I believe what you said was very reasonable. However, think about this, what if you added a little content? I mean, I don't wish to tell you how to run your website, but what if you added a title to maybe grab a person's attention? I mean %BLOG_TITLE% is kinda vanilla. You could peek at Yahoo's front page and note how they create news titles to grab viewers to click. You might add a related video or a pic or two to get readers excited about everything've got to say. In my opinion, it would make your website a little bit more interesting.