BiofuelsWatch.com presents quite a sharp look, especially in the upper part of the site mostly due to its elegant use of a background image and the shadowing beneath the header and content area. It almost seems like the site is floating on a patch of earth. The header is quite simple, but in a very elegant way. A sharp red color with a stylized title and slogan with words colored from white to gray.

The content area uses a three columned layout filled with various kinds of information and this is where most could be said about possible design improvements. The first column features a few articles with consistently sized images to fit them, but the next two columns are a little bit more mixed. The center column contains two square ads, listings of popular and random articles, a featured video and a yet another article teaser. The rightmost column contains a widget that allows displaying recent articles and comments. It also has a tab for "about us" but it is empty.

If a three columned layout is to be kept here are a few suggestions that could make it seem better organized. Popular and random articles could be moved below the widget of the rightmost column. The space left in the middle column could be filled only with more article teasers and a featured video, with an ad thrown in somewhere in between if necessary. One instead of two ads might even be sufficient. This would make columns contextually consistent with themselves. First two would put the actual content into spotlight by means of teasers, images and that featured video while the last column is reserved for further links to recent, popular and random content as well as the search box for searching them.

This might also make more sense to the reader whom I believe may be more accustomed to the content or teasers of content taking up at least two thirds of the width of the site while links to more is in the last third.

There could also be a few minor improvements in the third column, namely ads and the search box. I would put the search box to the top and perhaps remove the "search for" text as it seems redundant. That would allow the "search" button to display next to the search input field rather than jumping into second line, making it look neater. This might be accomplished even without removing "search for" by reducing the width of the input field. As for the ads, only thing to do would be to center them. Centering items in their respective space usually adds up to a more elegant look.

While we're at nitpicking, some teasers in the left and center columns seem longer than others and as a result push the "read more" link to the edge of the teaser block or almost over it.

Moving on to the design of the article pages things seem to be fairly decent there. The title that comes with a nice thumbnail on its left is a nice touch. Where articles have subsections they use a proper heading tag (h7 apparently) which is always better than strong tags as is case with some sites. And where lists are displayed there seems to be good spacing between them. The only conceivable issue that one might complain about are the ads. Square ads often display right at the beginning of the article and then once more below it. But at least they consistently use a fitting color scheme and don't seem to mess up the layout from the samples of articles I've seen.

Finally, the comments area is quite nice. Comments are put in a speech bubble pointing to the avatar which looks great. However when the user doesn't have an avatar it doesn't display and only an alt text saying "avatar" does. Perhaps a default avatar could be made to display for commentators who don't select or upload one.

Design Rating: 8/10

Focus:

Since the site's name and domain are descriptive, BiofuelsWatch.com readers shouldn't have trouble knowing what to expect in general. That said there don't seem to be any categories for content and some articles go a little beyond the fold of biofuels by talking about solar and wind energy as well, albeit that isn't a serious issue given that most articles still do focus on biofuels. Perhaps the biggest suggestion here is to make fill up the "about us" tab of the widget in the right column just introducing the site to the readers and emphasizing its highlights (what makes it a great resource, maybe who is behind the site, why should the reader care about biofuels and things like that).

Focus Rating: 9/10

Content:

The site offers about 50 articles about various biofuels related topics and a few among them about more general alternative energy topics. Articles are relatively to the point, not too long and the writing style appears correct and easy to follow further helped sometimes by the usage of bullet points, subsections and emphasis.

Readers can learn what are biofuels, what differentiates them from fossil fuels, about various types of biofuels, its costs and furthermore information on going green in general and other clean energy sources. So it's already quite a comprehensive resource for someone interested in biofuels with a bit of other information on top, given that those interested in biofuels are likely to be interested in other clean sources as well.

Content Rating: 10/10