Design wise you can’t go wrong with simple. You’ve got a very clean look going here; your lack of clutter is much appreciated. Just be careful you don’t cut to much of your personality out of the design. I’ll stick around to read what you have to say if your design can tell me enough, at a glance, about who you are.

Sometimes that’s as simple as a colour choice. Greys and blues are, calm, cool, strictly business. That and Moneris had me thinking pinstripe suit before I could read your blog’s title.

If your intension is to be about the business side of music then you’re design is bang on. But if not, let a little more of you back into the design – those of us who don’t respond to business will definitely respond to you.

wishing u all success

srini

wishing u all success

srini

I like the minimalistic site layout. However, I dislike the fact that the content is kinda scrunched into a smaller section, with a lot of blank space if you scroll down to read older content. It’s claustrophobic. I also dislike the fact that the text in the right section is so small. Could be my resolution or something. I also don’t really dig having ads in the center section, it feels like that’s the entire focus of the site design. It lacks symmetry and balance, and those two elements tend to make things pleasing to the eye.

The general feeling that the web design gives me is that of newspaper ink. If I were actually touching the blog it would be inky, and I’d need to wash my hands when I got done. It’s rather impersonal, like a newspaper, yet it serves it’s purpose. The design is much more news than music, and if it were my site, I’d probably add more color. I’d also seriously consider putting the content in the center section.

“I’ve recently been approached by more than 1 of the established blog networks. Would a niche blog like this benefit from such an alliance or be hurt by a perceived lack of independence?”

I don’t think it would hurt to be a part of a blogging network, it might actually serve to make your site look more authoritative. However, your main concern would be to find a blogging network that fits with your topic, style and niche. A blogging network about knitting, soapmaking and frugal living might not really be a good fit for Hypebot, lol. Music is cool. That stuff is not. Blogs about music, gaming or gadgetry would be fine. Just make sure it’s cool.

“Am I achieving the right balance of news vs. commentary?”

In my opinion, as long as the content is worth reading and well written, I, as a reader, couldn’t care less which category it falls in. Just make it worth your reader’s time, no matter what it is.

-I love the logo.

-I like the way the white space in the header forces you eyes down into the content (or ads).

-The general layout is good, but it could use more balance. Also livelier colors.

-The sidebar is to plain. I would change the sidebar headers, they look so Seth Godin/Typepad. At least change the font.

-The books below the “resources” section can go. If you have to have something there, then style the actual word “Resources” and make it blend in better.

-If you want a place to put an ad (maybe a banner), you could use the white space to the right of the logo.

That’s it, if you want more help with design email me at: thomastheblogger [at] gmail [dot] com

-Thomas

-Agreed that the sidebar is too big and being shaded, it takes the focus away from the page.

-Most of the sidebar text is too tiny and spaced out too much in proportion, making it difficult to read (very difficult at 1600×1280).

-Don’t like the centered headlines/headers (in general, centered=bad for scanning)

-The headlines are clickable links on the main index, so give them some color – it will make them stand out a little more too and break up the wall of text.

-Don’t like the digg and delicious, etc links on the article summaries on the main index. Why would someone use these without reading the whole article? Plus it adds clutter to an already long page, IMO.

Otherwise, I think it’s a clean design with a good logo and you seem to have good content. Good job and I hope you get some more useful feedback.

Once this is over than you should start doing the changes on your blog as per the suggestions.

Although you can still think on removing that clip art image from the right sidebar as I suggesting in my comment above (number 8) :)

The logo is cool but what is with the huge dead spot right of the logo. Place an ad or something there.

Blend the Google ads with your content. The colors (text and background) should be the same as your page. You don’t want the average Joe to think its an ad.

Remove your e-mail link to prevent spam. State your email as bruce[at]skylineonline[at]com. Add an “About Me” to tell readers about you. It personalizes the Blog.

I agree with a lot of the comments above, so I won’t restate them. Good luck!

I suggest bench marking this blog for the layout.

I want to make some of the changes suggest right now (colors, sidebar width, selling ads, etc…) but I’m going to wait until at least the end of the week so I don’t skew future comments.

In the end, the blog is flat in terms of color and design. The content is good for the most part. Experiment with advertising and income streams. There’s a different combination for everybody.

You will need to do research to know your target audience better before you can attract them to your site.

Use questionaires, polls, interview, etc.

Questionaires should have questions probably not more than 5 and make sure they do not “break a bone” to answer your questions. Use things like “true or false”, “yes or no” or choose one of answers (Multiple choice questions). Remember this people are probably busy people who will not be willing to spend too much time answering your questions. If you need to know more, give them different questionaires intermittenly, maybe a few weeks between each questionaires (each questionaires maybe 3-6 questions). Few ways I can suggest to approach them with the questionaires are with flyers, emails and your blog.

You can use polls in your Blog like what Darren did. Simple and easy and do it over a period of time to get enough useful information.

Use interview if you are able to talk to your target audience. This way you can have a more intimate way of getting answers deep down,

Last method, if you really have a broad network of your target audience. Use focus group to get your answers. They will sit down together and discuss the topics that you set. It will have an open ended questions that may result in interesting results or answers that you may not have ever thought of before.

Questions to ask… questions to find out what your target audience wants, needs and hope to see in the future. You may also suggest solutions and topics to find out if this is what they want.

Next step in research is to look at your competitors. Find out what are the things that they are doing and how they are doing it. How does their readers feel about their blog. Their strengths and weaknesses. You should also look into your own strengths and weaknesses.

With all these research, you can tailored your topics to be better than your competitors or in areas that your competitors aren’t in.

Add another tab (page) to cater to these audience (maybe a music profession tab) in addition to the all news postings tab, all commentary postings tab, home tab (main tab) for all the latest postings and all postings, an archive tab and as well as a contact you tab.

This will get your different variety of audience (but same interest in the music industry) to feel “at home” in your blog.

I also did not exactly get what the purpose of the site is. I know there is a tagline, but there could be an ‘about’ somewhere at the top or the side stating if its news, commentaries and interviews (sounds like a pretty good tag line too).

The text in the side bar is too small – I didn’t read it – there is so much text. The blog is also a text wonderland. There needs to be more use of images – bigger.

Nothing wrong with google ads, but the one in the sidebar seems awkwardly placed.

Also you might want to try some other advertising (emusic has a pretty sweet affiliate offer – I use them on my workout music site).

SEO
The title (in the header of the blog) needs to have some descriptive key words. Right now it’s just “hypebot” but it needs to be “Music News | Hypebot.com” or something similar. Also in the header of the individual archive page (not sure if this is a TypePad thing).

Another reason why a text tagline is important is for keywords close to the top of the page that will get indexed by search engines.

The RSS is just an image with nothing beside it. Align it left and actually use the words subscribe by RSS or email. If I didn’t know what that orange symbol means, I would have ignored it (and if you are just going to use the symbol – make it bigger and noticeable).

Lastly, I think the titles of your entries could be a little better. They are not really descriptive. For example, “Announcing Music Blog Awards Nominees.” I thought it was a regurgitation of a list of something that was coming on the tele. Then I read it and realized that it was your competition and the nominees were from readers of your site in a previous post. The title could have been something like, “The Readers have spoken and selected their top choices for HypeBots Music Awards.” – Again SEO from the title words, plus I would be more inclined to read it; Then in the post, there should be a link to the previous entry (interlinking posts).

Yeah – and categories 2x as mentioned before.

In summary, I think this page gives a bit of a dry, boring impression. I think the content is fabulous, but it’s missing something to draw me in.

Second – and this is a big one – on a quick skim, I don’t get what your blog is about. I don’t feel a cohesive theme. There’s music, sure and some technology, but I felt bombarded with lists of links.

Give me a wider post with solid content that fits into your theme.

When I first clicked over to your blog I noticed the first post cited credit to Gawker. While it’s great to make sure you are hitting the high notes with your news, I think you need to focus on bringing content to your readers that they cannot find from the major players in your arena.

Make sure you are creating content that they can only find at your location and your readership volumes will grow steadily because they need your website to get that fix of information. Then sooner or later the bigger sites in your medium will start linking to you because your content is unique and fresh.

When you are reporting ‘global messages’, things that are widely covered, think about ways that you can bring your message in a unique delivery that will make your readers prefer your volley over your competitions.