Here’s an unbeatable formula: Great Content + Fabulously Reader-Friendly Site Design = Repeat Visitors (Potential For Loyal Customers and Great Revenue).
Is there any blogger out there that’ll disagree with the above formula? I don’t think so. The simpler your blog design, the better the user experience. Get those readers coming back to you time and again – with a reader-friendly site design.
1. Start With A Great Blog Theme
Readers don’t like seeing everything everywhere; this makes it tough for them to focus on content. So study a few of the top blogs and decide exactly where to place your header, content body, sidebars and navigation menu. Keep your theme professional.
2. Get A Usability Review Done
Get some people to check out your blog and offer you qualitative feedback. You can use your friends for this, or even launch a usability survey using a feedback form and a freebie eBook as a gift.
3. Link Your Post Titles To Your Home Page
By making your post titles clickable, you will make it easy for people to visit your blog home page. While this increases reader-friendliness, it also ensures better usability and SEO for your blog. Also, use the H1 tag to define your post titles. This will ensure that your blog gets a better search engine placement and SEO ranking.
4. Test Your Site On Multiple Browsers
Your blog may not appear or work the same on all browsers. Make it a point to test it on Chrome, Firefox, IE and a few other top browsers every time you make a code change.
5. Install A Sitemap
A sitemap helps people locate the pages they want quickly and easily. It also helps you remove some of your clutter, allowing easy and pleasant browsing.
6. Please Lay Off The Reverse Text
Reverse text strains the eye; even if people with regular eyesight manage ok, those with sight-disabilities can actually get a bad headache looking at reverse text. Try black text on white background.
7. Make Those Fonts Reader-Friendly
Hard to read fonts and small fonts are detrimental to reader friendliness. Stick to eminently readable fonts such as Georgia, Times New Roman and Arial.
8. Use Neutral Colors
Blinding colors are okay for distant neon signs; even then, they look tawdry. Spare your blog such cheapness. Extra bright colors cause blind spots to appear in front of a reader’s vision, causing severe discomfort. Use neutral, easy to view colors such as greens, blues and pastels. Use bright colors only as accents.
9.Work Those Navigation Menus
Your navigation menu system must make it easy for readers and PR people to find your pages and information categories. This is a very crucial part of any readable blog. Make sure that pages such as disclosure, contact information and affiliations are easy to access as well.
10. Update Template Icons
If you still have those sidebar icons that came with your blog’s initial template, get rid of them. They are common images that come out-of-the-box and you’ll find them on many templates out there. Either make your own images or use combinations of white space with attractive colored borders for a clean template.
11. Always Include TITLE And ALT Attributes For Your Home Page
In the attributes, your blog name should come last; put your descriptors there first. Do this for both your post titles and blog title. This helps users locate specific information based on keywords, and not your search for your blog’s name. This makes great SEO sense as well. Alternatively, use a custom logo instead of words in your title.
Do Check: SEO Essentials for Web Designers
12. Don’t Overcrowd Your Pages
If your page has way too many elements in it, readers won’t know what to focus on. Space things out and arrange them in an orderly, uncluttered fashion. Space is a good thing in web design. Use paragraph breaks and use videos and images to break up the text.
13. Install An Internal Search Box
A large website with many pages can be daunting; sometimes good content gets looked over because readers get intimidated by the variety on offer. Why not make it easy for readers to find specific posts and other info they’re looking for?
14. Keep Your sidebars uncluttered
Use your sidebars only for the essentials, including your advertising. Don’t place a button for each of your affiliations into your sidebar. Readers will get distracted and too much action on the sidebar slows down your site load time. Put them on a separate page and enable linking from your navigation menu.
15. Figure Out Where To Place Prominent Information
If there’s important information that you want the users to see, place it prominently. Some bloggers provide attractive coupon deals, freebie offers and so on; however, they make them so hard to find, it just defeats the purpose.
Dean writes for Invesp – a company that specializes in offering landing page and conversion rate optimization services and helping businesses in enhancing the overall experience of their visitors.
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