Bloggin Ads

As you’ve already noticed, we’ve went through a major redesign of the header region and a brand spanking new logo is born. The caricature is a depiction of a successful blogger having a good time, blogging in a carefree manner from an exotic beach – and of course this dude could be you!. Sorry to our lady bloggers here, I just have to go with a dude here for obvious reason – because I’m a dude – so no hard feelings please. If you are observant enough, you’ll also notice that I’ll be starting a newsletter pretty soon. Since this blog is about helping you to become successful in blogging whether you are a hobbyist or a Pro, I find the design rather inspiring, fitting and fun. Actually, it doesn’t really matter what I think, most importantly is what you think. So, don’t be shy, please voice your opinions here.

There are no doubt perks to be gained from a site redesign like the buzz and refreshing factors, links galore, new lease of life on Ads, and more leg room. But in my case, I’ve no choice but to redesign the header because I don’t look like Mike Huang.

Buzz Factor

Any dramatic changes to a site are going to have people talking about it in ways that will soon become viral. If you have a lot of RSS subscribers, you’ll notice a spike in their click through rate in response to check out what’s the fuss all about. This would in turn create a lot of buzz for the site. Any publicity is good publicity even though if it is negative. Obviously you’d like that buzz to be positive in nature, but hey you can’t please everyone, our whole would be so monotonous if that’s the case.

Links Galore

The more viral the buzz factor is, the more links it’s going to translate into. Some people call this link baiting. Before you actually overhaul your site design, you would want to send out a preview of what is coming. This would cause other blogs to talk about it, analyzing, critiquing and discussing the new look and feel. The chances are that people are going to link to your site whether they are in favor of your new designs or not. You’d like that they have good things to say about your new designs in their links, but a link is a link to the search engine gods, and it’s going to count towards as an equity in favor of your site, as there is no such thing as a bad link just as there is no such thing as bad press.

I don’t think I’ll benefit from this much, because I’ve not managed to create a lot of buzz beforehand.

Refreshing Factor

Sometimes we all need a little lift to shake us off our monotonous way of doing things. Redesigning the site does help to bring that refreshing effect on us. This is especially true with the color scheme that you go with for the redesign. Studies have found that the color affect our mood as well as for our visitors. For instance, Red evokes “passion” and “excitement”; Blue and Green brings “stability” and “calmness”; yellow and Orange represents “happiness” and “energy”; and Black is a dignified color in certain context but in other offline context it may be traditionally associated with death. According to many studies, with the right color scheme, you will see a better click through rate for your visitors for sure.

For this site redesign, I’ve used a more Red to jive with our passion for blogging and the excitement that it brings. And, I’ve also used more yellow and a brighter Orange – this brings more energy and happiness in which blogging could use more of.

Here’s the before and the after picture of the header – you tell me which one you like better?

Before

After

New Lease of Life for Ads Albeit Short-lived

We’ve all experience this all too often when we are very familiar with a place that we become blind to the things around us. This is because our auto-sensory mechanism just takes over- it’s what makes us efficient and evolving beings so we don’t use energy unnecessarily. In the online world involving ad placements, the same logic applies. It is sometimes called link blindness. We need to shake up things a little, move things around, so that the Ads can become more noticeable and appealing that it will get clicked on more often. This is the principle behind why my rotating button banners Ads have the best Click Through Rate(CTR). Although this may get you what you want in terms of better CTR, it is nevertheless a short term gain because your visitors will soon get accustomed to it and its effect will be gone.

In my case, I’ll not benefit from this because I’ve not make any drastic change to where I’m placing the various components of the blog.

More Leg Room

Yes, everybody could use a little more leg room. With the advancement of technology, and prices of monitor coming down fast, most of your visitors are going to view your site on nothing less than 1000 pixels wide screen. This may mean more ad space or extra navigation room, or simply more space for content that you can stuff before you get side walled – the choice is yours – whatever that you do with it, extra leg room is always nice.

Again, for the same reason above, I’ll not benefit from this.

That’s about all I can think of in terms of benefits for redesigning your site. If you can think of more benefits, please share it with us.

The moral of the story is that no matter how good or bad your redesign turns out to be, these benefits will inevitably accompany it to make your effort a worthwhile cause. So, don’t fret, start redesigning if that’s what you’d wanted to do.

If you like the design of the header, please visit Forest. This guy’s work is phenomenal as you can attest, and I say no more as his work speaks for himself. He is also a seasoned professional at every turn, using his business acumen and gifted graphic design skills; he’s able to translate requirements into works of art that carries a message that would resonate with your visitors.