For the Central Virginia blog owners who are submitting a blog to Friday 2.0’s first ever “Blog-Off” Competition (to win a great prize OR to get free feedback) – here is our next set of criteria:

Our judge for Blog Sexiness (Look and Feel) will be Andrew Potter of ShoutOut Marketing.

Andrew will be judging on a combination of your blog’s aesthetics and also it’s content, asking the question: is your site “sticky” (does it make people stay?).

1. Does your blog have a good color combination?

Following conventional rules of good design, your colors should be both complimentary but also contrasting. If you don’t know what good color combinations are, look it up in Google!

2. Does your blog use attractive and complimentary fonts?

Beginners should start with 1 font, playing with the sizes and the different font styles like Bold and Italics. Ideally, however, you should have two font types: one serif font and one sans serif font (look em up if you don’t know what they mean). Again,they should compliment but also contrast. 

3. Does your blog have bells and whistles? 

In other words, does it use nice pictures, videos and other forms of media?

4. Does your blog have good content?

Make sure your blog’s content is separated in a hierarchy of important information, using bolds and font sizes to break up the text. Also your text should be relevant to your target market. Is your content properly edited? 

5. Is your blog sticky?

Does it make people want to stay? Does it make people want to come back? 

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Our judge for Blog Usability will be Jennifer Bailey of Marketing-Helper.com (that’s me!).

I will be judging on the visitor’s ability to understand, comprehend and interact with the website without frustration or anxiety.

1. User’s ability to find the site’s main purpose upon first glance

Most websites only have 3 seconds to introduce themselves to a visitor before they click the “back” button. Is your logo is visible, usually upper left hand corner at all times? Do you have a slogan or website title that is visible with a short and to the point description of the site’s purpose? Do you have a description of purpose or services on home page and easily visible on the navigation bar? 

2. Does the information flows in such a way that you can find what you are looking for without having to think about it?

Do you use H1 to H3 tags, bold, different color contrast, etc? 

3. Is the navigation consistent, simple and visible?

Is it conventional? (Across the top of the site). Does it go more than 3 levels deep?
Does it stay the same on every page? Can you click on the logo to get back to the homepage?

4. Website accomplishes functional goals

What is your end goal for the user? What information do you want to take away, what action do you want them to take at the end? Do the applications work?

5. Newsletter Signup, contact, or other Convergence method

Do they work and are they easy to find and use?

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You can enter the Blog-Off competition here >