(Week 11)
Wow. Dressing sustainably (DS). I know this peer review post is supposed to be about analyzing your audience and marketability and this may tie into it… but damn, the optics (in a good way)!
The layout, the topography, the framing, the contrast with the colour pops and the neutrals. Your site looks very clean, approachable, and professional.
How your site presents itself/your brand/the way you market yourself, sets an idea of what kind of audience you have and could potentially attract.
Who I believe your audience may be
The proof is in the pudding, and the pudding has dropped and smeared on the ground in front of you. Albeit not the best visual, it’s more of a metaphor for how apparent the topic of your site is. Your site is about sustainable fashion and it’s obvious. That obviousness is great as it allows those who stumble across your site the directness they need to either stay or leave, because why stay if you don’t care for the content? The fact that you allow the experience for your audience to be an obvious one, builds a more niche audience while strengthening their alliance with your brand. Those who are looking for a sustainable fashion alternative, those whose default is to shop sustainably for anything, those who love fashion, and those that care about the planet, are your audience. Taking a look at these possible audiences, these counterpublics range from small to large audiences. In that regard, I don’t believe numbers will be an issue for you to grow your brand and your audience and this can be quite powerful. How do you harness this power in numbers? Marketing.
Some points on marketing
You have the material, and you have the vibe, but you need to work on marketability.
I’ve pointed this out in every peer review, and yours, regrettably, is no exception. I’m noticing that your images do not have alt text. I cannot claim to be an expert in any regard towards the shrouded mystery that is Google’s search algorithms, but I know one of the many data points are the content you have going on in the background, in the code. Alternative/alt text is not just some fictional topic that Lauren and Suzanne are trying to convince you is real. It exists, and it exists here:
Now, why is this important? HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is a programming language that is used to build the structure of a web application or component. In this day and age, we use HTML5 which is semantic. This means, the code that we developers use has meaning, it’s not just a waterfall of <divs> anymore, it’s a grouping of relative content tagged with semantic tags.
Again, why is this important? Giving meaning to code allows that code to be categorized more easily. Alt text lives in the <img> tag as a property. It is meant to give an alternative definition to the image source for those that may need or choose to use it. It is also used as a data point for Google’s search algorithms to categorize your site and content and allow those that are searching for sustainable fashion to find sites and information that are related to sustainable fashion. Yes, alt text is important for accessibility, but it is also important for boosting your site in relevancy for Google aka boosting your marketing. So, more of that.
Aside from boosting your marketability via alt text. What I found interesting about your blog posts was the form at the bottom of the posts that allows your audience to sign up for emails on comment updates! This is great. It allows those who are interacting with your site to multiply their interactions with your site and drive up your page viewings, and time spent on that page while lowering the page bounce rate.
Take it or leave it – Some Advice
What do people like about fashion? How it looks, how it makes you feel, and how it may inspire others. This is great, however, if we cannot see fashion, is fashion really there?
Tree falling in the woods aside, I feel that you could attract your audience more if you use more images. Fashion is huge on sight and how what they see makes them feel, so it feels like fashion and images of fashion should go hand and hand. I would suggest including more images on your main blog post page as well as just adding more images on the individual posts themselves, for example:
It would be cool if there were some screenshots/images of the banners of these sites so that your audience doesn’t need to read a whole paragraph to get a feel of the site you are recommending. Linking and backlinking are great for SEO and increase your marketability.
I mentioned numbers and how you have them, but I believe that the numbers you may have may be underutilized if you do not ensure smooth, usable interfaces for ALL devices. Your desktop site is tops, but the responsiveness of your site’s home page for mobile users is (I’m sorry) horrendous:
Being accommodating to as much of your audience as possible right off the bat will only help you in keeping new visitors and growing your numbers.
I also mentioned how I think it is great to ask your audience to further interact with your site by sending them emails for responses to their comments. Perhaps just adding a general email list that allows your audience to sign up for new post updates will help with your marketability and deepen your fan base.
Overall
I think you are doing a great job. Great aesthetic, great concept, good content. There are just a few suggestions I believe would take your site to the next level in terms of growing your audience and adding more marketability.
Hope this was helpful in some way! Bye for now!
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