Main Benefits of the Winning the Web Redesign Explained
September 29, 2008 - Written by Gyutae Park
Check out my first screen cast ever, where I explain the new Winning the Web redesign and why the new features are important.
As you may have noticed, Winning the Web recently underwent a site redesign to incorporate a lot of new features that I had in mind. In my opinion, the new design is cleaner with more of a web 2.0 feel and has the potential to attract more new visitors to my authority articles.
I really like the layouts John Chow and Darren Rowse use on their blogs. With the number of subscribers they have, they have a much larger testing ground and are able to more easily determine what works and what doesn’t. For this reason, it’s a great idea to emulate the layout elements of the top bloggers in your niche – at least for experimentation’s sake.
In order to attain the new layout, I tweaked Brian Gardner’s Revolution City theme, which I would recommend to anyone looking for a new blog design without spending a fortune. Not only is it jam-packed with features, but it uses the magazine-style homepage (which I’ll go into more detail later) and is extremely customizable.
Below is a screen shot of what Winning the Web looked like before the redesign. What do you think?
If you haven’t already done so, be sure to vote on the poll in this post.
Loading ...At first glance, it might not seem like I changed much other than a few aesthetic components. However, there are several important changes that impact the functionality of the blog. Below is an explanation of each of these new features and why I implemented them on Winning the Web.
Main elements of the redesign
Magazine-style homepage
The biggest flaw of the standard blog format is that it puts the most emphasis on recent posts. In many cases, only the latest 10 posts are shown on the homepage and everything else is pushed away into the archives never to be found again. The problem with this is that your best content isn’t necessarily your most recent. For example, that great how-to guide you wrote 3 months ago may be buried deep in your blog, making it difficult for readers to access it. Not only is it inconvenient for readers, but it takes away from your blog’s marketing potential to new visitors.
A magazine-style homepage solves this problem. Rather than listing out posts only in chronological order, the new layout enables you to add additional content to your blog’s homepage and give first-time visitors the big picture of what you have to offer.
Here’s what I plan on adding to my homepage:
- Featured Article
- Recent Blog Posts
- Who is Gyutae Park?
- Sponsor (300×250 ad)
- Featured Video
- Best of Winning the Web
- Recent Reviews
- Recent Interviews
As you can tell from the various sections listed, a magazine-style homepage provides a better overall impression of the entire blog rather than just the most recent posts.
All of Brian Gardner’s Revolution Themes use a magazine-style home page layout. If you plan on transitioning to the format, I highly recommend you look into Brian’s collection.
Breadcrumb
A built-in plugin for the Revolution Theme that I particularly like is Breadcrumb Navigation XT, which lists the hierarchy at the top of each page. This gives users a better sense of where they are in the structure of your site.
Second navigation bar
I also implemented a second navigation bar that includes various post categories that I want to highlight on the blog: articles, reviews, and interviews.
For articles, I created a new post category that only contains authority content. Posts like contests and news are disregarded. This section is for detailed how-to Internet marketing guides and is used to showcase the foundational content here on Winning the Web.
I also want to incorporate a lot more reviews and interviews on the site so I have included sections for those as well.
More prominent subscriber count
I’ve been using the standard Feedburner chicklet for a long time to show off my subscriber counts. While this is an effective tool, almost everyone is doing it. I thought I’d be different and use the Feed Count plugin to more prominently show my stats for social proof.
More ad spots
I’m testing out 3 new banner ad spots: a 300×250 on the home page, a 300×250 after every post, and a 120×600 on the bottom of my sidebar. All of my ads are managed via OIO Publisher. If you’re interested in buying one of those up, visit my advertising page.
Decked-out footer
I’ve never really used the footer of my blog to hold any information other than maybe a copyright and a few links. However, I think it’s a good place to put information and links that you don’t want to put too much emphasis on. For example, I now have sections for Gyutae’s Top Pick which displays my Internet marketing and blogging recommendations, a MyBlogLog widget, and links to my social media profiles and friends.
That’s it. I hope you like the new site. I’d love to hear your feedback in the comments. Come back often for your daily dose of Internet marketing. 
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Hmmm… I do like it, blog themes are changing everyday so I guess this is just another step to getting to the top.
Thanks, I’m glad you like it.
Blog themes are important but they’re pretty much secondary to the content and marketing. At the end of the day, they just need to have the right features and be presentable. No one is going to read or not read a blog because of its theme.
Option no. 2 – # I like it much better than your old theme.
Because i like the way how the homepage explains every part of the blog and the blogger
Good work there Gyutae!
Thanks Chetan, I’m glad you like it. The whole point of the magazine style homepage is to explain every part of the blog as you mentioned. The main flaw of the standard blog format is that it puts too much emphasis on recent posts when this shouldn’t necessarily be the case (unless you’re reporting news).
Thanks for giving some reasons as to why you did the redesign. More ad spots is always nice.
There are a few more ad spots, but nothing too different from what I was doing before. Most of my advertisers seem to prefer the 125×125 button ads so the others are mostly for affiliate marketing opportunities where I can promote cool products I actually use and enjoy.
My honest opinion:
The new design is really bad for regular visitors.
The middle column is pretty much useless for them, and yet occupies the main real estate of your site.
They pretty much look for fresh new content, and they need to scroll down through the narrow left column to catch up.
I would much prefer glancing through the blog post list in a comfortably wide column in the center.
Hey Peter,
Thanks for expressing your opinions. I understand where you’re coming from but the homepage is targeted towards new visitors who might not know about the blog. For regular readers, I set up a blog page that lists out all of the recent posts in a wide column like what you would normally expect. Hope that helps!
Wow, just wow. Looks pretty damned sexy.
Everyone else is getting a redesign… I need one.
Thanks Jason. That’s just how I roll.
I think it’s time University Kid gets a redesign as well.
I love more the previous one.
What did you like about the previous one that the new design doesn’t have?
This is a great redesign and a lot more user friendly.
Thanks Eva, that’s good to hear. The main purpose of the redesign was to spruce things up a bit and make it more user-friendly like you said.
I like it, but I really think you need a better logo…
Thanks for the feedback Isaac. What don’t you like about the logo?
I was specifically looking at this post because I am also looking into redesigning my blog. I’ll have to put a pin in it – until I find a theme that has what I want or a designer that can accomplish it. Who did you use for your redesign? Or did you do it yourself?
I do like that your RSS button is much easier to find, and I like the social proof idea. Your navigation is much more helpful, as well. Also, any chance you will publish a list of all the plugins you use?
Btw, thanks for finding me on Twitter, and congrats on your first screen cast! Looks like it went off with a bang. Why not do a tutorial on how you did the screen cast? I’d love to see it.
Hey there,
Thanks for the comment. I used a customized version of Brian Gardner’s Revolution theme for my redesign. The magazine-style homepage works incredibly well.
I’ll look into getting a list of my Wordpress plugins together. Thanks for the feedback!
This is actually a great thing about this format; that I can access a relatively older post such as this one from the front page itself, I dont need to hunt around for it. You can put all the relevant material on the first page.
The new design always good for visitors. The option three is good.