Pre-Launch Mistake Hunt: Not Another Self-Help-Blog

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Hey everyone,
just finished the design for my blog. Just waiting for the domain transfer to get completed to get this thing out to the world.

Might as well get some qualified feedback :smiley:
It’s the first website I ever built, it’s for myself and I poured a lot of love into that project, so by now I am probably expertly blind to any and all of its faults.

One thing: despite the whole tone of the site, I’m pretty serious about this, so you can give it to me straight.
I also want to build many more cool pages with Webflow, so any design dumbness you can help me spot will help me enormously.

I’d be very curious about is my choice of font types and sizes over the whole page, but especially regarding the lead paragraphs of the blog posts in relation to the rest of the post. If you have any examples with better solutions I’d be very happy.

Here is the link: http://foolzevolution.webflow.io

Known Issues:

  • the footnotes Button on the Articles template doesn’t adapt to the color of the modal when in pressed-state in Safari but works fine in Firefox.
  • on the Downloads page: Sometimes the pictures disappear for no apparent reason, then on reload everything works fine.
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I really enjoy the tone you set, I think you definitely hit the nail on the head to appeal to a niche. The read won’t be for everyone but you definitely have a vast audience to hone in on and market to.
I’m not a huge fan of the heading fonts and hero font. I do feel like something slightly sleeker, yet along the same style can achieve the same effect you’re going for.
Keep in mind I’m only viewing this on an iPhone 6 so I haven’t checked out the desktop version yet. With that being said I think some more images or color blocks could break up some of the whitespace you have going on. I love whitespace so I wouldn’t overdo it with too many images though. When browsing vertically on my phone, some of the spacing between words is really gapped. But flipped in landscape view they are normal, so I’m not sure what’s happening there. I’ve attached a screenshot of what I’m seeing with word spacing.
One small note; because of responsiveness, the picture of you doesn’t sit to the left of the text as it does in landscape view or as it would on desktop, it sits on top of the paragraph. For that reason when you say “that handsome little slacker you see right to your left” sort of confuses the reader when on mobile because the picture isn’t to the left of that sentence.
Maybe it’s an illusion and it may be completely symmetrical, but I feel like the fox logo is hanging a pixel or so to the right, I’d maybe alight his nose right down the center of the “V” in the word evolution right below.
All in all, I think the site is actually really fantastic. Great design, flow, and conversation that grabs. I love the slide out nav when pressing the fox face, killer job. Fine tune it a tiny bit and really target that niche market and I think you’ll have something really special happening.

Great work sir!

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Hey, Doug, you just made my day :smiley: :smiley: You have no idea!
This really the first feedback I get from non-friends, so, well, I’m gonna head to bed with this huge-#$! smile on my face now. Thanks a lot.

And, yeah, the site is really optimized for desktop, since I neither use my phone a lot for surfing nor an Ipad or so. so that’s probably the weakest part of design because I just don’t ‘get’ the user experience there.

  • On the headings: They are all in Montserrat because the logo is Montserrat. Probably could all make them Lato, like but then I’m not too happy with the Lato for the text either. Hm, Fonts are like a science in and for themselves. Probably gonna spent couple of hours and play around with it and then report back. On a second thought. maybe just make the titles not bold… that makes them reasonably sleeker, it seems.

  • the white space on the missions page, I take it. I think that’s a legit concern, but need to check again, what I can do there.

  • the weird word spacing on mobile is probably because I used justified text throughout. I’m gonna change it to left bound for mobile.

  • great point on that picture: I thought I had put a different text for mobile. will do so ASAP.

  • I think you are right about the logo, too, that’s something I would have never noticed myself.

Funny, though, you take it to be a fox. I was pretty sure it’s a raccoon and hoped people might take it for a honey badger :smiley: could be anything, though.

Anyway, you gave me some really good stuff to chip away at. Really Appreciate it!

I’m gonna sleep over it now and report back once I did some changes.

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Hey that absolutely is a raccoon! I see it now. I had spent a good hour earlier in the day working on a fox logo, so I guess foxes where already preconceived for me.
Fonts definitely are a tricky science but I have faith you’ll nail it. I would definite optimize for mobile at the best of your ability, most of your traffic will probably hit on mobile (I’m guessing).
I really enjoy your content, is your subscription service all set up and ready? If so, I’m going to subscribe :+1:t3:

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Jo Dude,
yeah, you can totally subscribe already. I’m glad to have you! There is a lot of cool stuff in the pipeline in the next weeks, too. :muscle:

I actually did follow up on most of your suggestions, today. The whitespace will stay for now, though, until I get some kind of heavenly inspiration how to better deal with it.
Sleekened out all the headlines, too, and I like it much better, now.
Also changed the text alignment for mobile, fixed about a zillion typos and the weird picture disappearance thing. Yes.
The racoon is dead center, actually, but the LogoText is about one and a half pixels left. so you had a good eye, after all :smiley:
I put that on the list of problems for future Chris along with the whitespace, though, and will improve on the go.
The real work is just about to start haha.

Thx again and keep it up!!

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Chris,

This is a beautifully-made site man! Love the atmosphere you put out.
I recently completed the design of my own agency’s site. Check it out here - fideagency.webflow.io.

You’re doing exactly what I’d like to do in the future man.

Personally, I think the font choice is good. It’s sharp and plays well with the site’s color scheme and tone.

Subscribing my man! Stay in touch.

Trevor

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Yo Trevor, thx for the love and definitely subscribe!
Always good to check out the competition haha

Had a quick look at your site, too. Looking sharp and clean. Simple est mieux :wink:

I noticed the copyright is turning white on hover. not sure if this was intentional?And when I try to choose what work I want you to consult me on, I could either not undo my choice (in firefox) and or not mark my choice at all (Safari). Not sure what’s going on there.

Hustle hard, my friend :smiley:

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I am not going to focus on the content of the website but rather only the critique of the UX (User Experience). I will start off with all the negatives. From what I see on the website in non-rude terms I would like to put it out there it looks like a website made in 2005. What I would do to fix that problem is put much less focus on the Containers. Containers are old and users want something that will be fullscreen in 2016. I am not saying get rid of the containers but rather make sure they are not seen. I would also divide the content up in smarter ways such as having the Sections be slightly different variations of grey. Another suggestion would be to add some icons and CSS animations which you could do in Webflow. Find free icons to incorporate into your design, a free Icon set is Entypo+ search it up and download it free on the official site. Also try to add some effects to the content. Once the site looks modern it should also function like modern sites with smart yet not too over the top animations. The text can also get some improvements, what I try to do is have the text be not to the same or to different but rather it is easy to read and appeals to the reader. to find good text combinations go look at some Webflow templates and see if the text fits your type of website and try it out. Also try some text that does not come standard with Webflow [add some Google fonts in the settings]. Just some ideas to have a more UI/UX friendly website as well as fit in to 2016. If you have any questions feel free to contact me :grinning:. Some examples of what you can do you can find on my temporary Launching site: http://vladinsacramento.webflow.io or on a template I did that used Entypo+ icons itself: http://craftsman-template.webflow.io

*Once again this is only a critique and tried not to sound too negative :grinning:.

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Solid crit man. Good points :ok_hand:

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Thanks man! Simple is better :ok_hand::ok_hand::nerd_face:

Not entirely sure what’s going on regarding the forms. I’ll have to troubleshoot them to see if I’m the only one having that issue.

Shoot me an email yeah? I’d love to stay in touch with a fellow entrepreneur. Trevor.fideagency@gmail.com

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ha, one year from now all your clients are going to ask you for is one of this cool 2005ish retro style websites, with lots of shadowed containers, like FoolzEvolution, ya know what I’m saying?

Nah, man, jokes asides thanks a lot for taking the time to check out my site and give such extensive feedback. Really appreciate it.
You raise some valid points I guess. Especially about the sections and the containers, which, I believe, connects with what @Syndicate15 said about the whitespace.

The way I did this is most certainly not the best way to do this. I actually tried giving the sections different colors, and different variations of grey, but I couldn’t make it fly with other design and content decisions that I was already committed to by that point. So I ended up with the containers. I made peace with shadow -containers for now :slight_smile:
If I had to do it from scratch I’d do it very differently now. Most importantly, I would start with a clear plan :wink:


A couple of things: I got quite some little interactions on the site. So not sure about your point there. what else would you want to make an interaction of?

Nor did you convince me that the site needs symbols. Could you give me any example from the site, where you really think using a symbol instead of text would make the user experience better?

I don’t feel it looks too 2005 though. haha, Not saying there isn’t a ton of Design and UX headroom here, but, as of now, I’m fairly confident actually that whatever is going to prevent people from reading and engaging with my shizzle is going to be the actual content itself, or maybe my person, but not the user experience. Which Is at it should be :smiley:

Still in on the typography, though. been looking at lots of fonts lately

Anyway, thx again, I’m going to put your points on my list to consider for later.

Hustle on, my friend