Moving right along, we have another blog review today for TriciaJOBrien.blogspot.com. I’m beginning to run out of cute things to say here, so let’s jump right in, shall we?

Kathleen’s comments

Tricia,

Your blog doesn’t have bells and whistles and graphics and so forth, so I was immediately led to start reading your posts . . . and I saw instantly that you’re a very natural writer. Your words seem to flow from your mind through your fingers. And if you struggle with grammar or syntax, you hide it VERY well! (I really, really doubt it. Your words flow too effortlessly, your voice is too clear, and people don’t spend months editing blog posts!)

I never really did find what the goal of your blog was, though. Is it primarily for you, as a method of self-expression? If so, then who cares what it looks like!

The fact that you asked for this review, however, makes me think that you ARE hoping this blog achieves something. It doesn’t appear that you’re trying to promote your own writing, since a skim down through the posts showed me nothing along those lines. Are you trying to build a small community? Just meet people online? Right now this blog is a pretty clear reflection of you, as a person, and your love of words. It’s not a reflection of your stories or books or poems, or of a particular genre. Do you want it to be?

I’m not really sure what to suggest, since I don’t know what that goal is. But think about it. This is where every website should start . . . with a careful assessment of what the goal of the website (or blog) is, what you hope it will achieve, and who you hope to reach with it. Everything else needs to follow that.

I’ll try to watch the comments over the weekend (which is sometimes difficult). Let me know what you’d like this website to accomplish, and I’ll see if I have some ideas that might help you achieve that.

-Kathleen MacIver / KatieDid Design.com

Jordan’s comments

If I were guessing (oh, wait, I am!), I’d put your blog in the get ready phase—you’re networking with other writers, and discussing writing with them. Your blog is a good way to make sure that other writers can connect with you, and to start building a community.

Having the Followers widget high on the sidebar encourages your visitors to become followers—the prominent placement is visible on every page load, and it also promises 24 lucky readers their headshots on your front page. You can also directly mention the following option, explain it to your readers, or even run a contest for followers if that’s your goal. (More on Blog Followers). You could also use a subscribe widget in the sidebar to encourage your visitors to subscribe via RSS or email.

I can see from your site and its content that you like to write. But I can’t tell what you’re writing—whether you’re a hobbyist or trying to make a career of it (nothing is wrong with either of those, of course, but I just don’t know). I can’t tell what genre(s) you’re working in.

After a little digging, I found your post from Teaser Tuesday earlier this month, with the beginning of your WIP. You could feature that post more prominently—with a menu bar or a link in the sidebar—to help visitors know that you’re an active writer, working toward publication, in YA fantasy.

You mention that you were once a newspaper writer. Would you care to go into any more detail, maybe link to some columns? You could also write an “About me” post, and link to it in a menu bar or sidebar, so we can learn more about you right away. Even in the get ready phase, it’s important to have “You” in an accessible format on your site—people like to network with people. (On that note, you have your email on your Blogger profile, but a lot of people probably won’t think to check there. I know I harp on this, but seriously—contact page!)

Search engine presence

You’ve got some professional competition for [Tricia O'Brien]—a real estate agent who’s working for that top slot.

However, for [Tricia J O'Brien], your blog is in the top two spots and your Blogger profile is #3. Woot! Rounding out the top ten are two more references to you on JacketFlap.com, and some kind of random stuff.

Yahoo has your blog as #5 for [Tricia J O'Brien]. It’s outranked by posts mentioning you at Literary Lab, Corey Schwartz’s blog and JacketFlap.com.

Bing . . . sigh. Why, Bing, why? We’re right here! Look us in the eyes! Yeah, they got nothing. Not even close.

(Out of curiosity, I also searched for [Talespinning.] Only Google had your blog in the top ten, at #4.)

Okay, so you’re doing good on Google, but you could be doing better on Yahoo and Bing. My advice has been repeated so many times that I’m sure we’re all getting tired of it: get links. Guest blog. Write articles. You have lots of writerly friends out there, get them to link back to your blog. Get these posts that mention your name (as a source, as the author of a writing sample they’re critiquing) to link to your blog.

You have great content and great community on your blog—with the right direction, you can grow your blog even more.

What do you think? What goals have you set for your website? How did you choose them? How have goals helped your site to grow?

Photo credits—Book heart: Piotr Bizior

Today we’re looking at Trisha Puddle’s blog, Trish-MollyGumnut.blogspot.com. But Kathleen covered everything so well today that her comments will be the bulk of the post. (In case you’re wondering, we write our reviews separately, and if there’s overlap . . . actually, until now there’s never really been overlap!)

Jordan’s comments

Pages & content

The very last link on sidebar (last line) leads to your profile, where you have an email link. It would be easier for people to contact you with a dedicated contact page.

How can you get a contact page in Blogger? Make a post called “Contact” and put your contact information in it. Publish it, then use its URL in a menu bar. (Making a menu bar in Blogger can be a little technical, but you can find very, very simple instructions, too.)

So many writers hear the advice to start a blog and ask, “What would I blog about?” This is a great example of how you can blog about your research. You could also draw these posts out—limit posts to a few pictures at a time (probably five or fewer, so readers won’t be overwhelmed) and give a little more description. If you’re comfortable with it, maybe show a few lines from your WIPs about those animals and settings to put them into context—let us know what they mean even though we haven’t read the stories yet.

Some of the posts are a good example of an in-world character blog—but some of them aren’t. [Kathleen has more advice about both these last points, too.]

Search engine presence

On a search for your name, your Blogger profile is the #1 result on Google and #2 on Yahoo. Your blog shows up as #2 on Google. Once again, Bing is not being kind to our volunteers, and Yahoo doesn’t have your blog either.

However, on a search for [molly gumnut] (the name of her character and her series), the the one search engine that has your blog as #1 is Bing. That’s a first. #1 on Google is your Twitter profile. #1 on Yahoo is your Blogger profile again.

The other results are places around the web, mostly blogs and forums, where you’ve commented or posted work for critique. Search engines are listing a lot of other pages as more relevant than yours for your name and Molly’s name. You could definitely increase your search engine visibility. The same advice I’ve given others applies—guest blogging, linking back to your site using your name, etc. Since you have a few critique posts out there, you might consider emailing the blog owners to ask them to link your submission back to your blog.

Good luck!

Kathleen’s comments

Dear Trisha,

Your pictures of the wildlife around your house are great! Not many children (especially those in the city) can imagine seeing such variety.

I’d like to ask a question: Who visits your blog? Or rather, who do you WANT to visit your blog? Children? Their parents? Your friends? Publishing professionals?

Pretend you are that person, pretend you’ve never seen your blog before, and take a look at it with fresh eyes. What do you find?

First, it appears as though you, the author, are Molly Gumnut. (Lots of aspiring authors use childhood photos, for some odd reason.) You say, “Welcome to ‘my’ blog” . . . and since the only name we’ve been given is Molly’s, we assume that YOU are Molly. That, in turn, made me assume that these were stories from your childhood. I didn’t realize this assumption of mine was wrong until I scrolled down the bottom and happened to find your real name.

Second . . . you know the writing rule, “Don’t tell, show?” That applies to websites, too. People don’t want to be told what is somewhere on the site, they want to simply be presented with it.

That paragraph on the right is full of telling. “I will be adding pictures.” (When you add them, you SHOW us that.) “I will update them each week.” (That’s dangerous to put, because when they see you haven’t for a month and a half, they think the blog is abandoned. Don’t tell people how often you’ll update, just update! ) “There are a number of links.” Just put the links in, rather than telling us that they’re there somewhere.

What do you want your blog to do instead? Well . . . just like a book, you want it to hook your readers immediately! In a book, you hook your reader with action. On a writer’s website, you hook your reader with the world of your books. That’s why your photos are so wonderful.

So all you need to do is clean this up so that the visitors realize they’re looking at pictures that reflect chapter books, rather than pictures from the author’s childhood.

Here are some ideas and suggestions:

1) Take out the childhood picture and see if you can find (or have someone you know draw) an illustration of Molly. That will help us realize that Molly is fictional. It doesn’t have to be amazing quality . . . even a child’s drawing would work, since these are children’s books. They will help portray “children” and “fiction.”

2) The picture at the top needs to fill the width of the blog. I also think that it should be an illustration that matches your illustration of Molly. Pick a fun scene out of one of your stories, and have someone draw a picture of Molly in that scene. The picture should include “The Wonderful World of Molly Mavis Gumnut” AND the words “by Trisha Puddle.” That also portrays “fiction” and gives us your name. If Molly lives in Australia, then make more of it! Americans are fascinated by Australia and the wildlife there, and I’m sure much of the rest of the world is, too! Then, make sure your background colors match those in the illustration.

3) Your welcome spot on the left . . . take out the “Welcome to The Molly Gumnut Blog” (you don’t really ever need to say “Welcome,” we know it’s a blog, and you’ll have her name up at the top), and take out the first seven sentences. They’re telling and won’t interest people. Instead, do a little bio of Molly, starting with the most interesting thing about her. ie: “Eight-year-old Molly learned to ride a turtle.” or “Molly decided to be a vet the day she watched snake eggs hatch.” Choose something really out-of-the-ordinary.

4) If you can, put an illustration-looking frame around each of your snapshots. This will pull the snapshots “into” the world of Molly. You can pretend that Molly (or her mother) took them, if you want. But this will keep the new site look of the fiction world cohesive. [Note that this is particularly effective if your see your potential audience as mostly children who will/have read your books.]

5) If you want to keep the links to animal rescue in the sidebar, go ahead . . . but you need to make them clickable links. Here’s how you do it.
Instead of just pasting the link in, surround it with this code:
<a href="http://www.TheLink.com">http://www.TheLink.com</a>

So your RSPCA link would be:
<a href="http://www.rspca.org.au/">http://www.rspca.org.au/</a>

It will LOOK the same on your blog, but it’ll be clickable instead of straight text. I’d also suggest putting it in Molly’s terms. “Molly loves to rescue animals, and you can help her by . . .”

6) Your most recent blog post: take out both “Wonderful Word of . . .” because you’ll have that in the header. A better post title might be “Where Does Molly Play?” Then just show the photos with the captions. Again, don’t TELL us the photos are there . . . especially when we’re about to be SHOWN them!

7) Finally, watch your grammar. I’m a grammar nerd, so not everyone will notice what I do . . . but you have quite a few fragments (that aren’t in someone’s POV to excuse them as thoughts), and some capitalized words in the middle of sentences that shouldn’t be, and a few missing commas around clauses. There aren’t a lot, but this blog is your face on the Internet. As an aspiring author, grammar problems will tell against you more than they do any other group of people.

I hope this is helpful to you, and good luck with your books! The post you did where you mentioned Molly trying to rescue a bandicoot caught my interest, since I’m not even sure what a bandicoot is!

-Katie/Kathleen
http://www.KatieDidDesign.com
http://www.KathleenMacIver.com

What do you think? Could you do a whole blog (not just a post) in your character’s world? How can you use the world of your books to hook your website visitors?

Photo credit: bandicoot by Greenstone Girl

Fixes to help with search engine optimization and loading time on an iWeb blog and website.

Another website review today! I feel like I’ve known Eileen for a while, since I’ve seen her around the comments of other blogs (like Kaye Dacus’s and Nathan Bransford’s) for over a year, but we haven’t really “talked” until she came to this blog (woot!). Now she thinks I’m a Superior Scribbler (why, thank you!), and she volunteered for the next website review with her site, EileenAstels.com. Katie and I both also looked over her blog, EileenAstels.blogspot.com, too.

Eileen’s website

Jordan’s comments

I see from your blog that you’re just entering the “get set” phase— you’re submitting to editors and agents now. Congratulations (and good luck)! It’s important that visitors can figure out what your site is about and what they’re supposed to do once there there. Your site looks pretty ready—it’s professional, easy to navigate, and the left navigation makes it easy for your visitors to find the important stuff on your site.

However, your genre and even the fact that you’re a writer almost seemed “buried” below the header. (It was several minutes before I saw it there.) You should use that line of text or something similar right under your name at the top as a tagline to make your purpose, niche and genre apparent when someone stumbles across your site.

Individual pages

In this phase, your contact page is more important than ever. So woot on already having a contact page! If you want, you might also use the form that GoDaddy can install on a contact page. (If you’ll recall, this page is the #1 thing an aspiring author’s website must have.)

You might consider relabeling “Eileen’s Hopefuls.” I guessed what you meant, but it almost sounds a little sad . Plus, it could be clearer—I knew what I was looking for when I came to your site. Not everyone will. On the plus side, I like your organization here—presenting your books as a planned collection or series. It looks like some of your books’ statuses need to be updated (books 3, 4 and 5).

I’d also recommend that you expand the book descriptions here into full “pitches” like you’d present in a query letter, especially for the later books (because the agents/editors will have already seen the pitch for the first book). It’s totally up to you, but you could think about putting a short excerpt—maybe five pages—on your site, too.

I might reword or delete the first sentence of the last paragraph on the Hopefuls page—it almost sounds like you’re planning on just using the series as a warmup exercise.

Your about page is personable and professional.

Search engine presence

Your search engine presence is good. Your site is #1 in Google and Bing and #2 on Yahoo for [Eileen Astels]. Your blog is #1 on Yahoo, #2 on Google and #6 on Bing for [Eileen Astels]. Other sites in the top ten for your name are the widget for your blog, Facebook, Afictionado, and Amazon.ca. While those are fine, it couldn’t hurt to seek out opportunities to get your name out there more—like you’re doing through coblogging, comments and guest blogging. (Be sure to get the most out of guest blogging if you do it.)

A few other tricks you could do to help:

• Change the <title> element on your home page to “Eileen Astels Official Website” or “Eileen Astels – Inspirational Romance Author” or something like that. Right now, if I were to bookmark your home page or minimize my browser while viewing it, it would be described as “Home Page.” I’d lose that in my bookmarks. Plus, it’s helpful to have a descriptive title for search engines to understand what your homepage is about. (I don’t use GoDaddy for building sites, but I believe this is under “Page title.”)
  • However, if changing this changes the title of the page on the left-hand side, see if “Eileen Astels Home” or just “Eileen Astels” will fit.
• Use headers to organize and emphasize your text, rather than just using size/styles. If you look at the source code here, you’ll see that “Jordan McCollum” is in a <h1> tag—a header (top level) tag. That indicates to search engines what the page is about. Use header tags (h1, h2, h3) to organize your text hierarchically. Test this to see what they look like, but in most designs the header tags are large and bold. (Technically, this technique seems to be losing a little power, but it can still help.)
• Use meta descriptions to control the “snippet” in search engines. Right now, search engines are showing “The Eileen Astels Official Website. Your Subtitle text … Welcome to the web desk of Eileen Astels, an Inspirational Christian Romance Writer. …” But if you have a meta description that matches a query, they’ll show that instead (i.e. without “Your Subtitle text”). You might have to insert them in HTML, like I told Livia).

Social media & your blog

For whatever reason (I’d guess browser incompatibility, but I’m not sure), I don’t see the widget showing up on your homepage. I see you’re on Facebook (on your blog) and Twitter; you could consider having widgets for those on your website, too, in the sidebar, on the main page or on the contact page.

Your blog looks to be a good mix of appealing to and networking with fellow writers, sharing your love of literature and sharing your life in an appropriate way. It looks like your content is fun, interesting and useful, and with 50+ followers and twenty-something comments on most posts you’ve clearly built a community around your blog.

My only advice here would be to set up your blog to be hosted at http://blog.eileenastels.com. You can do this through Blogger and GoDaddy, your domain registrar, without changing anything else, really. Setting up Blogger Custom Domain is a little bit technical, but not very hard.

Why do you want to do this? Because every link to your blog is a “vote” for your site in search engines’ eyes. The more votes you have, the more authority search engines think your site has. But if these links point to http://YOURBLOG.blogspot.com, it’s BlogSpot getting all that authority. If you move your blog to blog.eileenastels.com, the votes now all go toward your domain (which many professionals believe will give your site an overall lift—and since Blogger will redirect your links, it can’t hurt!).

This might seem like a lot, but really, you have a good site set up so far and a few tweaks could take it to the next level.

Katie’s comments

Dear Eileen,

Nice to meet another Christian romance writer!

Your site uses a common layout, but it’s still tasteful, in relaxing colors, and is easy to navigate. Those may seem like simple compliments, but they’re extremely important. (And many people get them wrong.) So congratulations! It is also a perfectly-functioning site, as it is. So these thoughts are just things to consider the next time you feel like doing a re-design.

What would I recommend on your site? Well, to me, there are three main issues.

Web-safe fonts

The font that you’ve chosen for the green bar (that says, “Welcome to the web desk of . . .”) and the scripture verse is very hard to read. At least, it is on my computer. (This is the only thing that might NOT be perfectly-functioning on other computers. Read on to understand why.)

Here’s the thing about using fonts other than Arial, Courier, Georgia, Times, and Verdana . . . you have absolutely no guarantee that your visitors have the same font installed on their computer that you do. What does the browser do if you’ve told it to render “Viner ITC” and the visitor (like me) doesn’t have it? The browser picks one at random and renders the text in it. So the visitor is totally stuck if the browser picks “Webdings” or some illustrative font that renders a picture for each letter. (I have no idea what Viner ITC looks like, so I don’t know what font YOU see on your computer. I also don’t know which, of my 100+ fonts, the browser picked . . . I just know it’s not easy to read.)

The only way to avoid this is to stick to the very, very short list of fonts that are pre-installed on all versions of all operating systems. (Google them, if you’d like.) If you want to do something in a font other than that, you have to use a graphics program to make an image of your text in that font [That's what I did for my header when I fell in love with that font—Jordan]. (And then make sure you use an alt tag for that image, so that blind Internet users’ text-reading programs can still tell them what the text says [And also search engines!—Jordan].)

While I’m on fonts . . . I’d recommend un-italicizing the rest of your text as well. It’s harder on the eyes, and therefore makes it more likely that your readers will click away without reading it. (You’d be surprised how little a website visitor needs to click away! And most of it is subconscious, too, so you can’t argue with it.)

Conveying your genre in the design

Your header image portrays writing . . . but not inspirational romance. I’d see if you can find something a little more romance-y. Adjust your background colors, if needed, to match . . . but keep them tasteful and relaxing! Also, your header image stretches farther down the page than your navigation menu. That looks a little . . . “off” to me. Maybe see if you can add a few other little items of interest in that bar on the left. Do you have a twitter feed? How about a favorite scripture? Or an image that coordinates what your header? Maybe you can install a widget that will automatically post the titles to your last five blog posts?

Blog/site transition

Finally, your blog’s overall feel doesn’t reflect your site’s at all. It makes the reader do a double-take and think, “Wait! Did I click on that right? Is this really the same person? It can’t be! No . . . wait, (checking back and forth) that’s the same name, so it must be. Okay. . . .”

You don’t want that interruption. If someone visits one, and then later visits the other, you want them to think, “Hey, this looks familiar! I must have been on this woman’s site before or something.” And actually, your blog reflects Inspirational Romance much more than your site does. Where did you get the background image? Do you have permission to use it on your site as well? I can think of several ways to use it, if you’re interested.

Finally, two other tiny things:
4) Your header bar, with your name in it, looks too long . . . almost like you’ve got a blank line under the text. I’d scoot it up against the top of the browser window (so the brown background doesn’t show) and shorten that up so it’s about half the height it currently is.

5) On your tips, hopefuls, and contact pages, you’ve got a light green background behind the text, that’s covering your gradient image. (It’s not . . . and it looks better . . . on your home and about pages.)

I hope this is helpful to you!

-Katie, KatieDid Design

What do you think? What other feedback would you give Eileen on her site?

After we looked at four goals of an author’s website (before publication), now we’re ready to start our website reviews. Just as a reminder, my day job is in Internet and search engine marketing. Kathleen MacIver, my co-reviewer, runs KatieDid website design. Our first victim review is of LiviaBlackburne.blogspot.com. Thanks for being the first to step up to the plate for the website reviews, Livia!

Livia’s site

Jordan’s comments

Hi, Livia! If I had to guess, I’d say you’re in the get ready phase—you’re in the process of writing, but you’re not submitting to agents or editors yet.

In the get ready phase, your goal is to build a community around your blog. You can network with other writers (and maybe agents and editors), you can appeal to readers of your chosen genre, you can tout your platform or skills.

So right now, I’d focus on using your blog in one or more of those ways. As far as usability goes, right now, you’re probably okay, but you’ll want to make some changes before you use your blog as a marketing tool or mention it in a query letter.

Your blog can actually perform the functions of a full website if you add a menu bar. On the menu bar, you’d want to link to your about page, contact page and works page, at a minimum. (Your blog would probably benefit from at least the first two right now.) Additionally, you can buy the domain LiviaBlackburne.com and put your blog on it. (If you want to develop a separate website later, no problem—put your blog on blog.liviablackburne.com and you can add your main website at liviablackburne.com later.)

If you do anything now, I would add a way for someone to contact you directly. Yes, we can tweet you, but if we’re not on Twitter, the only other way we have to contact you is through a blog comment—not very private.

Posts and their content

A huge strength of your blog already is your focus on a topic and a niche—a [neuro]scientific approach to writing. In terms of quality, your posts look great! You have really good, helpful content. Generally, however, when you post more frequently, your blog will grow more. Posts are what blogs are for, after all . Once a week is probably the minimum, and it’s important to be consistent.

If you have trouble coming up with things to write about, you could break some of your future posts into series of shorter posts (you could get four posts out of a post like yours on the power of prologues, for example). Series also helps to build a sense of anticipation among your blog readers—they’re looking forward to your next post.

You can also add more bulleted lists to help make your reading more scanable, if suited to your posts. Pictures, even stock photos, also help to break up big blocks of text and draw in readers (I use sxc.hu and Flickr Creative Commons search to find mine). See the screencap at right to see how photos break up what otherwise looks like a long block of text. (Also, there’s a bulleted list in there; they stand out more when you do them “for real” instead of just throwing a graphic together like that.) The screencap also includes the recommendations I have made/will make about your sidebar.

For a blog that’s pretty young, you’re already getting multiple comments on your posts—woot! You can always try to appeal more directly to encourage blog comments, such as asking discussion questions at the end of the post.

Similarly, you can appeal directly to your readers to become Followers and subscribers.

Search engine presence

Your search engine presence is decent. I think you’re very smart to start using your married name now (and congrats and good luck on the big day!)—changing later would’ve caused a few problems. You have little competition for your name. This blog is #1 on Yahoo and #6 on Google for your name. (#1 on Google is your Twitter page; #1 on Bing is your other blog.)

Unfortunately, I can’t seem to find this blog on Bing. To help improve your rank on Google and get indexed by Bing, look for opportunities for links with your name as the anchor text, like guest blogging, your friends’ blog rolls, etc.

Also, you can sometimes have more control over the “snippet” that appears in search engine results (the description below the blue link) by using the meta description element. The format is:

<meta name="description" content="[description of your site, such as what you have below your blog name]" />

The description you put there will show up as the snippet in search results (if there isn’t a better match for the search terms elsewhere on the page).

Here are some more specific instructions on how to insert header codes in Blogger.

Social media

You’ve done a great job of integrating Twitter with your blog with the Twitter widget in the sidebar and TweetMeme on each post. This goes both ways, since you actively use Twitter and promote your blog posts there (good!). You also promote your subscription options well, though I might recommend moving them above the topics menu (that way we can see the subscribe buttons “above the fold”—in the area of the page you can see without having to scroll down).

I might also move the Twitter widget above the Google ads, but that’s fairly subjective.

In all, you’re off to a good start. A little work on the static pages and posting consistency will get your blog to the next level.

Katie’s comments

Hello Livia!

First, I’d like to say that I find your little catch phrase quite intriguing! What IS a brain scientist’s take on creative writing?

However, this is a website review, so I’ll have to focus my comments on your blog design . . . and frankly, I’m not sure what to say. There’s not really anything to critique, since it appears to be a basic template. A website made from a basic, generic template (99% of the time) is like finding a hardcover book that’s missing its dust jacket (the old kind that had nothing more than a solid color and gold lettering on the edge). There’s nothing to turn you off to the book/site, but you really had to have a compelling reason from somewhere else in the universe to open up that book and start reading, because the book cover itself is offering you nothing.

You do have that little paragraph that explains a little. Now you need to find a design that is the visual interpretation of your concept. A header image/text would help . . . my initial thoughts would be your name long, spaced out (and not too large) and centered, then immediately under it, in a strong technical-looking font, your words, “A brain Scientist’s take on” on the left, leading to “Creative Writing” on the right, but done in a fun “creative” font. This would give a partial “translation” of the text and help show the contrast between “brain scientist” and “creative writing.” (Note: this text would have to be turned into an image . . . check back for the next review for the reason why.)

Then, a background and/or other image here or there that carried that contrasting theme would be fantastic. You’d want something that melds technical/scientific/detailed, with art. (I’d sure have fun designing that one!)

Your layout is fine . . . basic layouts for blogs are often best, since people are there to read content (once they know they’re interested, of course).

So all-in-all . . . you don’t have anything wrong here, but you haven’t really taken any steps toward the two main goals of a website’s design, which are:

1. Instantly portray what your website is about, and what the visitor will receive if they hang around. (In your case, interesting information that they’re not likely to find anywhere else on the Internet, since the number of brain scientists blogging about writing has got to be extremely small)
2. Make the site stick in their mind, thereby upping their chances of wanting to come back, coming back, and remembering why they bookmarked it when they do come back.

Feel free to drop me a line if you’ve got any more questions!

-Katie, KatieDid Design

What do you think? Can Livia’s site do more? What advice would you give her?

Photo of book by Marcos Ojeda