Good to see another website from you James. Assuming some nice, quality content is fed into the system, I might add another one to your subscriber total (doubling the number!).
Since .Nick got such an unnecessarily harsh response for his post, I'm in two minds about saying
anything much at all about your site. But since I'm a TFRanger, I'll bite the bullet.
My first thought on opening this site was, "yay, another web designer blog" on first appearances. The layout screams boring blog, not web design house. Is this website just a boring blog with 'useful' tidbits of advice for some niche (web designers?) or the website of a (one man) design house? If it's the former, take out the portfolio and other 'hire me' marketing areas. If it's the latter, keep the blog as a corporate blog (and perhaps start a new niche blog separate from your business entity).
After the initial scan of the page, things started going downhill; not helped by the tiny body text size and weird, unorganised nature of the different UI areas. I'll go through some things as I saw them, since that's the most logical for me and well, it's my post.
The logo. Whether this site is a portfolio/sales site, or a niche blog, it's always nice to develop something unique, memorable and remarkable to identify the site/service by. As you're a designer, I assume you know all that already and just made something in a few seconds to stick up there in the top left corner -- to fill space? I'm a logo geek, and if there's one thing out of all the items I'll mention in this post that I'd love to see improved/changed would be the implementation of a really sexy logo for Flockey. That tagline is also not a beauty to behold and is confusing (to me at least). Does it mean "web design development" as in developing the art and craft of web design; "web design. development" as in web design and (house, website, etc.) development; "web design & development" as in web-design and web-development? Moving on, because there's still a lot to type.
I'll skip the primary navigation because even though it's a bit boring and naff, there are more worthwhile points to be made elsewhere.
" flockey changes the way your website represents itself online. " The highlighting looks more like a rendering bug than something done purposefully. Reading the highlighted words as a single phrase (something that naturally happens) gives "flockey your represents online" -- absolutely meaningless. If you're going to highlight key words there, perhaps change them to read "flockey your website online" since that at least gives an impression of the service you're providing. Visually, I'd remove the background colour for the highlight and simply use different tones of colour to differentiate highlighted from non-highlighted words.
"10% off" box. Since from all initial observations the website appears to be a blog, the 10% off box comes as a bit of a surprise. Also being placed where it is, and visually different from anything else on the page, it looks like a third-party advert more than a promotional offer from the business associated with this website. Suggested improvements aren't necessary here because it'd fall into one of two categories: remove this box completely, or make it a prominent part of a non-blog redesign.
Since at this stage, my mind was mightily confused about what this site is, I wandered left to the sidebar. 1 feed subscriber? Sorry but if your numbers are so low just don't display them. A much larger and more inviting RSS icon might better suit here, you want to be attracting subscribers (since that means regular readers) rather than saying, "hey look, only one person reads this!"
The search box, all fine and good but I'd much rather have it in a more conventional spot: visually include it in with the sidebar navigational area and/or into the header (top right).
What is flockey? This should be much, much, much more prominent. Also, what it says goes against everything my eyes are being led to believe. You say flockey is a design house, my eyes say it's a blog. What's the score, really? Nit-picking, or being typographically minded, I'd like to see the type in this section tweaked; "high quality web design" should be visually together, as should "go here", though especially for the latter (or for the area as a while) the copy itself could do with some revision.
The sidebar links themselves are there and serving their purpose. Perhaps move the categories list above the blogroll, unless you want visitors to stray away from your content?
I could go on and on about the actual
content of the site/blog/whatever-it-is, but I've already said far too much and you're probably not reading this far anyway. What I will say, however, is that your posts bring up a few interesting points but do little more than that. Take your latest post, "Clean That Workplace!" for example, the post itself doesn't say anything much more than the title. Why should we keep a clean and tidy work place/space? What are the benefits of such, or indeed the negative aspects of working in a messy environment? You could say so much, in a much more concise way I might add, and really bring something useful to your 'articles' (your own categorisation, not mine).
Quite frankly, I got bored even before "the fold" so decided to come here and post by
my own thoughts and opinions on your site. Make what you will of this post; I intend it to be somewhat useful, you may see it as merely derogatory. C'est la vie.
Good luck with the future of the site, in whichever direction it flows.
P.S. One more obligatory coffee smiley, just to show I'm not a hater
)
P.P.S. Apologies to all for the reading and/or scrolling I've inflicted on you because of this post.
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