Tag Archives: #travel blog

Peer Review #3: Stop by ‘Angie in Canada’

This week, I visited lifestyle and travel blog, Angie in Canada. So, keep reading to find out more about this week’s blog!

Angie in Canada / Home page

This is Angie and her blog, ‘Angie in Canada’

Angie in Canada is a lifestyle and travel blog created by Angie, an exchange student from Hong Kong. Her journey in Canada began two years ago. Ever since touching down, she has had the opportunity to visit some great places, eat delicious foods, and try new seasonal activities in Vancouver, BC—all of which you can read more about on her blog.

All in all, Angie hopes to share her experiences in Canada—particularly in Vancouver and at SFU—with her audience, taking them along on her personal journey.

Imagining Angie’s audience

Angie in Canada / Hello everyone!

Just from reading Angie’s introductory post titled, ‘Hello everyone!’, I’m immediately drawn into who Angie is and who her audience is: university and other exchange students alike who are exploring Canada one day at a time. Though I will say, seeing that this is a lifestyle and travel blog, I wouldn’t limit her audience to that specific demographic just yet. Rather, this blog would be great for lifestyle and travel enthusiasts like Angie. But anyway, let’s take a closer look at Angie in Canada.

Content—a casual and colloquial conversation

Something I noticed in each and every blog post on Angie in Canada is the casual and colloquial writing style used by Angie. I appreciate that as a reader because not only did the topics in each post intrigue me, but I felt like part of the author’s thoughts and conversations.

This writing technique reminds me of Suler’s ‘online disinhibition effect’—that feeling we have in cyberspace where we say, act, and do as if nobody is watching—in that what Angie has written thus far is a reflection of her personal values.

The UX (User Experience)

The UX—user experience—of a website covers functional aspects.

The theme and design of Angie in Canada tie everything together. Right when you land on Angie’s website, you’re greeted with a personalized heading and clean design.

Angie in Canada website header and navigation bar

The navigation bar is tidy and categorized by topic. However, I think the link to Angie’s ‘About’ page could be moved from the top-right corner of the screen to the navigation bar so that all her pages are all in one place.

Other than that, I appreciate the addition of photos in each post to compliment the text content. For instance, in Angie’s ‘VanDusen Botanical Garden’ travel post, the text content is followed by a photo gallery that provides us a visualizer of her experiences.

Angie in Canada / VanDusen Botanical Garden

One more little detail that caught my attention and gives Angie’s website more personality is the integration of a Spotify badge in the right-hand-side menu. The badge features Spotify’s ‘Chill Hits’ playlist and updates regularly with tunes that you can listen to while reading Angie in Canada. It not only encourages interactions on her site, but it makes for a great reading experience.

Angie in Canada Spotify playlist integration

If Angie hasn’t had a chance already, I’d recommend looking into how else she can boost her SEO. Having a good SEO is great for builds user engagement, site credibility and trust, and user experience. Hollingsworth covers this in more detail in his 2021 article, ’15 Reasons Why Your Business Absolutely Needs SEO.’

The UI (User Interface)

On the other hand, the UI—user interface—of a website highlights visual aspects.  

Something that stood out to me was the use of negative, or white, space. While sometimes white space can be too overwhelming and other times nonexistent on websites, Angie in Canada gives us an easy-to-read and easy-to-navigate design with an even balance between text and image content and negative space.

Even more so, the font colour contrast against the white space plus the sans-serif typography used across Angie in Canada allows for an easy reading experience on the eyes.

When you take all these different elements into account, you get a good sense of the image and brand that Angie is promoting—her brand. As Gertz (2015) notes, the pattern that these elements forms becomes its own “trademark.”

My final thoughts on Angie in Canada

In terms of overall marketability, I feel that Angie definitely knows her audience and has done an exceptional job at catering her content to them. Like a performer has a crowd of fans at their show, Angie has her own public made up of individuals who share similar interests as her and as each other.

Each post is consistent with the theme of her blog—travel and lifestyle—and doesn’t fail to engage her readers with curated photo galleries for each of her experiences shared. I think Angie has done an amazing job building her personal cyberinfrastructure, and she has lots of room to continue developing it through her blog.

So excited to continue reading Angie’s content, and I encourage you to check out Angie in Canada as well!

References

Gertz, T. (2015, July 10). How to survive the digital Apocalypse. Louder Than Ten. https://louderthanten.com/coax/design-machines

Peer Review #3: amandasadventures.ca

First off, I would like to start off with my apology that this Peer Review #3 is posted late. I have been fighting a throat, ear, and skull infection the past 2 weeks. It has been hard to stay awake and focus on school work but I am here now for Amanda’s peer review!

Amanda’s home page is very welcoming. The title “Amanda’s Adventures” with the pale pink background and photo collage adds a beautiful start to the adventure we are about to have on her blog. 

As she writes in a personal journal style, I believe her intended audience would be friends, family, classmates, and people who generally like to follow along with others lives and lear new things. Like me!

Audrey Watters states: “Having one’s own domain means that students have much more say over what they present to the world, in terms of their public profiles, professional portfolios, and digital identities. Students have control over the look and feel of their own sites, including what’s shared publicly.” (Watters, 2015). 

This quote reflects with Amanda as she envisions her audience. Amanda is presenting her true authentic self through her posts and creating a digital identity that her viewers will see. She shares personal stories that can resonate with others. 

Amanda definitely does not have the “You Don’t Know Me” effect in “The Online Disinhibition” John Suler describes. Amanda makes it clear who she is to her audience and opens herself up to them.

Some of Amanda’s tags include “adventure”, “democratic”, “awareness”, and “SFU.” These are great navigations when exploring her blog and finding exactly what we may be looking for. 

This was all I have learned based on her home page alone. So let’s dive into her pages!

Her about me is also very welcoming as she lets her audience know she is an English major and potential REM minor. This relates back to my review of how her audience may potentially be other students looking for others to go through this journey of university. 

A few of her hobbies include reading, writing, and listening to music and she also emphasis’ her passion to travel. These could reach a wider audience as the travel community is huge and people of all age groups are interested in music and reading. 

“Follow me on my journey as I experience the ordinary, extraordinary and everything in between.”  

I clicked on her article “Reflecting on a Year Gone By” and felt connected to her passion for travel. This feels like a true travel journal and could be marketed as such.

Her article “Girls Night Out!” and “Why Tuesday’s Are My Favourite Day” are so wholesome and reminded me a lot of what my former blog was all about and the adventures my friends and I had in the 11th and 12th grade. The simpler times, before university took over our lives. 

I believe her marketing to her audience would include, as mentioned earlier, people interested in more personal and travel posts. If she posts pictures on her Instagram relating to her traveling posts, I feel she could get a lot of traffic from there!

She linked her Instagram and icons below to find her on social media and e-mail which helps when connecting to her audience.

I noticed through her loading page, the pink and purple stripe that sways back and forth, occasionally caused pages to load slower on a mobile device. Using the lab computers worked fine! I believe this was made with Elementor and potentially can be the cause; which is common. Overall, it adds a cute and friendly look! Just potentially changing something in terms of loading speed could help but that is only a minor critique. 

Overall, my general impression of Amanda’s blog is that it reminded me a lot of why I started writing. I have to admit, I have been in a very big creative block lately and have not felt inspired to write. This blog was like a breath of fresh air and I cannot wait to continue reading in the future! And fangirl over Ariana Grande together!

♡♡♡

Audrey Watters. 2015. “The Web We Need to Give to Students.” https://medium.com/bright/the-web-we-need-to-give-students-311d97713713#.4d7j8rs6x

Suler, John. 2004. “The Online Disinhibition Effect.” Available from: Cyberpsychology & behavior 7.3 (2004): 321-326. http://truecenterpublishing.com/psycyber/disinhibit.html

Featured Image Reference: Tumblr User

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