Tag Archives: branding

redesigning my about page

Repurposed

The About page is where people go to gain a better understanding of a website or blog. Basically, my about page is the first impression newcomers will get of my blog and me. Keeping this in mind, it’s important for this page to be captivating, professional, and beautiful. Looking at my current About page, I knew I wanted to make some changes – not only in the style, but also content. My current bio explained the basics, but was too short in length and was unengaging for my likes.

I tried editing my About page through Elementor, as it offered a whole lot more versatility and customization to the elements, especially in comparison to the blocks theme that I’ve been using. Because I didn’t have an exact idea of what I wanted the layout of my About page to look like, it took a lot of time and trial and error.

What I liked about my previous page was the definition of “klick”. I wanted to keep this, but redesign it to make it more appealing and cohesive with the style of the logo that I had created weeks prior.

Original design of the definition on my first About page:
First updated draft:
Changing examples:

I wanted this definition to be the first graphic on the page, as it would set the tone for the rest of the blog. Yes, I do know that click is typically spelled with a “C”, and yes, the “K” was on purpose. In one image, I hoped to capture the explanation and theme. Just like in dictionary definitions, I wanted to use “klick” in a sentence, so I used this first sentence – which was originally used in Joffre Lakes; however, I ended up changing it to something much more relevant to my blog:

I had the plan of creating three distinct clickable categories in columns below with brief descriptions of these different categories. I wanted this graphic to blend seamlessly with the categories below. Originally, I wanted to extend the grey a little further down, and add a white mountain in the middle to blend the grey from this graphic and the white from the following section. While I was doing this, I realized I was creating an arrow in the wrong direction. Instead of having a white arrow pointing up, which would have been the case had I kept the white mountain on the grey backdrop – I created a negative valley (as in lack of colour, not unhappy) to draw attention to the following section.

Third and final draft:
Finally, with the added category columns, this is what the top part of my About page looked like:

Each of these columns are responsive, meaning that it react to your curser. When the mouse hovers over the column, it becomes a darker shade, inciting you to click on it. These columns, images, and titles are linked to their respectful pages. For example, if I were to click the “local” column, it would send me to the landing page for the local category.

Already, this so much better than my previous About page, which is below for reference:

Editing my bio:

Next up was rewriting and redesigning my bio section. I chose colours that would match the image, along with a readable and professional font. My original About page lacked warmth and friendliness, so I tried to keep this in mind when redesigning and rewriting this next section:

Staying Connected:

All that was missing was connecting my social media account and contact information. I opted for simple responsive icons. The icon would increase slightly in size when hovering over it with your mouse, and for consistency, I chose to have the colours change to the blue and yellow of my logo:

Mouse over the Mail icon
Mouse over the Facebook icon

When clicking the facebook icon, it would open my facebook page in a new tab with to make sure I’m not kicking them off my blog. Similarly, when clicking the mail icon, the user’s email would open up in a new tab, ready to send me an email.

The trouble in troubleshooting

So while I’m really happy with the design and content of my new About page, you might be left wondering why you still see my old About page, as opposed to this new and improved one. To my big disappointment, when I was troubleshooting this page for different screen sizes, I realized how illegible it is for mobile devices. Somehow, the graphics, icons, columns and images didn’t transfer well onto a smaller screen: not only was the layout lost, but some images disappeared and the content was just not easily readable.

Final note:

This was especially frustrating, as I had spend days working on it this. While the layout did still work on tablets and desktop computers, over half of my audience accesses my blog on their mobile device, so keeping this up was out of the question. I rather have an elementary version of my about page rather than make this illegible gibberish live on my website. Unfortunately I don’t have the time to try and fix this before the end of the semester, but I plan to sort this out as soon as possible. If nothing else, I learned the importance of troubleshooting regularly throughout my progress to make sure its compatible with all devices.

My Transmedia Strategy | Week 10

Before knowing the “transmedia”, I was already critically aware of the importance of having not just a cohesive online brand, but one that cross-promoted itself. Before starting djalexrose.com (and still now), Instagram was my primary social media platform. I had always promoted my Soundcloud using the business website function and by posting previews of songs, however, now the connection is deeper. My Instagram and Snapchats focus primarily on “story” function engagement with polls, event promotions, and exclusive media.

My Facebook and Twitter are both quite neglected, being automated to post content whenever I upload to Youtube and Soundcloud. I’ve heard from colleagues that Facebook has a much stronger ROI on advertisements than Instagram (which I recently tried) so I’ll be investing more into that platform soon. As of now, neither one has exclusive content.

Soundcloud has shifted to have only my best musical content. From originals to bootlegs to remixes, Soundcloud houses all the tracks that make it Spotify and ones that can’t clear copyright but are still strong releases. It also includes links to all my other social media platforms.

Youtube is the king of my content strategy. It’s home to weekly vlogs, 30-80 minute mixes, exclusive mashups, and much more. As you can see, djalexrose.com remains a focal point being included in my banner.

The final service I’ll mention is ArtistUnion, a download-gate service that exchanges downloads of your music for specified actions. In my case, I require my audience follows my Soundcloud and like and reposts the song they wish to download.

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Insights from my Google Analytics | Week 9

Let’s start off with my User Overview. We will look at my data since the website’s inception in January, including February 20 – March 10th whose data was lost due to a tracking code issue. My traffic is relatively low and consistent. According to 21 Handshake, my type of site has an average bounce rate of 70-90%. Compared to this benchmark, my bounce rate is very good at 38.44%, however, my low amount of users makes most of my analytics insubstantial. The biggest thing I’ve taken from this section is to remove my Youtube videos from my site as session durations are too short for them to be relevant.

Next up: some technology-related data. Most of my users are in the Apple ecosystem and use Google Chrome like myself. Not much to say here other than I may consider implementing an Apple Music widget as well, seeing as my music is hosted there as well as Spotify.

Now for geography. The website follows my Instagram and Soundcloud analytics in that I am predominantly popular in the United States and Canada. Interestingly, the website maintains my popularity from Spotify which is concentrated in Latin America, especially Chile and Brazil. This is most likely due to name confusion with Latin artist Alex Rose (the reason my name is spelt “alex rose”).

How about discovery? Well, there’s a pretty even split between Direct, Social, and Referral here. Most of my social traffic comes from Instagram (my primary social media for engaging my audience) and I’ve also seen a lot of traffic from my peers’ websites referring users to me. I should continue focusing on my Instagram as a traffic source and expand my collaboration to ensure more referrals. Finally, I plan to improve my SEO to see my organic search improve.

 Finally, pageviews broke down by page. No surprise that my homepage would have the most traffic. It’s also comforting to see that my shows page, where my audience can purchase tickets and RSVP to events, is second most popular. Shows are a growing form of revenue for me so this is a welcome insight. Unfortunately, my blog doesn’t appear to get much attention. Most of my blog content can be found directly on my Youtube, but moving forward I plan to have exclusive blog content focused on SEO friendly tutorial content.

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