Under The Microscope: Tourfolio.com

Welcome to the first Travel Blog Review in our “Under the Microscope” series!

This past week our Travel Writers’ Forum members reviewed Tourfolio.com, a travel blog founded by Bryan Cassidy.

The goal of this series of travel blog reviews – handled entirely through our Forum – is to help travel bloggers discover what visitors like, or don’t like, about their blog, with some helpful suggestions on things they can do to help improve the overall look, performance, and growth of their blog.

So let’s get to it!

What Works:

Hands down all the participants really liked Tourfolio’s overall layout and design, and use of social media connections. Specific comments included:

• “First impression was a good, crisp and tidy site.”
• “At first glance, I love the photos and the layout.”
• “Clean website — not too many ads.”
• “I like the clean layout and simple design – the colors are easy on the eyes, the font is readable, and there is not much to distract from the conten.t”
• “Cool button to direct people to your facebook fan page.”
• “Good clear use of social media networking connections – I love that you make it easy for others to retweet your posts.”
• “I like the fact that subscribing to the blog is right there & you don’t miss it by scrolling down to read something else.”

What Could Be Better:

Although there were mixed opinions on the navigation, their was universal consensus that more navigation was needed to browse posts, and that it needed more prominent promotion of the fact that Tourfolio encourages Guest Posts:

• “Add “Recent Posts” and “Categories” to the right hand side where “Popular, Comments, and Tags” are.”

“the navigation could be a little bit clearer. It would be handy to have the ‘Recent posts’ and ‘Categories’ in the sidebar as well”

• “I also had to really look for the navigation & getting around to other posts.”
• “Add “Become a Guest Poster” to the top navigation bar.”
• “Do you allow guest posts? I see now that you do, but it was not apparent until I really looked for it.”

A Few Suggestions:

Aside from what the participants felt were some needed improvements, everyone offered a couple of ideas that might also help:

• A bit more explanation as to the meaning of the name “Tourfolio’
• A few more social network icons to make it easy for people who use other networks to share content;
• Expanding the “About” section to include a little more about Bryan (most people like to know something about the person whose blog they’re reading);
• Adding a few more photos on the home page to draw readers in;

Thanks again to Bryan for volunteering his travel blog – I was happy to read that he was as excited as we were about this new series!

And many thanks to Rebecca Sebek, Maria Staal, and Wendy Van Hatten for offering their opinions and suggestions!

~Trisha

Do you have some helpful comments for Tourfolio? Share your thoughts!