[dropcap]I[/dropcap] love the classic/simple yet truly effective design (and life) principle that continues to perpetually teach me to keep things (it) simple – stupid. I’ve mentioned KISS before in a simplified pickled onion recipe. The recipe might appear as a contradiction to the principle because it’s an adaptation of a tried and tested, already good and successful recipe, but there were good intentions to it – to simplify the (time-consuming) original recipe (by removing/minimizing unnecessary parts) – making it easier/user-friendly, yet still effective/delicious. And it worked well.

Since that experience – KISS has resurfaced several times to teach/remind me. A couple of days ago, it was about the design/layout of this website – in particular, the number and placement of ads. Even though Padaek is approaching its 1 year anniversary early next month (yippee – Hammertime!) – the whole food blogging thing is still quite new/foreign to me, and there are many things that I’m still not familiar with.

As a writer/publisher (essentially), one of the most (if not the most) important thing to me is my reader’s happiness/satisfaction when they’re reading/viewing this blog. I try my best to provide a useful resource – of delicious recipes, somewhat funny/entertaining writing, good photos, etc. for my readers to enjoy to make their visit worthwhile. Personally, I think I’ve done a satisfactorily job – and through doing so, along with the knowledge that my readers are enjoying my work – it gives me great satisfaction/happiness!

From the start, in an effort to monetize the website/food blog to help assist in the running of it (bills, fancy ingredients, etc.), I decided to place some ads on the site which up to this day, to be honest with you, has accrued not too much – about $1 a day (roughly).

The ads initially grew from 3 ad spots to 6, and then to about 9 ad spots in total on the site at one time. Along with these ads – somehow, the site also managed to gather a collection of badges, widgets, extra menus, patterned backgrounds, etc. These are all great/nice and all, but it came to my attention the other night, that the site was starting to look like a distracting moving/flashing mess/jungle! And from a reader/visitor’s point of view, I thought it was just too much to handle – too confusing/head-achy, not to mention the likely possibility that it slowed the site down – making the reader’s experience less fun.

As a result, I recently decided to remove/reduce the number of ad spots on the site to just 3 (header ad, sidebar top ad and sidebar bottom ad), plus the permanent fixture Sista Sista sidebar ad. Those two girls will continue to keep an eye on you while you’re on the site! bigsmile Furthermore, I decided to remove other unnecessary/distracting clutter, including badges, widgets, background pics, etc. – leaving the site looking like what it does now. There’s still a lot of stuff on the site, but at least it’s not as cluttered as before.

If you do use ads on your blog/site – I want to share with you that even though I have only 3 ad spots on the site, I’m still using 2 (possibly 3 once I work it out) different ad providers (Gourmet Ads, Lijit/Sovrn and Google Adsense) for those ad spaces. I’m using a method/strategy called “backfill waterfall”, which I learnt from Nagi on Recipe Tin Eats.

I’m new to the strategy, but in my nutshell – it’s utilising the ad spaces you have on your site to their fullest potential by organising the ad spaces to display an alternative/back up ad from a different ad provider when your first ad provider does not have a productive ad to show. This, in theory ensures that you get the most out of your valuable ad spaces on your site. For more detailed info/instructions on the “backfill waterfall” strategy, please read Nagi’s post. And while you’re there, be sure to check out her other Blogger Resources, and her collection of mouth-watering recipes too. Thank you Nagi!

So there you have it. I hope you like the new re-design/look of Padaek – less ads and less distractions, and hopefully a lot neater and faster/easier for you to navigate too. While things may change in the near future, for example, another ad spot might appear (in other words, if you’re interested in advertising with Padaek, please feel free to contact me bigsmile ) – I can reassure you that it is my goal/intention to minimise the number of ads and clutter on Padaek – making the site more user-friendly and enjoyable. Thanks for reading folks and I would love to hear your thoughts!

[[1]]Image Source: Wikipedia. Date: 4 May 2012. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Salvador_Dali_NYWTS.jpg. License: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. [[1]]