The NESW Sports site claims to be the best sports news anywhere. A very, very bold tagline. Their browser title says The Best Sports Videos, which is maybe a little more apt. I’m no ESPN jockey, but they do some fairly serious reporting. My first bit of advice for the owner would be to cut the hyperbole and get down to the nitty-gritty — what does the blog provide? (Sports Videos from Every Direction — just an idea.)

The NESW Sports site does provide sports videos with a bit of historic background. The current post (as of writing this) shows the Carl Lewis National Anthem from 1993. The bit of text leading into the video provides a clear idea of what you’re about to see. Each post has a relaxed and informative feel to it, which will help gain readers and with search engines ranking.

There’s no archive in the sidebar, but it appears, according to Alexa, the site’s been around since March of this year. Since that time the site has been posting sports videos, or videos related to the sports world on at least a daily basis, if not two or three times a day. This is no small achievement, and fans of the blog should high five the blogger. Keep it up.

Template and Layout Problems

I would say there are some problems with the appearance of the blog, mainly due to the header. The image in the header doesn’t look right. It should cover the whole of the page or at least be balanced with an RSS subscription callout or something to the right, and the main banner should not look like a scanned in photo. The Live banner below the header image appears to be the secondary title of the site. Not a good thing by any measure. There’s also some prime real estate on the right side of the blog being used by…white space.

You’ll also notice the post title scrunched up to the Join Now banner. It’s hardly noticeable with no margin. Pull the ad, or give it a margin, then people will see the post title much more clearly. The navigation does quite well on the right. There’s quick access to subscribe to the feed, recent posts, and categories. The only thing missing is the archive.

The RSS feed is supported by Feedburner and includes the option to sign up via email. It shows the videos perfectly inside the feed, so A+ in that respect.

Does All This Negative Talk Mean the Site Sucks?

Not at all. The site has really good content. If the header were to be cleaned up, some key advertising moved around, and a few navigation elements added, then the blog would be really, very nice. Could it use some professional design touches? Absolutely.

I would start with the header and work my way down. The majority of the design flaws on the site could be fixed in a matter of an hour or two. The more laborious things would be sorting out the main header with advertisements.

All in all I would say the site’s a good one, but could use some tweaking. The right changes and with the current content, the site will definitely pick up readers and continue to move forward.