Last time I reviewed the site Get Rich Slowly and in today’s edition I will discuss The Finance Buff. One of content rich Personal Finance Blog. I have been following TFB for over an year now.
The Finance Buff – Design
As soon as I go to the blog, I noticed few things that can be added to improve the user experience.
The Finance Buff - Screenshot
Things that needs improvement are
- Missing Header – Header provides a navigation mechanism. By default everyone is used to look at header navigation while trying to find contents. Since there is no Header Navigation, only way to Home Page is via the Logo.
- Navigation Structure - Websites in general requires a structured navigation. It can dramatically improve the Average time spent on the website. In TFB I saw only 3 Navigation options ( Categories, Related Posts, Previous and Next article above each post). Since Categories is located below the fold and if visitors don’t find that, they will go away from the site.
- Writing Format – In the screen shot above shows a lengthy article. Most of the articles at TFB are detailed and very informative. But, it has to be made more readable. For example if you look at CNN, most of the paragraph will not be over 4 lines in length.
- Google Adsense – Adsense in Sidebar is good placement, but to improve the revenue, more ads can be placed in the blog. Testing various ad placements can drastically improve the revenue from Ads.
- Subscribers – Right now TBF has about 1135 subscribers. In blogging world, MORE Subscribers = MORE Money. Visitors are not going to subscribe to the RSS fee by default. They have tp be explicitly said many times in the blog to subscribe to the RSS Feed. One other way is to provide free content like ebook and ask them to sign up for News Letter. But, Email Marketing requires at least $15 per month to start with.
- Google Custom Search – Search bar can be moved to top right corner ( above About). Visitors eye move towards that corner find the search option. Custom search results are displayed as separate page. It might be good idea to display the search results within blog page.
- Affiliate Marketing – Affiliate marketing for Finance related products pay out lot of commission. I don’t see many affiliate product links.
- Header – Right side of Logo has lot of empty space. You have added Twitter and Fee Subscribe there. Instead, try placing 468×60 Banner ad in that space. Move Twitter and Fee icons to sidebar.
Hope this review is helpful to you. If anyone reading this review, requrie a free review, just leave a comment to this article.
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Thank you so much Raghu. After setting up a new blog for TIE, I’ve been thinking of switching to a different layout for my own blog and upgrading WordPress to the latest version. I will take your suggestions when I do that. Thanks again.