One thing that I would do if this is going to be an authority website is to find people (mentioned earlier) smiling with their beards and replace the cartoon sketch of the beard with an actual beard. This leaves nothing to the imagination and can also make a person say, âYeah, that beard!â Having real people in the slider and cartoons for the styles clashes in my opinion. Speaking of the slider, I would also reduce its size to about half otherwise on first impression, all I see is a navigation bar and a pictureâIâm too lazy to scroll down unless something immediately pops (or the later, thereâs a background fade).
I like how you integrated a beard into the logo with the B, however, hair doesn't grow like that unless you got some crazy chops going on. I would have the logo "hairy" and in a slight chin shape at the bottom to appear as if it's a soul patch.
I would find 5 images for each beard style and rotate between images of different angles or people for that beard with a boarder that matches the theme to liven things up a little more, giving it a little eye candy for the ladies too (though, probably not your target audienceâwomen do have an influence on how their guys facial hair should beââCan you trim it like that one on Beards.net for me?â)
With that being said, since you plan on having that much traffic, ensure you have the right licenses for the stock photography or celebrity images so that you donât get your beard sued off!
I would also have 3 areas of content for text instead of just âBlogâ (which I would change to âTopicsâ or something else), one widget a full 100%, below that an advertisement followed by a 50/50 split. Some ideas could be âReviewsâ, âProductsâ, etc. which are constantly updated (ensure that you follow the rules by the FTC if they are paid for if you want this legit). One column could also be âmembersâ which rotates between members of your site of people showing off their proud beards or something, this would engage the audience to want to be a memberâI would find a Facebook Connect or Twitter Login to make it easier to signup/login, but still moderate comments until X are made and approved (you have stiff competition from the .org, so I would watch out for trollsâas their website was founded in 1996 and probably has a large audience [their design looks like itâs from 1996 too, so youâre already up on them for that one]).
Also with the background, I would change to make the content pop out, possibly diagonal stripes, a dark fade from the top to lighter gray at the bottom or something.
How many comments do you have to moderate a day now by using âdofollow commentsâ in the footer? Thatâs not necessary to have. There arenât many (if at all) webmasters that are going to stroll along your site, have a related site or product in this niche and possess the knowledge of what a dofollow link is then post a comment for their benefit. Just keep it dofollow and if their content is worthy of posting, post it. Say for instance that they reviewed a great trimmer to line up a specific beard giving that most people find difficult that gives you a lot of good keywords and such (manufacturer, model, etc.), but no links in their comment, just the link left on the comment they would see the reward after approval. Additionally, you could have a plugin that emails them on approval that their link was approved as âdofollowâ, explain what that means and thank them for their post. This would get their immediate attention and then they may come back to give you more great stuff, keeping it fresh and alive.
The âAboutâ should also be in the footer as itâs a description of what the site is about, unless you plan on constantly grooming every once in a while.
You should also log on the backend what question is asked so that you constantly have a question that could be answered adding to the Q&A. Possibly, one of the 3 text widgets could be âLatest Askedâ and have a link to the latest question asked/relevant topic clicked on so the homepage is constantly changing and youâre also constantly adding content (or just completely random, nobody would know the difference unless they were a frequent visitor). Like I just typed in âhow to grow a beardâ and got an irrelevant answer back, âIs a Mustache Right For Me?ââI should get an article on how to grow a beard, tips on growing a beard or how a beard is grown (testosterone or something).
I think Iâm getting too much into the concept of the site and how it should be run rather than the design, so I will stop here unless you would like additional ideas on what to implement in the future.
By the way, I've been dreaming about beards and I believe I may have a proposition for you. I bought a domain and am building a website and writing some copy right now and I believe we may be able to cooperate on a project! Hit me up and we'll see, Chris.
