Most Constructive Review Wins $50 - www.coolest-gadgets.com

I've just updated the theme for Coolest Gadgets, it's taken a fair amount of development, deliberation and hair pulling. I'm after a review of the look and feel, ad layout etc.

As a reward I will pay what I feel is the most constructive review (positive and/or negative) $50 via Paypal or MoneyBookers.

Thanks in advance.

 

First of all I would say its a good site .
Secondly , its an informative blog and I love informative blogs !
Thirdly, the theme is simple and light , easy loaded with me , I mean to say ; loading time is good'
Best of Luck and hope to see you again in the world of blogosphere . cheers!
M Briain.

 

Overall I like the website! But are some things that can make better. Try to add some hover effect on the top bar navigation, is to simply as it is, also on IE 7 there is some issue the graphic buttons go little over the bar above, of course I saw the message saying is best viewed with FF. bu can be fixed quickly for IE also.
Try to align the banner from the header to left at same distance as the Google ads.
It would be best if you could validate the page XHTML.
In to the left bar try to put a <br /> between the google ads and the "Categories" text.
If you can try to compress more the images from the posts content, you can get them easily to 10kb at same quality, I refer especially to the image from the: "Coolest Gadgets has a new look !!" post.
This is what I had to say. Thank you!

 

In my very humble opinion, I wasn't crazy about your site... the color combi of blue n red didnt quite come off. If your site is about cool gadgets the it deserves to be a lil' more hip. The ad placement is okay, but you have to do something about your messy sidebar. And if possible get a better banner

Once again its just my opinion... you go ahead and do what you think looks awesome. One more thing, I typed all that just coz I was a little bored ... In other words - I dont want your money

 

No offence but I believe you could have went for a better theme. Something which is more appealing and in which it is easy to read the text as I find it hard to read the text properly.

Categories are tooo close in the sidebar which makes it 'kinda' hard to read em. A lil space between em will look good IMO.

http://www.coolest-gadgets.com/20080424/dueling-space-marines-copter-set/
A lil space between next post and the current post title will also look good IMO.

The feedburner box below leave a comment is not displayed properly. Atleast, I'm not able to read the numbers properly ( header one is fine )

I'm not sure why are you having a white space between the image ads and post a comment.

In the footer, you've lots of internal links. Maybe you can arrange em accordingly so that they don't look spammy.

You may consider some space between the text and the border of extreme right-sidebar.

This is just what I felt about the theme. No offence.

- It's a great blog ( We all know this )

- Good Luck!

 

Okay here goes nothing!

My Review Of Coolest Gadgets:
Coolest gadgets, a neatly set out web page based on finding simply/fancy gadgets online. The site offers a verity of different reviews for different products offered on the internet market. The site offers a easy-to-use navigational system, a choice of over 1000+ gadgets, and gives you a taster of what some products are like, kind of like a try before you buy.
I am not an expert in these areas of the internet, but i found this site very helpful, although its a little complex in some areas, its something i could get used to easily. So, my overall mark for www.coolest-gadgets.com is 8/10 for noobs, but if your experienced in this type of stuff then a 10/10 no doubt. Although the theme could do with a little more color, i would still reccommend this site to many people Thanks for your time!

Hope you found this review helpful!

Seeeecret

 

Thank you everybody for the reviews, they were all interesting and I will be acting on a good few. The review I found most constructive was from mixke so will be paying him the $50 and I'll leave rep for everybody that contributed, thanks again.

 

Just a small feedback... Not a review as you asked... I would think that logo looks out of place on your banner... If you can merge the logo to the banner (header).. say make the background of the which curently light blue to blank.. so that the banner itself is the background, it would give it an immensely professional look..

 

Man, why do you need to change it when it's so successful?

To be frank, the blog doesn't look that appealing to me but probably your contents are good that you have readers In that case, no need to change anything !

 

The logo looks great now or was it always like that..??

 

the backgrounds looks dull..need to make it more happening n cool..you should take some music background into it also..this is my sincere comments n suggestion..

 

Ok alot of the stuff I see on your website, Seems as if I seen it before but if you really want to have a great site. What I would do is first go out and do some research on the newest science technologies and inovation's and as well as some from the past and just review them. Then I would come up with atleast 30 that I would fell sutible for the website then from that 30 only ten would make to the site so with that I would have a poll. Having some of the visitors vote on what they would like to see on the site with the full description. I would probly do with a six month cycle to insure quality and guest satisfaction. Or I would just do a questionire asking the visitors a little bit about themselves to see what kind of background of Gidgets and gazmos people like and what they think would be kool. Or just put up another poll with different types of gadget backgrounds such as Machanical, Electronic, Kenitic, Co2 stuff like that to just see where my guest and or visitors are coming from. Basicly I just run on Guest and costumer opion that's they only you will keep people wanting more. It's simular to what a soda company does before putting out that hot new summer drink or bevarage that will have everybody wanting it or that theme park with that new roller coaster they just built. It all comes from what the people want, and the same goes on the Internet.

 

EDITTED: the logo/banner looks fine in Firefox but not in IE.. Please have a look.

 

Firefox latest version:

-Light blue header at top of page stands out too much and I would float the text in the middle instead of the top. Also maybe try a darker shade of blue with a border at the bottom
-logo/header: white doesn't fit in with design at the top of the page. Try a darker color to ground the page and grab interest
-Had to wait over 30 seconds for the right column of the page to load... try breaking it down into smaller divs and optimize to decrease page load times
-Everything needs more white space: line height, borders around images, etc
-top box enter email address should be full width with the 'submit' button on the following line
-Search font shouldn't be bigger than the main headings on the page...draws too much attention
-main article content is placed too far down the page. First impressions are scattered content in the top of the page and some users might not scroll down the page to find the articles
-too much flashing, moving content. Especially don't like the inserted video on the right.
-big white box at top of page with google ads: Too much attention with the white color. Maybe try a darker shade of blue to keep the flow of the page going down
-Categories: list is too long...try breaking down categories into subcategories with headings
-articles: more space above main title to give some breathing room. Also more space on the left side (same space as categories) and more space in the bottom
-move read and comments to the right of the box (not left)
-middle of page you have 2 flash ads lined up in a row. Try staggering the ads or at least getting different ads. All the ads are the same and this is annoying
-too many ads: I counted at least a dozen ads/links on the homepage. This will scare away returning customers and first time customers
-mid bottom of page you have a square ad that breaks the flow of the page. Try to have the same width/box structure as the articles
-footer: have a break in the page where you have 1,2,3,4,5 older articles. try a border above to separate the content from the footer
-footer red word link cloud: Too crowded and not enough space between words. Also the blue divider line is all over the place...sometimes big, sometimes not centered
-add a little more blank space at the bottom of the page to give some breathing room
-forums- create unique thumbnail images for all the different sections of the forum. Looks a little boring having CG everywhere

Nice site though and looks like it's doing alright as is...
have a good one,
Derek

 

It's pretty cool except I think less ads would make it look better and maybe more gadgets on the homepage

 

you could have done better. your theme is too plain.

 

The gadgets I admit are joyfull!

 

Hi dct,
I still remember I bookmarked your website because I readed a topic you started in the Adsense Topic here at DP where you said that this website earns more than 10.000$. I really like how the Google ads are placed. They are good blended.

The design is simple. But I think it's a bit confusing when you are in the index page because you added too much ads. I think that if you add less ads, the website will looks cleaner. That's only my opinion. Anyways, good luck.

cheers,
xcelent88

 

Good site. Keep it up.theme is too plain

 

you could have done better. your theme is too plain.