Blog Critique: Becky Povich Writer

In this series I give constructive feedback about the look and function of an author blog from a marketing perspective. As always, I rely on help from graphic designers Tom Barnes (my hubby) and Joe LaRue. To review the blog elements we look at, go here.

How are you all doing post Hurricane/Superstorm Sandy? I live in Denver, far from the disaster, but I'm sad to hear about all the crap that friends and family have had to go through. I'm thinking of you all.

Okay, enough chit-chat. Let's get to our critique. Rush over to Becky Povich and meet below.

Becky, I love your header. It makes me smile. Coffee in general makes me smile, but even if they're only drinking hot chocolate, it still makes me smile.

We do recommend changing the wording on your header. Your name - the most important part of your entire header - is hard to read. If you put "Becky Povich" to the right with your subtitles (writer- humorist - bliss follwer) smaller underneath.

You have beautiful quotes. But as beautiful as they are, we need to see your profile up top. Give it the top spot on your sidebar. This blog is about you! Let us be able to find you easily.

Under your profile, put your follower button. You want your followers to be able to subscribe with ease.

Under your followers, put your publications. Those are mighty important.

You have lots of great colors in your header. We'd like to see you pull some of those colors into your blog to give yourself a nice color palette. Like that red would be a great color for your post titles. And that yellow couch color would be nice as your date stamp. If you're afraid of color, just pick one to use throughout your blog. You'll be surprised how much it uplifts your look.

I'm glad you have the Link Within widget, but I'd reinstall it and choose 5 stories instead of 3. It will look more balanced.

Another thing that needs to be moved up on your sidebar is your labels. People do use those to find past posts. But, first, it needs to be seriously cleaned up. I would go through and remove anything you only have one and maybe even two of. Right now, it's pretty difficult to make use of it.

We'd like to see your sidebar better separated from your posts. Can you put a color behind it? Make it a light neutral color. Just something to show some contrast.

The link to your newly created website is broken. When you fix it, I recommend your links open in a new window. That keeps people on your site even when they click to go elsewhere.

There are some things you could clean up from your sidebar, but it doesn't look too crowded to me. I wouldn't mind if you widened your post area a bit. I think most people have bigger screens than that.

Other than those few little things, I am enchanted with your blog. You have delightful posts and I enjoy visiting. Good job and thanks for being a victim.

Any other suggestions you have for Becky?