Fire Critic An Unadulterated View of the Fire Service
This might become an ongoing column by The Fire Critic, we will see how it goes.
Today, I offer you a critique of FireEngineering.com. Fire Engineering has become a favorite of a lot of the go getters in the fire service. While FireEngineering.com my not compete with Firehouse.com, Fire Engineering magazine spanks Firehouse magazine in my mind. I might not be able to pinpoint it, but it seems as though Fire Engineering has better articles with more depth for the veteran firefighter.
Basically, if I want to read great articles on the Fire Service and our jobs I flip through the Fire Engineering rag. If I want to check out fires I go to Firehouse.com. However, I go to Firehouse.com only after I have checked out the State Fire News sites here and the other blogs etc. here.
I am digressing. The main point of this post was not an in-depth comparison of Firehouse and Fire Engineering. Actually, I started this post because of a HUGE issue I see with FireEngineering.com. I go to the site everyday, and every day I see the same damn thing. The home web page above the fold never changes. “Above the Fold” is a newspaper term for the top of the front page which you see while the newspaper is folded. The term loosely relates to websites in that “above the fold” would be what you see when you arrive at a website without browsing. The next image is what you see. Follow along though because you will have to scroll down to see the rest of the issue and my way of easily fixing it.
Current site. What you see is what you always see and is pretty boring. I have highlighted the area in question. The stuff on the left is the navigation bar, which might work across the top with the other navigation bar. The stuff on the right pays the bills, no complaint there.
Below is my proposed solution to the issue. Move the more dynamic parts of the site up to the top so when people visit daily they see that stuff has changed and are interested in scrolling down to see what else has changed.
If you go to the site, you will see that all I did was moved the "Fire Pictures of the Day" to the top along with the headlines. Both of which should be updated daily (and I believe they are). The more dynamic content will draw more visitors and more clicks per visitor.
