Better Best Offers

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Since I began blogging full time in early 2012, I’ve maintained my Best credit card offers page.  The purpose of the page is to list, in one place, all of the best available credit card signup offers.  I put all of the info into tables in order to make it easy to see key information at a glance: signup bonus, bonus requirements, annual fee, etc.  The problem with this approach was that I had to jam a lot of information into a very small space.  So, I made the font small and did the best I could.  Here’s an example of what the table used to look like:

BestOffersImageOld

That wasn’t so bad, except when I had to fit in a lot more text.  For example, I was required to include the full marketing bullets on this one:

BestOffersImageSimplyCashOld

Well, that was ugly, unwieldy, and difficult to read.  So, I increased the font a bit, swapped things around, and added images.  Here are the same cards in the new format:

BestOffersImageNew

BestOffersImageSimplyCashNew

As you can see above, the new format allows me to include the same information (or more) with a bigger, easier to read font in roughly the same amount of space as was used before.

Mini reviews

With the old format, I had very little room to write what I thought about the card.  With the new format, there’s a bit more room.  Going forward, I plan to add “mini reviews” where I’ll say things like “Small signup bonus, but great category bonuses for everyday spend” or “Decent signup bonus. I don’t recommend using this card for day to day spend, but consider keeping for the annual free night.”  I’ll also link to relevant blog posts when I can.  This is a work (barely) in progress at this point.

Better navigation

The Best credit card offers page is quite long and its easy to get lost when scrolling around in it.  To help with that, I’ve added two levels of “jump to” hyperlinks.  After every section, you’ll see text that looks like this:

Jump to: Chase, Amex, Citi, Barclaycard, US Bank, BofA, Other

On the real page, the underlined words are hyperlinks that will jump you to the beginning of the offers for each bank.  For example, click “Citi” and the page will scroll immediately to the top of the Citibank offers.

With Chase, Amex, and Citibank, the offers are further subdivided into offers for bank point cards (Ultimate Rewards, Membership Rewards, and ThankYou points), airline cards, hotel cards, and (Amex only) cash back cards.  To help you find each of these, jump to the bank you’re interested in, then look for something like the following:

Also see: Amex Airline Cards, Amex Hotel Cards, Amex Cash Back Cards

Once again, these are hyperlinks that will move you to the appropriate section.  So, if you’re at the top of the page and want to see Amex Cash Back cards, simply click on the Jump to Amex link, then click the Amex Cash Back Cards link.

If all else fails, use your browser’s search in page functionality to find what you need.

Better disclosure

Another change I made was to make my affiliate link disclosure more visible.  Previously, I mentioned at the top of the page that some of the links were affiliate links, and I had itty bitty text at the bottom of the page that declared that for many of the links I would get paid.  However, there was no easy way to tell which of the links I was paid for.  Well, I still have the same itty bitty text at the bottom, but now I have a big banner at the top to make things obvious:

AffiliateLinks

In addition to the banner, I added a credit card image next to each of my affiliate links.  That way, readers can see at a glance which of the links are affiliate links and which are not.  My goal is to always share the best available link regardless of whether I would earn a commission.

Reader reactions

What do you think about the new format?  Is it an improvement?  What else can I do to make it better?

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