On 1st December 2016, ShoutMeLoud will turn 8 years old.
Yeah! That’s eight years of blogging & continuously engaging with like-minded people who also love blogging.
I never imagined myself being a blogger for so long.
Who would have thought of that? Huh!
I guess with the way that ShoutMeLoud has evolved over the past eight years, it would be wrong to call it “just a blog” (and myself “just a blogger”).
ShoutMeLoud now houses much more than a blog; it’s a functioning brand with many useful features. In the past few years, we have added sections like:
- Exclusive WordPress discount and deals.
- The ShoutMeLoud store.
- A video section.
- ShoutUniversity!!
- and a lot more cool stuff coming…
Note for techies: In WordPress terms, this section is called “custom post type”…
While things have been steadily moving ahead, one of the big challenges we were facing was the impacted user experience. With so many articles on various topics & with so many different sections, it was getting tough to get user eyeballs on all of these places at once.
Well, this is why we have revamped the ShoutMeLoud homepage.
Internally, we are calling this:
- ShoutMeLoud v3.0
One thing which I learned from the launch of an earlier version of ShoutMeLoud (2.0):
- There is never a perfect theme.
It’s always a constant work in progress & modifications will keep happening over time. Right now, I’m using the following tools to understand how readers like you & others are interacting with the site:
Based on my observations, more changes will be done over time.
Along with the homepage, we are working on optimizing all of the sections. Our goal is to treat every section as a mini-site & optimize each of them accordingly. Of course, this will be another work in progress, but for now, we know which direction we have to go.
More mini-courses on the way:
For the last two months, we have been focusing a lot on email marketing. That includes getting users on board & helping them learn the important things related to blogging & making money online.
- Last month, we did a “Mini affiliate marketing” course.
- This month, we are doing a “Start a blog from scratch” course.
Do you want to see how these mini-course campaigns increased the number of email signups?
Here’s stats from ConvertKit dashboard (our email marketing service):
You can clearly notice those big jumps are because of mini courses signup forms. We are using OptinMonster WordPress plugin to add those forms all over our blog with exclusion rules.
The idea behind these mini-courses is to help newbies understand the various mechanics of making money from a blog, while also helping them launch & grow their blog.
Right now ShoutMeLoud featured email signup box is offering our “WordPress eBook” for free as an incentive to sign up. If you also want to add similar signup box, you can watch this video to learn the process.
Soon, we will test the “Featured email box section” with options to subscribe to different mini-courses. This will be an interesting feature & an A/B test will give us a lot of interesting data.
In short: Get ready for data-rich case studies in the coming days!
The work is still in progress & things will unfold as we move ahead.
We are still a few weeks away from celebrating the 8th anniversary of ShoutMeLoud. In celebration, I will be preparing a few giveaways to ensure you get some useful blogging tools for free.
But the work is not over yet & there is a lot more to be done. For this, I need your help…
How can you help to make ShoutMeLoud Better?
You can do a lof things to help ShoutMeloud get better. For now, what matters most is feedback & suggestions.
- You can suggest changes or new ideas that could improve navigation.
- Suggest changes to improve the user experience.
- Conversion optimization tips.
- Don’t like any particular color or area of the homepage? Feel free to share that info, too.
Whatever you want to share with us, we will be happy to receive. We love feedback!
Share your views, feedback, & ideas of ShoutMeLoud 3.0 in the comments section below!
Along with suggestions…
If you are or know of, a web-designer who understands conversion optimized website design, you may be the perfect addition to the ShoutMeLoud team. This person will get to work with some of the brightest minds & thriving members of ShoutMeLoud. We are a bunch of creative professionals working together to make money! Doesn’t that sound fun??
So if you are this person or know someone who is, please send an email to [email protected] with the subject: I’m the one!
Get ready for a lot of new and interesting stuff in the coming days. More than that, get ready for the upcoming series of guides that will help you to grow your online business as a blogger and/or an entrepreneur.
Eight years later, and things are still exciting!!
Share this post and spread the love! See you tomorrow with monthly income report post.
Harsh,
Congrats on the new ShoutMeLoud level.
It’s inspiring watching this project grow in leaps and bounds over the years.
Greater accomplishment is still on your way.
Shoutmeloud 3.0 looks wonderful. Congrats on your upcoming 8th anniversary. Wishing you all the best for the future
Hey Harsh, why don’t you launch discussion room on your blog beside comments section so that everyone interacts and joins the discussion on your blog
@Sandeep
Are you talking about Chatroom or forum post? (We have one at http://ask.shoutmeloud.com)
Can you show me an example of what exactly you meant with discussion room?
I mean on post discussion like DISQUS and by adding Upvoting the comments
Nice job on the home page, Harsh! I can see where this would be intuitive for new visitors as well as regulars. Congrats on 8 years!
Great design, Harsh.
The only thing I miss is, seeing the latest blog posts as soon as I enter ShoutMeLoud.
Other than this, you’ve done a great job.
@Istiak
That’s a trade-off had to do to showcase other section of ShoutMeLoud. Since we publish one post a day, it seems to be alright at this time.
Awesome stuff.
Hi Harsh,
Designs looks good. I feel you can improve little better I guess… For example, adding more important category (income report), your Products showcase and also you can increase better design for optin form.
@Arun
Let me know more about what direction you are thinking & how do you imagine these section to get better.
The new theme looks good. Great to here that many more mini courses are coming up.
I took up your affiliate marketing mini course last month. And this course was useful for me such that it helped me in pointing out few mistakes. Going to rectify them soon.
Harsh Your homepage design is awesome, but i have one question why you remove borders from post section, your post title font is not good, so you can change your post title font
Hey @Gaurav
Good to see your comment.
Will change the title font & overall Typography. Thanks for bringing this to my attention.
Very Well Job Harsh, It’s look very nice and know it’s very difficult task but you done it brilliantly.
Wow always an inspiration,started reading this blog 3 years ago when i started blogging and always appreciate such creative minds
Really good Harsh
hi harsh Shoutmeloud 3.0 new look is awesome..
Thanks @Ashish.
Clean crisp design and it loads really fast. Popup are non intrusive and color palette is soothing to eyes.
Keep rolling more other new features.
Ty @Sanaiya 🙂
Looking forward to make more changes to improve usability.
Hey, New design of ShoutMeLoud looks wonderful on Desktop but not in Mobile, Blog is not responsive for Mobile Device.
BTW,Great Job!
@Gaurav
Thanks for the feedback. Blog is definitely responsive on mobile. Could you let me know the OS & browser are you using? Could you plz send me a screenshot at [email protected]
I like it when you say there is no perfect theme. That’s very true Harsh. I have been messing around with tons of themes since I launched my blog and I must admit it took time for me to realize it matters less. As long as you have a clean, minimalistic design, your texts are readable, and your color choice is not too aggressive, the visitors don’t really care about your design.
That said, I really like your new design. Wait…so you mean you started ShoutMeloud way before I even had an email address!
Hi Harsha,
your New website new design shoutmeloud 3.0 is very informative and interesting to visitors.
new look is have good visitor attractive. nice decision.
Loving the new look of shoutmeloud! It’s looking really nice on mobile version. Must have been hard for you to revamp the whole blog’s design. But it’s worth it! 🙂 Sir please try to launch free ecourses too, not all of us can afford paid ones. 🙁
@Dipti
Thanks for the feedback & yes, we will be launching many new stuff in coming days. 🙂
Just now I have noticed and very surprised to see the new look of Shoutmeloud, no doubt it looks outstanding. I am so glad to see this improvement. Keep it up brother…
Hey harsh, I like The New Shoutmeloud 3.0 Design. Its really a tough job for you to centralized all the things under one roof. But I am happy that you are able to do it and you do it with precision. Great Job Man, Keep it up.