Can you let me know your first impression when visiting?

Hi All,

Could you let me know what you think when first visiting my site?

itmanagerstoolbox.com

Does anything stand out that shouldn't?
Is there anything you don't like?
Are the individual posts easy to read.

(I know I still need to create a suitable logo )

Thanks in advance guys/gals.

John

 

The design is simple, maybe a little bit too simple. However, that might be aliviated when you get a proper logo.
The menu, with the drop-downs, give no indication that there is actually a dropdown present. You might wanna rethink the menu-looks a bit. The height of the menu-items is also ridiculous (it takes away from the content, for no reason).
Above the "Latest" on the front page, there is a lot of white-space - I dunno if this is for an advert or something (nothing shows here), but unless you wanna put something there, move the top heading and content up.
Apart from that, there's a distinct lack of content (4-5 articles does not a blog make). I would suggest upping that to at least 20-30 minimum. Also, maybe embellish the posts a bit - I understand that there might not really be that much more to say about certain topics, but if you're looking for good rankings and Google liking you, you should try to make each post over a given minimum size - say 400 words. If that's not possible with the smaller articles, think about maybe taking 3-4-5 of those and making them into a collection, and posting it as one post.

 

Thanks for your reply, the blog is new so I only have a few posts, this will change.

I agree with you about the menus actually, I'll look into changing this.

The white space appears when adsense can't display an ad.

 

Ive edited the Menus now, look alot better! Thanks for your advice.

What would you recommend displaying when the adsense ad isn't available? Although once the blog has more content the adverts should become more stable.

 

You're not quite done with the menus
The new look for the main menu is better, but you haven't adjusted the styling for the drop-downs, which means they still show where they used to show, and hence are not clickable (you can't mouse down to them fast enough).
As for the missing adsense, you'll probably notice that a lot of people have adblockers on - personally, I don't mind adsense that much, they're usually quite subtle, but having ads above the main content like that... I'm not sure I'd recommend it. Perhaps put some adsense-ads in the sidebar instead, and have some ads on the main post-pages.

 

Might change the background color and add logo.
I have no problem with ads on top page, graphic ads look good above posts.

 

When does EVER an ad "look good"? As long as you have no control over the looks of the ad-banner (which very rarely you have, unless you have a site where you can get advertisers to come to you and buy placement), it never "looks good". There's a reason most people run an ad-blocker, it's not really because they want to save bandwidth or avoid scams, it's because ads are frickin' annoying.

 

I like the simplicity of your page. Only I would not use just the latest articles in front of the page because I scrolled down and thought something was missing. Even there are posts on the right side. So in your place I'll put more posts at the front.

 

Thanks for all your advice guys, ive fixed the menu now PoPSiCLe.

 

I see. Looks better, apart from the hover-state on the dropdown - I don't think I'd gone for the gray-on-gray background - it sorta makes the whole menu disappear when you hover over the drop-down, and might confuse some users. I would just keep the hover-state from the main-menu, the white background, also when hovering over drop-downs. No need to overcomplicate it.

 

Logo is pale, make it more saturated. The design is very simple but I like it.

 

At first I am looking page rank

 

What do you mean by this?

 

I have recently changed the homepage of my blog - in particular the sidebar. (Social count, social bar and subscriber option)

What do you think?