Steps To Improving Site Usability And Functionality

Stop Now! You may be sending visitors packing with your blog design, and that’s not all, you are also reducing the likelihood that people will ever come back to your site again! First impressions are the most important thing, especially in this business where your blog design is representing YOU. Successful blog design has three essential concepts attached to it, cleanliness, uniqueness and content flow. If these three quintessential concepts are not met, you can be sure that you are throwing away at least 60% of your visitors or more.

Cleaning Up and Tidying Your Blog or Site Theme

• Ad Placement: You can have ads, but you should pick designated areas of your site to put them on and stick with those areas. Less is certainly more when it comes to ad placement, remove as the ads which don’t achieve a high CTR or those which do not convert well.
• Widgets: These are a continuous problem for most sites, they see a widget - they want it. They end up with huge amounts of widgets which make their site’s load-time skyrocket. Remove as many non essential widgets as you can; maximize internal links and reduce un necessary chicklets.
• Colour Scheme: Ensure that you are using a blend of colours that are not a bad combination. Your blend of colours in addition to your design should be something people remember you for.
• Social Media Buttons: Yes, it can be fun to use them at the end of a post, but make sure you use the ones that are of a reasonable size, huge buttons don’t make the post look any better and they take a very long time to load. In addition to this, put popular social media buttons, don’t include obscure social media sites which have very small readerships - this is pointless.

Giving Your Blog That “Come Back Soon!” Touch

• Buy or Design A Custom Theme: Buying or designing your own custom theme will allow your online business to become more than just a blog, it will allow your blog to rise above the rest. It will also give you an edge over millions of other blogs out there; you will now have a unique brand that will work for you - even when a site visitor has left your blog.
• Make or Hire Someone To Make A Logo For You: What does a logo do for your business? Let’s see, it gives you a unique identity, it sets you apart from the rest of some utterly disgusting web sites present online and it allows for a sense of synergy; helping to encompass what you stand for and how you are perceived in other people’s eyes.
• Being Open And Up Front With Readers: One of the biggest problems online; and especially when it comes to blogging is the fact that writers (bloggers) are not up front with their readers. This is especially true and it stems from subjects like affiliate marketing. If you’re trying to sell your readers something, tell them, most of the time, they’ll buy from you if you’re providing some form of incentive.
• Having A Relationship With Readers Is Key: This leads in from the previous point about being open and up front with readers. If you have a strong reader writer relationship you should be able to get a sale from them; you should have such a strong bond, that they don’t care if you’re using an affiliate link, you’ve earned them loyalty and respect, and they give you back theirs.

Helping Readers Discover More Quality Content

• Link To Posts From Within Your Sidebar: Your blog’s sidebar should maximize internal linking. This means that you should try and put more links to your own content thus reducing the likelihood of visitor’s leaving your site to go elsewhere quickly.
• Feature Your Blog’s Best Content: Maybe you’ve had a bad week, you haven’t really been bothered about publishing the latest and greatest content…Guess what? People will come looking for you! If you have a loyal readership, they’ll come to your site to see what’s going on; which is why featuring it is better than not doing so.
• Do It For Your Readers: If they don’t see any new content, they may simply decide to check out some of your previous articles…So be sure to link to them so readers can check them out from time to time - even when you’re posting frantically, they may want to find out about something a bit different.

If your blog can meet the above standards, it is already ahead literally millions of other blogs which do not seem to be able to grasp this concept. By following and implementing the steps mentioned above, you will be able to dedicate a large amount of time to writing more content as opposed to analyzing statistics, visitor data, traffic sources etc…Which you shouldn’t be wasting too much of your time with anyway.

“What Do You Believe Is Most Important About A Blog’s Design?”

Posted on May 27, 2008
Filed Under Site Development |

Tags: affiliate link, Affiliate Marketing, blog design, blog theme, click through rate, ctr, custom-theme, monetization, readership, Social Media, statistics, web design

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