An Independent Eye by Trevor Thorn
I am frequently amazed by the insight into something I had regarded as satisfactory, that can be offered by someone who is independent and with a different skills set to my own. This is what happened to me just recently to heighten that view.
As some of you will know, I have been blogging for eight years and had regarded the format of my site as ‘established’ and ‘working well’. Then on a recent summer school I encountered a young man, Brian, from the USA who is a website designer. I asked him if he would have the time to look over my blog site and feedback to me any design or technical issues that might improve my site. He was kind enough to do that and the first he identified was one of those situations where the obvious was 'hiding in plain sight’ to me.
Some time ago, I had written on this blog about how useful it is to highlight particular ‘collections’ of similar material. In that entry https://morethanwriters.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-power-of-collections-in-generating.html , I identified how all the collections attracted more interest than individual postings.
At that time, each collection was identified by a conventional blog link at the top of the site, just below the banner headline: that is to say, identified by the equivalent of a short sentence.
The suggestion of my fellow conference delegate was that these links could be changed to pictorial links. His reason for suggesting this was that whenever people are browsing a site to see if it might be of interest to them, they are likely to look only as far as the material presented in the initial view. As this was entirely word-based (and with a small print face at that), this would be unlikely to attract them further. A picture link, he advised would be unquestionably better. Undoubtedly useful advice.
new Children’s link image.
There are four similar images
on the site at
The Cross and The Cosmos main page
So what was the ‘hidden-in-plain-sight’ element?
Well, since the collections have consistently been the most effective 'lead-ins’ on the site, it would have been logical to have given them a good deal more prominence than I had ever thought of. As a well publicised meerkat would say ‘Simples’! Changes have been made!
Having literally just made the change, I cannot offer any statistics to evidence the practical outcome(s) of the switch. But I promise you a report in due course.
If you run a blog where this might work for you, there are two possible ways of looking at this. Accept the logic and make similar changes OR wait to see the evidence before deciding. One aspect of the decision might be how you would generate a picture ‘button’. I use a purchased picture painting programme called Artrage - but there are, I understand, several free products around which others might like to mention in the comment section of this post.
My ‘Children’s’ section now looks like that shown above.
As some of you will know, I have been blogging for eight years and had regarded the format of my site as ‘established’ and ‘working well’. Then on a recent summer school I encountered a young man, Brian, from the USA who is a website designer. I asked him if he would have the time to look over my blog site and feedback to me any design or technical issues that might improve my site. He was kind enough to do that and the first he identified was one of those situations where the obvious was 'hiding in plain sight’ to me.
Some time ago, I had written on this blog about how useful it is to highlight particular ‘collections’ of similar material. In that entry https://morethanwriters.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-power-of-collections-in-generating.html , I identified how all the collections attracted more interest than individual postings.
At that time, each collection was identified by a conventional blog link at the top of the site, just below the banner headline: that is to say, identified by the equivalent of a short sentence.
The suggestion of my fellow conference delegate was that these links could be changed to pictorial links. His reason for suggesting this was that whenever people are browsing a site to see if it might be of interest to them, they are likely to look only as far as the material presented in the initial view. As this was entirely word-based (and with a small print face at that), this would be unlikely to attract them further. A picture link, he advised would be unquestionably better. Undoubtedly useful advice.
There are four similar images
on the site at
The Cross and The Cosmos main page
So what was the ‘hidden-in-plain-sight’ element?
Well, since the collections have consistently been the most effective 'lead-ins’ on the site, it would have been logical to have given them a good deal more prominence than I had ever thought of. As a well publicised meerkat would say ‘Simples’! Changes have been made!
Having literally just made the change, I cannot offer any statistics to evidence the practical outcome(s) of the switch. But I promise you a report in due course.
If you run a blog where this might work for you, there are two possible ways of looking at this. Accept the logic and make similar changes OR wait to see the evidence before deciding. One aspect of the decision might be how you would generate a picture ‘button’. I use a purchased picture painting programme called Artrage - but there are, I understand, several free products around which others might like to mention in the comment section of this post.
My ‘Children’s’ section now looks like that shown above.
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