Twenty Usability Tips for Your Blog — Condensed from Dozens of Bloggers’ Experiences
April 9th, 2007 | Posted in blog 271 Comments »
I’ve been doing research on what distinguishes good blogs from poor ones, especially by reading “lessons learned” posts by bloggers. I’ve come up with 20 principles I think are worthwhile. Let me know which ones you agree or disagree with.
1. Pick a topic for your blog.
Pick a general topic you are passionate about, and stick with that focus as you post. Near the title of your blog, identify your blog’s focus so new visitors can know immediately whether your blog aligns with their interests. In the following image, the blog identifies its theme in the tagline and provides an explanation of the topic on the home page. Paradoxically, having a specific focus actually gives you more to write about. Like a novel, your blog takes on direction and purpose.
2. Encourage comments.
Allow comments, and respond to comments. Blogs are dialogues, not monologues. If you turn commenting off, you lose out on the Web 2.0 aspects of your blog. Comments enrich your thoughts and take you to a higher level of analysis. You benefit from the additions, corrections, tips, and other feedback from readers. To encourage comments, don’t require sign in. Activate Akismet and this math plugin to avoid spam. Add the Subscribe to Comments plugin so users can be aware of follow-up comments. When people comment, respond to their comments, and keep the dialogue going because this is what Web 2.0 is all about: connecting users to each other and sharing information.
3. Make it easy to subscribe.
Make it easy to subscribe to your feed by placing an orange RSS button in a highly visible location. Route your feed through Feedburner so you can keep track of your subscribers. You can also offer an e-mail subscription using FeedBurner. In the example below, subscription information is prominently displayed in the upper-right corner.
4. Include an About page.
Include an about page to let people know more about you. Are you a technical writer based in Seoul, a developer working at Microsoft, a Russian open-source business mogul? Your blog reveals your personal views, so introduce yourself to your readers. Don’t blog anonymously. You can include a photo in your About page — some think it makes you more real to your readers. Include some basic facts, such as where you live, your job title, your interests, and other biographical information. You may want to omit the company you work for, if content on your blog inappropriately reveals company information.
5. Present your ideas visually.
In this culture of scanning and clicking, long blocks of text aren’t read. Break up your text with visuals—graphs, charts, photos, blockquotes, and videos. Annotate the images to reinforce your meaning. Creating Passionate Users always reinforces its message with visuals. If you get photos from other blogs or from Flickr, include a link back to the source. Most popular blogs are visually rich.
6. Keep posts short and to the point.
Keep the text in bite-sized chunks that readers can quickly consume — brevity forces you to get the point quickly. A good post can be 1-2 paragraphs long. Even if your posts are lengthy (like this one), remove all filler and communicate your message concisely. You can also chunk up long posts into several small posts, or use subheadings.
7. Use subheadings for long posts.
If you do post long, use subheadings to break up the text. Copyblogger is a great example to follow. Also use the “Read more” tag so users can scan down the front page without having to scroll eternally. In the example below, Copyblogger breaks up his lists with subheadings and keeps his paragraphs short.
8. Link abundantly.
Links increase readership and let others know you’re writing about them. Others can see incoming links in their blogs. Links also enable trackbacks and pingbacks, allowing your content to appear in the comments section of other posts. Blogs are collaborative, linked conversations. The example below shows a trackback. I linked to another blog in my post, and that link appears as an excerpt in the comments section of the original post. The Kramer plugin is helpful for automating trackbacks, and you can use it to show inbound links in the sidebar of your blog. Links also boost your Google rankings, converting your blog into a powerful search engine optimization tool.
9. Make headlines descriptive.
Avoid vagueness and ambiguity in headlines. Readers scan down a list of titles in a feed, so the article title is telling of whether they’ll read the post. With millions of blogs and new content daily, readers have to skim, scan, and jump around just to keep up. Make it easy by clearly describing your post’s content in the headlines. Copyblogger has some excellent advice for crafting headlines. You can also entice readers with some copywriting techniques, such as asking interesting questions, making lists, stating paradoxes or contradictions, or just being exuberant.
10. Archive by topic.
Archive your posts by topic rather than date. (Date archives may be appropriate for blogs that are personal journals only, rather than topic-driven blogs. For topic-driven blogs, date archives mean little to readers.) About a dozen categories is a good number. You may not know all your categories until you’ve been blogging a while. Along with the archives, include a search feature.
11. Include a list of related posts beneath each post.
Many users find your site by searching for specific information. When readers find your post, why not point them to other posts on your site with similar information? Doing so can increase the page views per reader. In WordPress, you can automatically create a Related Posts section based on matching keywords with the Related Entries plugin. If you want more control (with more effort), use Darren’s Related Posts plugin. You type keywords in the Custom Fields section of a post, and posts that match the keywords are connected as related.
12. Allow users to contact you offline.
Readers may want to contact you offline with a question or comment — perhaps to propose a book deal or to extend an invitation to speak at a conference. You will be perceived as an expert on your topic (the go-to-guy for that topic), and the user’s question may not be related to the comments section of your latest posts. If you make your contact info readily apparent, users can reach you. You can use a contact form plugin (Contact III) or simply make your email address available. In the image below, an editor from Wiley posts — with embarrassment — an invitation for a book deal within the comments.
13. Present your real viewpoint.
“Be yourself and speak your mind,” John Chow says. Readers enjoy the personal aspects of a blog. If you never voice your opinion, your blog loses appeal. You don’t have to reveal your personal life, but a glimpse here and there is appropriate and provides human appeal. In the following screen, the writer expresses her frustration with health insurance limitations. You can rant and still keep it professional (as she does).
14. Write for your future employer.
A blog can be a dangerous tool, and you should know that your future employer, and possibly your current employer, will read it. Avoid posting anything confidential, gossipy, overly-emotional, rude, company-related, or otherwise self-damaging and unprofessional. A blog can be both an asset and liability depending on the information you post. There are at least a dozen stories of employees fired for blogging. Respect your company’s information restrictions, and don’t jeopardize future employment opportunities.
15. Include a Top Posts section.
You can use the WP-PostViews plugin plugin to automate a Most Viewed posts section, or you can create your own list of classic posts. Once your classic posts leave the home page, they’re often buried in your site. Like displaying trophies on a mantle, showcasing your classic posts allows more readers to find and enjoy them.
16. Provide an index.
Much of your site’s traffic comes from search engines. And many readers are first-timers on your site. Providing an index readers can quickly scan (such as with this site map index plugin) is an excellent way to let users skim your entire post collection. An index may increase the page views per visitor. It also shows you just what you’ve written. It’s like a Table of Contents for your site.
17. Get your own URL and match it to your blog’s title.
If your blog title doesn’t match the URL, it will be harder for users to remember the location of your site. It pays to use your own URL. Even if you just purchase a domain and point your hosted WordPress.com blog to it, it looks more professional. Readers don’t always use RSS to read your blog’s content.
18. Include a Recent Posts section in your sidebar.
A recent posts section in your sidebar provides an at-a-glance index for your latest posts. Especially if you write long posts, the recent posts section allows readers to see what you’ve been up to without scrolling down a lengthy page.
19. Reward commenters for commenting.
If you add the Show Top Commenters plugin, you can show the people who most frequently comment on your blog. This is a simple way to create your own community of readers with similar interests. You should read their blogs and comment on them as well. In this way your blog turns into more than just a one-person show: it becomes a virtual community.
20. Post often.
Posting regularly to your blog, such as daily, every few days, or every week, will change your experience of blogging. It will help you stay engaged with your topic. It will build a greater community of readers, who will post more comments. More comments will make blogging more rewarding and fun, not to mention more content rich for your site — leading to more page views from search engines.
However, if you have nothing to say, don’t blog fluff. That annoys readers even more than not posting and you will lose readers. But if you stay engaged with your topic — reading articles, books, other blogs; listening to podcasts and other recordings; attending events and seminars; and reflecting on the work you’re engaged in — you will have plenty to say each day. Whether you can carve out the time is another matter. The Technorati graph below shows that the most popular bloggers post about twice a day; the least popular post a dozen times a month.
Resources
- Weblog Usability: The Top 10 Design Mistakes, by Jacob Neilsen
- Five Principles to Design By, by Joshua Porter
- 9 Lessons for Would Be Bloggers, by Joshua Porter
- 10 Blogging Mistakes to Avoid, by John Chow
- How to Make a Great First Impression with Your Blog, by Mitchell Harper
- Blogging Tips and Mistakes to Avoid, by Joe Lewis.
- 10 Blogging Mistakes I’ve Made, by Webomatica
- Do You Make These Mistakes with Your Blog, by Brian Clark
- The 5 Immutable Laws of Persuasive Blogging, by Brian Clark
- 10 Effective Ways to Get More Subscribers, by Brian Clark
- 18 Lessons I’ve Learned About Blogging, by Darren Rowse
- Who the Hell Are You? by Lorelle VanFossen
- The Top 10 Clues That You Are An Amateur Blogger, by Lorelle VanFossen
- The Most Powerful Blogging Technique Ever, by Brian Clark
- Top 10 blog mistakes? – maybe, by Kay Smoljak
- Common Blog Mistakes and Users Can’t Distinguish Blogs, by Rok Hrastnik
- 10 Principles of Highly Effective Blogging, by Darren McLaughlin
- 10 Ways to Make Your Blog More Appealing, by Tom Johnson
- How to Start a Blog, by Phil Windley
- The 120 Day Wonder: How to Evangelize a Blog, by Guy Kawasaki
- Why Blog Post Frequency Does Not Matter Anymore, by Eric Kintz
- The noisy tragegy of the blog commons, by Seth Godin
- The First 100 Days: Observations of Nouveau Blogger, by Guy Kawasaki
- 10 Simple Tips for Better Blogging, by Angsuman Chakraborty
- The first 7 days of blogging, by Neil Patel
- 10 Blogging Mistakes to Avoid, by Moey
- Why Do Blogs Fail? by Partha Battacharya
- Of Blogs and Novels, by Beth Long
- Top 10 Blog Writing Tips, by Denise Wakeman
I’m interested to hear your thoughts. Do you agree or disagree with any points in particular? Did I miss something major?
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Tom,
I think your tip #2 (encourage comments) is a great tip. Your first resource on the post is also a great resource. I happened upon Jacob Nielsen’s research that stated that 95% of a blog audience never comments. I created ClickComments as way to get that 95% engaged with blogs (which makes them stickier). Our hope is that those 95% will start getting accustomed to commenting and when they want to express more they will leave traditional text comments.
Please check out our service and tell us what you think.
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Hans, your clickcomments plugin seems interesting. I’ll give it a try — just added it. Thanks for the tip.
Cool, thanks for your tips!
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a link to help you to maintain your blog updated http://www.bligter.com
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If you have a blog, I would strongly suggest you review and comment on the list.
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http://www.blogging-resources.com
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Preved dyatlam!
Thanks Sparky. You rock. I have set up a blog (as you recommended) and am working through a couple issues (cant get email functions to work yet, and which template to use) but your info has been very helpfull.
You are da man’. Hope all is well in Utah!
Andrew, I’m so glad to see you’ve joined the blogosphere. So where’s your blog? As for themes, I think Studio Press looks like a good theme.
Yes, all is well in Utah. I love it here, but of course I miss my family and would like to see baby Hannah.
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I saved your post when I was just getting started with my blog last November, and reading everything I could find. I just revisited it, and have to thank you. This post really reinforced to me that I’m focusing on the right things. My blog certainly has room for improvement, but the tips you offer are the guidelines I’m trying to live by.
One thing I have been struggling with for a couple of months is trying to find a way to add popular posts to my sidebar. The system I’m using (Point 2 real estate websites) simply doesn’t offer that feature. For some reason, when I read this post again a lightbulb just went off. I just created a new tag category and put a * in front of it so it would be the first Tag in the list (* Popular Posts). Then I went back and added this tag to every post that has more than 50 views excluding my monthly market reports. I’ll start including a link to the Popular posts with my related posts at the end of each article, and it should serve my goal of keeping these posts from getting lost in the archives. I can’t wait to change my minimum requirement to 100+ views instead of 50 views.
Thanks for the inspiration!
Karen, I’m glad you found something useful on my blog. I checked out your site. It seems you’ve gotten off the ground and are moving forward quickly. Looks great. Re the popular posts, I use a plugin from Alex King called Popularity Contest that automatically generates a list of the top 10. With some of the posts, I honestly don’t understand why they’re so popular. But this top 10 is always a feature I look for on a blog. Your technique seems like it would work, but it creates more work for you. Thanks for the note.
Tom,
Thanks for the reinforcement. I wish I could use plugins, but my blog’s system (CMS?) doesn’t allow it. I can’t add anything that has java, and can’t do anything with changing the layout of the sidebar. There is another template I can use that allows some custimization, but there are other downfalls.
I konw that the blog isn’t as flexible as if I went with WordPress or Typepad, but since my blog is an integrated part of my website (which I really need for my MLS home search and featured listings), every post is increasing the SEO on my website along with my blog. It’s the best solution I’ve come up with as an agent whose job is really to sell houses, and this website stuff is just a means to an end.
My target audience is also not sophisticated blog readers, so they aren’t likely to notice the differences between my blog and the ones that are really spiffy.
I’m focusing on content, and figure that is the most important thing to have it be an effective business tool.
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