10 ways I’d change dukeo.com to make it better

I love to do blog reviews and so I immediately jumped at the opportunity to write one for dukeo.com.

Not only because I want to win the $200 prize for the best review, hehe, but because I really enjoy doing it and I want to help dukeo.com and the many people out there who are reading his blog.

10 things I’d change

1. It’s not very clear where the blog for the site is, because there is no menu option called Blog. I think the intention is to have the blog as the home page and the center of the site, but many people are looking for a menu option called Blog. I know, I don’t have one on my site either… Something to be considered :)

2. First thing that happens when you get to the site, is that the popup opt-in jumps at you immediately. I would delay it a bit so visitors have a chance to see what’s there before even considering if they want to subscribe. Also I see that the popup offers just 2 eBooks in exchange of your email, while the opt-in on the site gives you 3 :)

3. The site navigation is inconsistent throughout the main pages. There’s no easy way to return to the home page from the About page and Free Updates page. Yes, clicking on the logo takes you home, but apparently not a lot of people know that.

4. No Search on the website? Tsk tsk tsk… It would be useful considering the huge amount of content.

5. There are no social media icons in sight, for quickly connecting on social media channels. Perhaps the emphasis is on contacting directly using the contact form. Some people consider contact forms a bit old fashioned, but in this case it could work.

6. The 2 guides that are offered on the site: How to start a blog and WordPress SEO seem to have extremely useful information. However, they contain a lot of content for a blog post. There is too much scrolling involved to read through. I’d make those eBooks instead and get people to download them if they want.

7. Blog posts are published every hour or so, wow! This is great, but I am wondering how can subscribers keep up with this amount of info?

8. Most blog posts have an image included, which is great. I am a big supporter of images, images, images! Some posts, however, have no images, and so a default image is shown on the main page. This tends to look a bit plain if you are checking the blog summary on the top page.

9. Make dukeo.com work properly on mobile. With so many people reading on the go, you want to reach your audience where and how they want to.

10. And a final cute one: the keyword for this very article says “very simple scam”. Of course, this is not a general comment for the blog, but I’m wondering if you want the request for a blog review to be labeled “very simple scam”? I didn’t think so :).

10 things I’d keep

1. The domain name. But, wait, what does dukeo means? Why isn’t the name SEO-optimized? Don’t know and it really doesn’t matter, because people learn to remember domain names, if they want to.

2. The clean and simple design. Minimum of items and options, great job!

3. The nice colors. They are a little plain, but this helps because any call to action is in orange or red, which stand out great.

4. The wonderful font size, it’s perfect for reading.

5. The amount of white space, very easy on the eye.

6. The structure of the blog posts. They are nicely organized in categories and tags. Excellent choice of words for SEO.

7. The nice and consistent formatting of blog posts, a pleasure to read through.

8. The sharing icons on each blog post page. They are big enough and visible, placed only at the end of the post. Kind of making sure you have read the post before sharing, nice!

9. The images used. When images are included in a post, there’s thought put into the choice of images, nice touch.

10. The super, super idea to ask for this review. I was coming to the site almost for the first time, so I think I noticed a lot of things that could be improved.

All in all, great site, lots of useful information, I’ll definitely visit often!

Your turn!

Wanna do a review for dukeo.com? Hurry up, the offer expires January 28, 2013. Good luck!