I have an ecommerce site that I added a blog to. I added the blog to get more content on my site and to help inform potential buyers about my product. My product can tend to be a bit confusing if you aren't familiar with my product. Currently my blog opens up in a different window and is a different theme. My question is should I keep the way it is or should I give the same theme and layout that my product pages have for consistancy and navigational purposes? Here's my site: www.anchoraudioclub.com. The link to my blog is towards the bottom on my left navigation bar named "buyer's guide". Thanks
It seems to me that your blog is meant to directly address business related issues. That being said, I would definitely integrate it into your current site (should be very easy to do), and I would make sure never to call it a "blog." Your reference to buyer's guide is great!
I'm just starting to dable with PHP so I don't know how easy it is going to be. Why do you think I should never call it a blog? I'm not planning on calling it a blog. Just curious why you think that. The only problem that I have is currently all my pages are one click away. There are no deep subpages. It seems to me that the blog portion of the site would need another navigation bar maybe on the right to navigate solely through the blog portion of the site. What are your thoughts?
Well, it should be as easy as reskinning what you have in place now to include everything that's currently on your site. A blog is essentially an online diary. While you're using blog software, it seems the purpose is more to serve as an interactive reference guide/FAQ. I would keep away from the word "blog" because I think it would cause confusion regarding the purpose of this component. It's not at all uncommon to have both a primary and a secondary navigation area within a site. One way you could accomplish this gracefully on your site would be to have a submenu appear directly below the "Buyers Guide" link after someone clicks on it, with every link slightly indented to signify the linking heirarchy. And/or a secondary menu at the top of the content area would work well too.