Now that you’ve created a blog, it’s important to ensure that it is user friendly for your readers. An easy to navigate site will increase the likelihood of retaining readers. Some of these tips may seem obvious, but unfortunately, I have encountered many blogs and websites that were not user friendly. I couldn’t tell you which ones for certain because I haven’t returned to them.
4 Important User Friendly Areas of Any Blog
1 – Feed Subscription
The number one thing you want to have in order to retain readers is have an easy to locate RSS icon near the top of your blog. When someone drops by and is interested in your content, they need to be able to easily and quickly subscribe. If they have to search for a way to subscribe, they aren’t likely to stick around.
I would further suggest offering both an email and a RSS reader subscription as options.
2 – Communication
Readers love interaction with the authors of the blogs they read. Make it easy for them to reach out to you with questions and concerns. You can do this by creating a contact form on your site or posting your email address in an easy to find location near the top of your blog. I would suggest a form to help prevent spam. I know some people feel that readers can just leave comments. However, there are some things that are better to be shared privately and directly. Or, if your comments aren’t working – how will you know?
Speaking of comments, make it easy for readers to comment. Requiring logins and captcha can deter readers. If there are too many extra steps they may be reluctant to leave comments, thus diminishing discussion participation.
3 – Social Media
Your readers love you so much that they want to follow you on and off your blog. Display your follow icons or links in an easy to spot location. I would also suggest grouping them together. If your readers have to go on a scavenger hunt it may discourage and frustrate them.
4 – Search and Archives
Provide a search box for your content. They are most often placed near the top of the site, but at the very bottom can work as well, especially if it is located near your archive links. Categorize and/or tag your posts so readers can search through your content. Accessible archives are important as well. New readers may want to go through your past content or a loyal reader may want to refer to (or re-read) an old post. Archives can be on the sidebar or at the bottom of the page.
Now that you have the basics for a user friendly layout with easy to locate and use feed subscriptions, contact, and social media, it’s time to test your site.
Testing, Testing!
It’s important to test your site upon set up, after any design or layout changes, and periodically throughout your blogging career. Sometimes readers will alert blog authors to issues, but not always. It’s sort of like the bystander theory, each reader figures someone else will alert you to the issue.
Here’s how I test my blog:
- Subscribe via RSS – Easy to spot? How many actions are required to complete the process? How do posts and pictures look in a reader?
- Subscribe via Email – How does it look? When does it get delivered?
- Fill out the Contact Form – How long does it take to be delivered to your inbox? Does it go to spam? What does the subject line say?
- Leave comments – Respond to someone else or add a follow up note to a post. How many actions did it take to leave the comment? (This is very important. I’ve known some bloggers that had no idea they had captcha turned on and would talk about disliking it on other sites.)
- Click your links – Do they work? Do they go to your Twitter, Facebook, etc.?
Want another opinion? Ask a friend to check out your site, preferably someone who’s never seen it, and observe how easy it is for them to navigate throughout your site.
I hope you find these tips helpful. I follow these guidelines when setting up my own blog. I try to view it through the eyes of a reader, since I know what I prefer when visiting another site.
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Image credit: RSS Icon—
About this guest post blogger: Darcy is a part-time work-at-home mother of one entertaining baby girl. She’s been blogging on and off for several years. While the genre and topics may change, her passion has not. Her current passion is writing about parenting, breastfeeding, cloth diapering, and family-friendly products at Tales From the Nursery.
I’m, like, really not computer literate. Therefore…I don’t know what the heck an RSS Feed is! Would someone please explain what that is?? Thanks.
I so agree with you about captcha.
sorry, i just dont have time for that – I leave those blogs and never come back
Shan – RSS feed is a way to subscribe to a blog. Either by having new posts delivered to your inbox via email or through a “reader” like Google Reader. The reader will update with new posts from all the blogs you subscribe to, making it easy to stay up-to-date without having to remember to visit each one every day!
Real time saver! 🙂
I agree about the captcha. could you check my blog and see if it’s ok? lol i’m making changes to it now, but you can check it before I do those things.
@M’s Mama – checked and tweeted ya.
If anyone else would like feedback – leave a comment!
Love that you mention adding a search box. So often I go looking for something someone’s mentioned before but have no way of finding it! very frustrating.
I totally agree about the captcha and word verification for commenting – especially on review/giveaway blogs. If you are really concerned about comment content, turn off the captcha and turn on comment moderation – that way you see all of the comments before they go live!
My readers requested I take captcha off- so I did. They also didn’t want moderation. There have been no issues.
Good tips! Perfect for new bloggers and some great reminders for those who have been blogging for a while.
Great tips! Testing is definitely important! I just moved to wordpress and it seems like the theme I am using doesn’t always like to work with IE. Since I never use IE, I never, ever checked the posts. That is until someone told me, “hey – when I look at your blog in IE, all I see is HTML code!”. YIKES! So now I always double check my posts!
Great list! I keep meaning to add archives. I will rush it to the top of my to-do list!
Just thought i would comment and say neat design, did you code it yourself? Looks great.
These are great tips! I just recently added a contact form, but I never tested it myself. Now I will go do that. I also need to add a search form near my archives. 🙂 Thanks for the ideas!