Getting the Most Value from the New Site & Seeking your Feedback
The New Site Design
If you’re an RSS Reader or Email Subscriber who hasn’t been by the site lately, and had no reason to, I don’t blame you. I’ve always believed in my content, but was never proud of the site design.
It took me 11 months to come up with a new design for the site, and I’m finally happy with the design. Most notably there are improvements on the aesthetics, functionality, interactivity, and shareability.
If you have been by the site in the last week or so, my apologies for all of the tinkering that I’ve been doing, which could have disrupted your browsing experience. You may want to clear your cache and cookies if anything looks screwy on the site.
Site Direction
I plan on posting a lot more to the site and in more easily digestible doses. I realize that a lot of my posts were lengthy, and that doesn’t fit everyone’s attention span. You’ll also see a lot more site interactivity and community features.
Features on the Site that will Allow you to Get the Most Out of it
1. Much more Commentator Friendly:
- Subscribe to Post Comments: at the bottom of posts is a little check box to indicate if you’d like to receive email updates from comments following yours on a given post. Want to see if someone responded to your comment rant? Now you easily can. Here’s what the box looks like.
- Recent Comments: In the footer, you will find the 5 most recent comments on the site.
- Top Commentators: In the footer, you will find the 5 most frequent commentators on the site, including number of comments. If you have a website, your site will be linked to. If you don’t, pride is at stake.
- Comments are now avatar enabled and you can now use tags.
- Please use the ‘ShareThis’ button after reading a post. If you like the post, please submit it to Digg, save it to del.iciou.us, Stumble it, email it to a friend, etc. All of these things can be done through the ‘ShareThis’ button. I need all the help I can get in promoting the site and if you get value from the site, please join me in promoting the content. Here’s what the button looks like:
Turns into this:
I appreciate all of your comments, and made these changes to encourage active participation on the site. Comment activity has really jumped since the changes have been made. Thanks for adding to the discussion!
2. More Chance to Express your Opinion:
- I’ve enabled polls in the sidebar and will include them in posts frequently. Additionally, there is now a polls archive.
- In the lower right footer there is a feature where you can leave a site comment for anyone to read.
3. Share Your Ideas
I’ll continue to actively respond to your comments. If you can’t find a post that interests you on the site, please use the new contact form to let me know of your idea.
4. Site Browseability
- The new site has a much improved search bar and archive pages. It’s a great way to navigate the site and is extremely accurate for Wordpress.
- All categories have been sectioned into five main personal finance categories: investing, live & career, money, protect, and retire. If you’d like to find more specific post categories, there is an ‘All Categories’ section in the sidebar that includes all of the old site categories sectioned into the 5 general theme categories.
General Categories
All Categories
- The home page includes ‘best of 20somethingfinance articles, the feature post, and snippets of most recent posts.
- In the lower left you’ll find the post with the latest video in it.
- In the lower right you’ll find ‘random posts’ by post image.
5. Get Content Delivered:
- If you’re not a current subscriber to the site, get all posts delivered to you for free via email/rss.
- You can also subscribe to each post’s comments as highlighted earlier.
Reader Feedback:
- What do you think of the new site – the good and the bad?
- What is your favorite new feature?
- How can the site be improved? What other features would you like to see?
- Do you see any value in Twitter or any of the other social media sites out there?
Thanks for the feedback, and I hope you enjoy the new site!
I’ve been following this site since early spring, and I really enjoy the changes you’ve made. I like the new format a lot. I’ve mentioned your website in various conversations I’ve had with other “20-somethings” when the topic of finance comes up (which is pretty frequently, since it has become quite an interest of mine!), and I started my own website last week in part to link to finance articles that I feel impact my life. I’ll probably be referencing your site a lot on mine! As I’ve mentioned before, I have found very little financial advice that applies those who are young/single/childfree/etc., so its great to have a community here of other young people who are interested in this topic. Its been great to see how the amount of discussion has increased in recent months too. Keep up the great work!
Stephanie – I really appreciate the kind words. Thanks for being a long time participator on the site. Good luck with the new site, I’ll definitely be stopping in to check it out!
I agree with Stephanie. I as well have been following for a few months now and have enjoyed the constant flow of content that you always deliver. The posts are lengthy and could disparage some users but those who really are interested would read regardless. I would recommend making the posts more stagnant in length then. I like all the new features you have added as well as the visual appeal to the interface. I also appreciate the effort you put forward to respond to comments made by users. As a user it really puts a human side behind the posts and make it worth coming back to every time. Good luck with everything. I agree that being young and in my 20’s it is hard to find useful financial information that can relate to me now in the present.
Quick questions, what are some of the plugins you have used to gain functionality?
Craig
http://www.budgetpulse.com
Thanks Craig. What do you mean by ’stagnant’. Are you saying keep them all to the same length and short?
I’ve used top commentators, recent posts, wp polls, recent comments, wp wall, and sharethis to name a few.
Maybe try making them a little different. Sometimes short, sometimes longer. Maybe one time have a pic, sometimes not. This way it has some flow and difference to the posts which will be more exciting to see. Thanks for telling what plugins you used. We are working on redesigning our company blog and am trying to figure out which plugins may be best for us.
Craig
http://www.budgetpulse.com
Please don’t get rid of longer posts, I like seeing information that is a little more detailed! I feel that for most topics the amount that can be said in a couple of paragraphs is very limited, thought I suppose there are some topics where a couple paragraphs will suffice. I do enjoy the more frequent posts, though – there is definitely a difference between the rate of posts now and the rate earlier in the year. If you plan to post frequently, I suppose some longer posts could just be split into smaller posts and posted throughout the course of a few days or a week, then you can provide the same amount of information but accommodate the short attention spans!
1.The top comment feature is solid and helps to build a brand loyalty. I plan on adding this feature to my own blog as soon as I attract more people posting comments.
2. The layout is very web 2.0, anyone viewing this page from StumbleUpon or anywhere else will want to give it a read.
3. The articles are still great, but the image is a nice touch because it adds a “magazine” feel to it.
The most important thing is that this blog looks really professional.
Studenomics – Yeah, I really like the top commentators plugin b/c it creates a friendly sense of competition and gives people an incentive to post more. Thanks for all of the feedback, those were all end goals in mind, so I’m glad to hear that the design is being perceived that way.
The new site is way, way better. (& I’m racking up more comments to stay in the new top 5 list!)
@ Michael –
I won’t be competing with you much for a little while. Since I started my blog last week I’ve been using the new email address I created for it and all of my posts with this email address aren’t counting toward my old total.
(So I guess technically you could say I am still competing, I’m just starting over so right now you have a huge head start!)
@ stephanie –
Bwahaha! Great. I could use the lead. Btw, I’ve subscribed to your blog. Best of luck.
-Michael
Stephanie/Michael – I sense a friendly rivalry brewing. Good…good. Too bad the plugin doesn’t allow count by IP address, Stephanie. Oh well, you’ve been challenged, so I’m sure you’ll step up to the plate =)
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