Making REW Blogs more about YOU

[webmaster]

Ok guys, I haven't talked about the redesign of REW Blogs yet, so you will get your first sneak peak at what is to come (Screenshot attached)

So what is this post about?

Right now, when a potential customer goes to Google and does a search for something real estate related, if a user has done a good job with their REW blog, it will come up in the search engines - they see the SERP (We are talking potential customers here) and they don't really know to look at the URL's they just click on the results. What they are met with with REW Blogs, is something like this http://www.realestatewebmasters.com/blogs/ryan-ward/

Now the idea here, is that I want this user to actually think they have landed on Ryan Ward's website (As much as possible) as opposed to sending them off to look at other blogs as well as Ryan's. (They already do this, I just want to improve upon it)

One of the things I want to eliminate, is the calls to action in the top bar labelled "Home (This takes you to the REW Blogs home) Explore Blogs (This takes you a list of ALL REW Bloggers, Login and Register)

Now obviously I know how to eliminate those links, but the question becomes what do I replace them with?

Now in my new design, we have some wicked clean drop downs, and I want to make use of them for this area - and these new buttons that replace the old ones need to be tied to things that are consistantly available in REW Blogs on a per user basis (Such as categories, the bloggers listings etc) so ummm what goes there? I will post my screen, then my ideas so far (Very rough, wanting input)

Anyways, here is the screen - then what I have so far.

[webmaster]

Ok so in my screenshot, you see what is currently there and needs to be replaced.

What I have so far is

Home: (This goes to the main page of THIS bloggers rew blog, not the main REW Blogs page)

Categories: (This would be a drop down of the users categories)

Listings: (This would either be a button to go to listings, or a dropdown if we can think of some options such as "on map" "by price" that sort of thing)

Contact: (This would take them to the contact page on REW Blogs where they can contact the blogger via a form etc)

About: (This would link to their bio page if they have created on, it would not show if they don't)

[Smuck]

Have you considered allowing the REW bloggers the option of skinning their blogs with their own design (rather, having REW implement a skin)? Personally, I would be willing to pay for this. I would imagine others would also.

Or perhaps, allowing bloggers to have a unique header graphic?

[Benjamin Dona]

Looks pretty good. I like Smuck's suggestion for a unique header graphic. Anything to help seperate and promote the individul REW blogger.

Also, would you consider adding a phone number field to the contact form and a way to put some order to our user pages? Even if they just were sorted alphabetically on the backend, would be better than how they are now. Give our blogs a a more organized and clean look.

[Eric Blackwell]

I'd second Ben's and Smuck's suggestions...

Both of those are good thoughts IMO...

Eric

[jessiesc]

I'll third those suggestions as well

[svrpaul]

I'll fourth that. A consistent header graphic throughout all of our marketing is a pretty important branding effect.

[webmaster]

Ummmm thanks for all the suggestions But! I actually didn't get any feedback on what I posted about:

Being able to re-organize the static pages, no problem, I will try to code this today.

Bloggers being able to skin REW Blogs - This will not happen, I made a conscious decision to not allow skinning simply because #1 I want REW Blogs to always maintain a consistent and professional design (I have empowered customers in the past to be able to effect their own designs, and often times the outcome was less than stellar) - basically I do not want this thing to become a myspace (A few nicely skinned pages, but for the most part, they look horrible) and #2 it would create a much larger overhead in terms of support

Now that being said - I am open to creating some areas of the blogs for personalization - For instance, One idea I had, was in the Category setup / manager, you could upload a banner or header graphic specific to that category, and / or another header graphic that could be applied overall - Some will of course be better than others, but that is cool - So there would be a defined width for the image (I might allow flash uploads as well) and the height could be whatever you wanted.

At the top right, it will not be the REW phone # it will be the bloggers phone #

Those sorts of things - so great suggestions, thank you - I appreciate it, and hopefully we can come up with some other great personalization options for you as well -

Now back to the matter at hand - The top navigation of the blogs (See screenshot) what do you think (And this needs to apply to everyone) would be good options?

Thanks guys.

[coastal]

I'd like you to make it so that if you are logged into REW Blogs (all of us USERS) you see a similar setup to what we have now so we can still easily browse each others blogs for ideas opinions etc, BUT when a random internet user finds the blogs they look like our own private websites.

Make it so!

THe Blue Bar Needs to say

HOME = our home page condosrehobothbeach. com
SEARCH MY FEATURED LISTINGS
SEARCH ALL LOCAL LISTINGS condosrehobothbeach com/search-mls.php
INFO 4 BUYERS - It's a buyers market, let's go lowball some some sellers.
INFO 4 SELLERS - it's a sellers market, here are some things to do 2 sell your house!
About our Team - we like 2 sell homes.
CONTACT US condosrehobothbeach. com/contact.php

[Benjamin Dona]

I think you've pretty much nailed it already. Not sure about the listings extras? It's basically just the bloggers own listings, so I'm not sure you need a whole lot of options.

What about maybe adding a "favorite blogs" section with a limited number of available entires. Make it so you could only add other REW bloggers to the list.