r3fresh

A Redesign and a Review of Autoblog.com

A few months ago we saw the (much needed) redesign of Engadget.com and just this past week we saw the redesign of Autoblog. Autoblog for those who don’t know, is a blog about cars, duh, which I have become a fan of over the past 2 years I’ve been reading it. What I like about Autoblog, over Jalopnik or any of the other car enthusiast blogs, is it seem to be more placed on newer (and future) cars and designs. Over the past week the site got a visual refresh, which included a new color scheme (red and black), a new blog heading, and a clean-up.

The new color scheme is much more pleasing to look at and creates great contrast with the red, black white. Before the redesign, the site was pretty boring and probably would be skipped over by new readers. It is important to have something on your website or blog that will be eye-catching (and memorable) if you want people to come back.

The blog heading hasn’t changed much other than the addition of more black, which makes it look more modern and interesting.

What Autoblog was really in need for was a clean-up. Over the past year the site has gotten bloated and busy (ads and new features), leading to slow load times. The site is still pretty busy, (especially on the right side) but it has been refined and organized, to speed up the once poor load times.

From this point the site sounds like a perfect one, BUT there is one addition that I do not like, the tags scroll-over buttons at the top of the page. I think they become annoying after scrolling over them a few times, but I personally think tags are useless when it comes to blog posts (leave tags to Flickr).

The new redesign of Autoblog was much need and optimizes the site. The new look 1ups the writing of this car lovers blog. Like cars? Go check out (and try out) the new Autoblog.