plenty of us who only discovered you and your site recently and are still working our way through your older articles.
To be honest I quite like the long drop down menus – it makes it easier to stumble across something of interest you’ve not seen before. Perhaps your drop downs could be categories with lists of articles expanding to the right. But then a category filter would serve the same purpose I suppose.
Looking forward to the new look,
Jon
Hi Alastair,
Your adventures are great and that cannot be seen in images at first sight. I think people wat to be struck quickly by the amazing things you do. So maybe find a way to show your pictures/videos more quickly here.
What I like is the diversity of things, so like said above, don’t delete anything. But maybe male more general categories or try to squeeze stuff in one page instead of having them in different ones ? Just an idea…
That’s all I’m thinking about for now, but your site is already very good like it is, so be careful not to do anything useless.
Cheers !
Brian, for Solidream
I happen to think it’s fine the way it is today.
I’d make it responsive, as in adaptable in size to tablets and smartphones and hence making it easier to consume the content on these mediums.
The long drop-down menus might work OK for those on a 27″ iMac, but on a 13″ screen they’re not usable.
Make the photos bigger.
I think that’s it, just small technical changes, while keeping the good content up!
My advices:
I would try to get easier the drop menu, it’s too messy right now.
I would reduce the size of your widget columns, leaving just one of them (and reducing or reorganizing your pictures/links of Speaking, books, videos, photos.
I would this way increase the size of the blogroll, and I would increase the size of the text you show there in the preview.
It would be great to add some pictures to your posts, being able to show there a small preview and making it more attractive.
You should add on the top (on the header) a link to your vimeo account, with the actual logos of facebook, twitter and flickr.
Redirect to your home page when someone click in the header.
That’s all what come to my mind right now.
Good luck!
I agree with the general sentiment that your site looks great as it is.
However, possible additions/suggestions would be:
1. Keeping it simple. The best thing about your site is reading your articles. End of.
2. Making it easy to access/explore older content. For example, having static pages for ‘Best bits’, ‘Fundraising’, ‘Philosophy’ etc. The WordPress category archives are convenient for us authors but less so for readers (a mon avis).
(I added Resources Articles pages to my site based on similar feedback.)
3. Maybe jazz up your ‘Adventures’ page? You’ve done some awesome stuff and you could afford to show them off a bit more.
That’s really helpful, Tim. I like those two pages you allude to – really good idea.
I agree with Tim’s comments exactly! I often find myself wanting to watch your videos and have a little trouble getting to them. Also – you might consider selling some of your photos as prints.
I personally like your drop down menus, they allow you to easily explore the whole site without clicking off the existing page. Another thing which I love is the four pictures at the top of this page. One thing I would say is there are a lot of links on the right hand side on the homepage and on every other. I understand these are for affiliated links etc., but perhaps think about getting rid of several of the others, though I love the recently popular articles.
You have already incorporated one suggestion from me – notifying on follow-up comments.