Comments on: Redesign of iwillteachyoutoberich coming — I’m looking for feedback

By: JimE

JimE — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 19:05:54 +0000

Rammit,
After a month of using the new site, I know what bugs me. I can’t print just the article. I like to print and read, but I don’t want to print the 50 or so comments with it. Any way to add a printer friendly button for me? I know I’m killing trees and all but it’s just a nice function I like to have.

Thanks
Jim

By: Gopakumar Sethuraman

Gopakumar Sethuraman — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 21:36:51 +0000

Ramit,

Another shoutout for Design #1 (it’s clean and the “Why are you here?” should probably go under a FAQ rather than a drop down) and for removing the “It’s not a scam” tagline. Maybe replace it with the equivalent of “Live by Design not by Default”?
I loved the design of the Scholarship (http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/scholarship/) and I’d like to see that aesthetic in the redesign. Is Rasteroids Design (http://www.rasteroids.com/) doing the redesign of the website/blog/weblog?

Regards,
Gopa

By: nico

nico — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 18:24:46 +0000

I agree w/Emma. The “This is Not a Scam” jumped out as simultaneously desperate, obnoxiously sarcastic, and scammy.

Very strong search functionality is key, as is maintaining a balance on the home page between self-promo and useful information. May need to tip more towards useful information based on the above “home” screenshot. In the “home” example, I’d like to see the blog content have a much higher priority, e.g., wider area of the screen, more lines of content on the entries that fall after the first one.

“Resources” as a navigation button is fairly boring. Don’t you have something more peppy, Ramit!?

In the “products” section, the iconography is jarringly different between the pig, the boot, and the different typefaces. Way to standardize, or have each product have its own background? That section is just overall oddly placed and awkward.

Unclear about what the graph “How much has Ramit saved you” is about. what is the 1st, 2nd 3rd?

By: Emma

Emma — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 19:33:52 +0000

I especially liked the third image– as long as the Blog tab gives you a clean look at all the entries as we currently see it? And I agree that the “not a scam” line makes all kinds of alarms go off– I really hope you will reconsider it. You know about the “Bob not linked with the Mafia” phenomenon?
(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bella-depaulo/watch-abcs-dramatization_b_29137.html) I’ve found your advice very useful and like to recommend your articles to family and friends, but they are already pretty leery about taking financial advice from a “blog;” in addition to their already existing concerns about how to judge the expertise of the person writing the blog, having the word “scam” coloring their judgments (and making them wonder “so, what exactly is the proof that this isn’t a scam? What if he’s just fooling all these journalists as well?”) is not very helpful. Can you put it in a funny but positive way?

By: Sonia

Sonia — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 17:57:47 +0000

As long has you have a search function I am happy. The over all design looks nice and clean.

By: Jay

Jay — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 22:11:40 +0000

The tab metaphor should be used only when you want to display similar info in different views, not when every tab will contain a different section of the site (as per Nielsen).
Also, I don’t see any space allotted for advertisements in the first two concepts. That can get seriously messy if you try to shoehorn ad space into an already busy layout, and can screw with extensibility should you need to pull in a bit of additional money.
Further, I’m not sure what sort of content will be living where, but if the users (us) are going to be able to tunnel deep down into the site, consider including a breadcrumb somewhere to let us know where we are in relation to the homepage (this is especially helpful after finding a page via on-site search on trying to orient yourself).
And my final thought (for now), is that without seeing any sort of metrics, most people are coming here to read your blog posts. It LOOKS like you’ll only be featuring the full text of one post on the homepage, which again, based upon my assumption, is a very small fraction of what a large portion of your usership is really interested in getting at. Think about maybe breaking out a few of the more recent posts, even if theres a ‘Read More’ link or something that goes along with them. A little synopsis offers way greater visibility, especially considering the fact that some of your headlines are a bit more tongue-in-cheek than your average financial blog (IE without contextualization via preview text, ‘I am a moron part 635′, or ‘A special kind of hell’ don’t give the users much of a clue of what they’ll get upon clicking to read the full text).
Just my two cents, cheers!

By: Thomas

Thomas — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 20:05:02 +0000

I see how this helps you increase page views, but how does this help me as a reader?

By: Alex B

Alex B — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 17:24:22 +0000

The best thing from these is that the newsletter sign-up is not taking up all the prime real estate. Coming here for the first time, I might not realize that this is a blog and not just a book/newsletter landing page. Also be sure to make your tagline, “A blog on personal finance (banking, saving, budgeting and investing) and personal entrepreneurship.” – stand out more. It’s hard to read as it is now.

It looks like your designs are going to make the site much easier to use.

By: Kim

Kim — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 12:08:25 +0000

Another echo in the chorus for design #1; it’s more of an eye-catching color, a nice, simple design, and it’s well-organized.

By: evie

evie — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 03:56:58 +0000

I like the brighter green rather than beige. It’s more exciting.

The third pic is too busy; I’m a fan of simplicity. What will a page with just a blog post look like? I hope it’s more uncluttered.

Perhaps instead of mentioning “It’s not a scam” (negative connotation), you can just use “Featured in:”

Love the new picture of yourself.