Okay. Today we'll be reviewing
Mysteries of the Arcana. Hold on tight and lets dig in!
All right. Today we have an exceptionally average site. While it scores very well in a couple of places, the over all site tends towards a cluttered distracting sight. A few changes could really improve eye focus and site flow.
ABOVE THE FOLD - 3/5
The biggest issue with the AtF rating is bloat. Everything feels slightly chunkier then it needs to be. A slight size reduction would net a solid 4.
USE OF COLOUR - 2/5
While the theme itself is obvious, the colours chosen could use some work. A vibrant green and purple are competing for my attention. This causes less focus on the primary website content. A more subdued background colour (of one colour!) will alleviate this. Perhaps a pea green, or violet.
The important thing is that you need to pick a dominant colour. Either Green, Or purple needs to become your primary.
BANNER - 2/5
It acuratly delivers your update schedule, and provides an identity. Unfortunately, the background is still fighting for attention, and the white text is noticed as an afterthought. Finally, it could stand to be smaller, and the logo text could be brought out more.
NAVIGATION & LAYOUT - 4/5
The site has really good navigation and layout. You even have comic navigation buttons above and bellow the comic, which is an often overlooked benefit for long form comics because it speeds up the ability to browse you archives without scrolling.
The only downside to your layout is the sidebar. At present it feels cluttered and bloated. It could easily be reduced to half its current width, and give the comic much more page dominance. As it stands, the comic feels almost shunned to the side.
SOCIAL TOOLS - 2.5/5
While you have no “Share This” tools ( A common complaint in these reviews), you make up for it in a few ways. First, you have your twitter prominently positioned, along with your E mail and RSS. You are very easy to socialize with both in public and private.
Second, you have a Forum! But it's not really being all that it can be. First and foremost, you're sharing forums rather then running a dedicated forum, meaning that, among other things, it looks like another community, not an extension of your site. The people who will participate in your forum will be your readership. You aren't really going to gain a lot of readers by sharing forums.
See, You're banking on having a lot of overlap with other comics, but in truth, that's rarely the case. More often then not your efforts will be better spent (From a marketing and brand building perspective) building something catered exclusively to the needs of YOUR community. Unless you and all these other comics are planning to merge and build a brand (Not a collective mind you, but an actual brand), then your efforts would all be better spent catering to your own unique needs.
If you're too small for a full dedicated forum, you could try a comment thread style forum, such as the one used by Sheldon and Evil Inc. But this members only forum that belongs to some one else will really alienate more then it will help.
Still, A+ for effort.
Get some form of dedicated on site forum for a solid 3.
Add tools like Sociable or the like for a solid 3.5 (Or 4 if you also fallow the above tip)
SECONDARY CONTENT - 4/5
I have no complaints or comments here. There's plenty of content. A well written about Page, a solid cast page, plenty of Extras. Bravo.
TOTAL – 3 out of 5
Over all the site isn't bad. At first glance it feels garish and unorganized. But upon closer examination, all it needs is some resizing on the header and side bar, some slight tweaking to the colour scheme to choose just one primary, and a little extra work on the Banner to bring the focus more on the logo and less on the background pictures.
For Extra Credit, consolidate your community so it feels like YOUR community, not an extension of some one else.
NEXT WEEK: We review
Crossing Death!