I’m at the very starting stages of getting the blog redesigned. Before I go much further I thought it would be a good idea to reach out to you guys, my readers to see what you like or don’t like about the current website.  Is there something another site has that you’d like to see implemented here?
Here are changes that I’d like to make:
- Improve the site speed dramatically
- Change to font size (bit bigger) and font style
- Fix issues with website on mobile and tablet displays
- Improve the site search and give people the choice to use Google search or the normal WordPress search
- Fix links in the comments (green outlined box) and the start of the comments section (same problem)
- Make it easier for people to subscribe to posts via e-mail, on either a daily or weekly basis. This will also involve fixing up the end of every post which says “you can sign up blah blah blah…”
- Increase the blog width so there is less dead space.
Here are the changes that I am considering:
- Add an advertisement between the second and third posts on the home page. This should give me a lot more blog income which I can put towards competitions that also crowd source content (e.g ‘Blogposts/Tools you wish existed‘ and ‘win $225 by helping me find bank bonuses‘)
- Add a featured post slider. This would show 4-5 posts that I think are the most important that we’ve posted recently, this way people just checking quickly would be able to skip the limited time deals and what not.
I like to think of this blog as a collaborative project and I want to try and emphasis this more in 2015, if there is something that you hate about the site currently then please let me know. If there is something which you think would improve the site, also let me know (feel free to link to other sites that do something particularly well).
This redesign isn’t going to be major and it’s not going to be an excuse to jam a whole bunch more advertisements down your throat. As you add your suggestions and critiques I’ll add to the above lists and pass it all onto my future designer.
-Font needs to be bigger (i’m not that old either, only 36)
-move the ads to the side, it looks terrible right next to the first paragraph and in between.
-i’d rather you suggest/promote products in your posts with text links instead of the adds – i read somewhere they do a lot better also. you give such great info, I would not mind using your specific link for a product – i never click on the banner ads.
I like the current matter format of your blog… couple of things I would suggest is adapting the blog width to the entire screen, currently on my laptop the blog occupies on the centre 75% of the screen – a lot of wasted blank space. Second suggestion would be to increase the font size.
On my ipad, the shares icons actually hide some content. I’ve almost completely stopped visiting this blog due to that single annoyance. It’s *that* bad.
I just made some changes to how they display, can you let me know if that has made it any better?
Shares icons moved from left to bottom. While they are now larger, they are much less intrusive. Very good change.
Can you take a screenshot for me? I don’t have an iPad so it makes things a little difficult, I might just remove the share buttons entirely because so many people seem to dislike them. I just wish my readers shared the content more without them being active…
Sure. I’ll point out a couple other minor annoyances in the screenshot for you.
Please remove the share buttons on the mobile site. The horizontal line at the bottom takes away precious real estate. There is virtually no space for seeing the screen when the keyboard is open on Android in horizontal view mode.
http://www.imagehousing.com/image/1221205
http://www.imagehousing.com/image/1221204
You already mentioned it but I would just love to see bigger font. Currently I enlarge it myself when I read your blog but sometimes that creates the problem of other things covering the text.
My major complaint about the layout of the post pages is that the ads are all over the place and it makes reading difficult. If you can have clear, uninterrupted sections of content, advertising, comments, etc., the readability will significantly improve. Also, you should use different font sizes and attributes (bold, italics) for different messages, such as the main content itself, the disclosures, and anything else so that your users know the difference. To me, everything seems to blend in and I miss a lot of content because I don’t see it.
Moreover, the right side has an unbelievable number of links and I guarantee if you look at the clicks, the majority probably aren’t needed. Free up space and possibly make the posts wider as a result, or use the right side for ads. You’ve crammed more information onto a post page than many blogs do in their entirety.
(FYI, I work in this area, I redesigned one of the most used websites in the world.)
The ads aren’t really all over the place, they are inserted in the exact middle of every post and at the start of every post. I don’t think we’d be able to easily change this without manually adding ads to each post. We used heatmaps and people actually do click the category links a fair bit, we should be able to make the content wider without needing to remove any of that but we will consider maybe making the category section something can expand or minimize.
Thanks for the suggestions!
I love your blog but I’m about to stop following you on facebook because you keep on posting expired deals on your facebook page like the staples $20 Visa Rebate that you posted today. Thats happened several times recently where you’ve posted deals on facebook that are like 2 weeks expired. Anyway to fix that?
Actually this is a good point! I’ve been pondering about unfollowing DOC on Twitter because they keep on repeating blog posts. Whenever my birdie flashes I go look and then like 70% of the time it’s old news from this site…
If you just want to be notified of new posts, I’d recommend using feedly or another RSS feed reader. I use twitter more to engage with readers and post a mixture of new + old posts depending on what takes my fancy. This won’t really be changing (e.g yesterday we got 300 visitors from twitter that were all to old posts) most people find it somewhat helpful as they don’t know about all the posts this site has.
Apart from the staples $20 post, when else has this happened? That was supposed to be reshare last week, but when I scheduled it I obviously put it in the wrong week. I don’t know of when else this has happened.
It’s just user error so I’ll try to be more careful.
Well quite frankly I have no idea what kind of problems everybody sees with this blog. I don’t see any ads (thanks to ad block+) and usually no pictures (except those ugly things in the “related posts” section under each post). It’s very fast even with the sluggish DSL line we have @ work. The new (?) option to get notified on follow-up comments is extremely helpful, especially with the new comment being sent in the email so I don’t need to go back here right away to read it.
The things I would like to see changed:
– the shares icons on the left side are way too big
– the gray dead zones left and right are a waste of space
– no “paid subscription” link (hell, I’d really like to spend like $5/m or so on my favorite blog but can’t find the smallest donation link)
– the weird looking links in comments
– the dead links in some posts which lead to something which looks like a future reference site (like the recent post about joining Upromise, the first link goes to an empty cash back credit cards page)
Other than that: to me content is way more important than form and since the content of DOC is superior to any other blog, I don’t bother too much about the layout 😉
1. A few people agreed with you in regards to the share icons, I’ve made them smaller. Is this any better?
2. Will definitely be improving on this.
3. This will never happen, I don’t need donations the advertisements pay me more than enough money. I appreciate you wanting to contribute to the site though, just let me know about deals you see and share the blog as much as you can. TBH, you’re appreciation is enough for me. We will be making it easier to use our referral links which always help out.
4. Yeah, this will definitely be fixed.
5. Good point, I’ll fix this over the weekend.
Thanks for all the suggestions and glad you find the blog helpful.
It would be great if it were possible to place the ads better. They often get in the way.
I like FrugalHack’s website. Not sure exactly what it is, maybe the font and the graphics.
I’d really like to see an option to have alerts to comments you leave or reply to. I’d also like to add up votes to: a full width/less margin space design, the TPG redesign and the photos (maybe use picmonkey.com?)
What is the main issue people have with the pictures? Are you talking about pictures in the post or the thumbnails that are shown elsewhere?
You can get alerted on new comments already. You just click “manage the subscriptions on this post”. Should this be reworded to make it clearer?
I like the format of thepointsguy and some of the content that is not sold out to affiliate revenues.
I do like the new TPG design as well, any other sites you like the look of that aren’t in the same space as us?
I also like the design of http://www.wired.com–a technology magazine…