It’s like buying a new purse. My current handbag, is neither a luxury name nor new. But it is functional. It’s black and made of cotton material which means it doesn’t show the dirt and is lightweight. The outside pockets make accessing my metro card easy when a train is pulling into a station and I running to catch it.

My old but functional purse

But the purse is old, the zipper handle is broken, the shoulder strap is falling apart, and the material is becoming threadbare. Looking for a new bag is not easy. It will be something I will use every day, like a blog. We can “preview” different themes for our new blog but such a big decision takes time.

However, unlike a purse, the blog will be interacting with other people. There are readers to snag, to keep and to prevent from bouncing elsewhere. I look at the various themes, and decide on Mystique. With its dark block of color at the top, it is the antithesis of TwentyTen with all its white space. I think about the readers’ experience. Will less white space be a turnoff?

I like the contrast between the name in white and the dark color at the top. Within the black is a grey bar with various sections on the left and below that the latest post which is considered prime real estate on a site. The start of the latest blog entry can be seen under the bar making it less work for the reader. To the right is a white rectangle for a quick search.

To see the first post or various icons, no scrolling is necessary. The build-in widgets on the right side are group together, and offer the reader another place to go which hopefully will reduce the bounce rate. I like the unity in the font size for both the blog entry and tags and twitter, www.twitter.com

For now, I like the change. But I forgot to ask Sean an important question that many seasoned shoppers remember, “What is the return policy?”