chrisg.com

When Adii updated my design he gave his own take on my theme and brought it up to date. I have received a great deal of feedback but it is not fair the spotlight be entirely on my blog, I think it is about time adii has the pleasure of some feedback

If you are not already aware from the design post, Adii is a freelance designer and strategist from South Africa. His blog promotes his services, introduces himself and his thoughts on design.

The design, as you would hope and expect, looks great. I particularly like the way it stands out from the crowd, you would be hard pressed to find another blog like it. While being modern, light hearted and colourful, it is still professional so as not to put off potential corporate clients.

His whole blog has a “young” feel. This will be an advantage on the design side but youth might not work so well when trying to promote the “strategy” side of his business. Perhaps a focus on just the design would be more effective?

I often tell clients to specialize in one thing. The analogy is would you rather have a handy man rewire your house or an electrician? A GP rummage around in your head or a brain surgeon? Most people know me as a blogger but of course I do other things. I know Adii as a blog designer, if I was him that is what I would focus on in my marketing.

The blog has everything you want to see. A great about page, if a little light on the “what’s in it for me?” stakes, nice pictures to see who you are dealing with, and the subscription options are prominent. One thing it is lacking is an email signup option; you have to always remember that your potential clients might not be blog savvy and email is always the easier option for the technophobe.

If I had one criticism it would be the site is very self-referential. Now I know it is his portfolio but Adii, remember that your visitors are selfish. They want to know what you can offer them. So where you say you specialise in creating pretty and usable websites that is good, it is about benefits, you just need to change it to being about your clients not about you. What will customers get? Why is that important? What should I care about?

Personally I like that you get a feel for Adii the person as well as Adriaan the freelancer. I wonder though if a portion of the audience would prefer the personal stuff separate from the business side? Arrive at the site for the first time and you have a good chance the first thing you see is him snogging his fiance

SEO-wise Adii is doing well generating inbound links. One necessary tweak is to choose either WWW or non-WWW URL. You can do this by upgrading to the latest WP version or using No-WWW or Yes-WWW plugins. You will notice that the non-WWW version has PR 1 whereas the WWW version is PR 4.

Page titles need flipping to put what the article is about first with the name of the blog last. The main homepage should feature blog design related keywords as right now the phrases are not going to capture search leads.

Lastly we come to monetization. This is slightly confusing, is the site a portfolio? A personal blog? A general freelance/design blog? There are six, albeit lovely, banners. One of the banners is for Adii but there is no call to action, it simply says “adii social media freelancer designer strategist”. Is it a description or an advertisement? What do you want visitors to do? I presume it is not to leave via one of the ads …

In summary the site is beautiful to look at, presents Adii the person well and with some tweaks should be able to sell his services too. There might be a case for splitting off the personal from the professional, but it is good to know the person behind the designs.

You can read and subscribe to Adiis blog here. Do you have any feedback for Adii? Let us know in the comments …