It should be a simple idea. People are enticed by appealing things. But some bloggers seem to dismiss that. They reason that the content of their blog is more essential than the layout. Well, they’re incorrect. The most enlightening blog in the world will not be effective if it is incomprehensible. Here are five reasons to take a second look at your blog.
1. Readability – To begin with, no one will stay ten seconds on your blog if they can’t read it. Is the text more or less the same colour as the background? Do ads muddle up, cover up, break up, or drift over your posts? You have a four second window of opportunity to grab a reader and pull them in. You’ll miss it if your site looks like it was planned by a first grader.
2. Lure– This goes right along with readability. Does your site look agreeable? No, don’t tell me who’s arranged it, just look at it. Is it appealing? Do the colours run together? Is the scheme set up in an eye-catching way? Do the photographs have borders? Are they the identical size? Do you have photographs? Are you uninterested just looking at the mass of words sitting on your screen? Add some glamor! Spice it up. Don’t go overboard, but colour and pictures are a great addition.
3. Accessibility– Can readers navigate on your site? Make sure you use all the widgets you need to make it easy to traverse your blog. You don’t want readers getting provoked and exiting, so make sure your blog is intuitive and doesn’t take a long time to figure out.
4. Flow – Speaking of the idea of ease of use; does your site flow? Does it obviously progress from one post to another, or is it a jerky mess? Let the reader’s eye move organically, and avoid cutting up your site into little lumps of distraction. The less preoccupied readers are, the more they’ll read.
5. Clarity – Okay, at first this appears almost the same as number one, but it’s not. Past just the look of the text- the colour mixture can a reader comprehend what you’re saying? Is your grammar precise? Are you writing in correct English? Do you get your point across without beating around the bush or using words that necessitate a dictionary? Remember, most readers have a reading level of approximately fifth grade. So unless your audience is only the well-educated, keep it unpretentious.
It really isn’t that difficult. Think about what you seek in a site. What are you partial to and what do you hate? Go from there. Clarity and flow are key. Just keep it simple and there shouldn’t be a problem. And remember not to devote so much time to the looks that you forget to write!
Great ideas Nanny. Always good to do a little self-evaluation on your blog from time to time!
@larryphoto
Unfortunately, most bloggers lack the ability (due to the lack of interest) to shape their theme according to their preferences. Most people kinda settle with what they’ve got.
Always nice to see a blog practicing what they preach. Nice layout and readability. Good read.
Usually I do not learn article on blogs, however I would like to say that this write-up very forced me to try and do it! Your writing taste has been surprised me. Thank you, very nice article.
Thank you Nanny- I do need to manage flow better. Years of writing 5,000 word opinion for lawschool means I do use white space well but I am not comfortable with bold or having single sentence paragraphs.
I do need to get over this.
Nice list! It think the most important is the readability and the content itself. Some bloggers are not aware that most readers depends on what they see so it’s important to give attention to details. Your list is a great guide! Thanks!
Hi Nanny
Thanks for the tips 🙂 i think this can benefit each of us. Love to read more posts like this.
Well said, the language of the post and even its layout matter most as if you are blogging for category where end users are not that educated enough to understand tricky words than you must try to stick to lucid way of presenting the things. Will get more visitors in terms of regular follower of your blog.
Interesting post here with nice ideas. I think the readability aspect of blogs is essential. I think as we are typing we think some things make more sense then it actually does. It is usualy a good idea to get someone else to read it through aswell for greater input.
I do agree that you need to examine your blog every now and then for you would have some ideas on what are the things that you need to improve. But still the best part that should be focus on is still the write ups that you produce wherein readers will be well informed and enlightened on the things that you write.
This is a great tips which many readers can adopt and apply in their own online businesses. we all know that once we have created our own blog we must proof read it first or many times before sharing it in the internet, for us to know if it is quite attractive which many readers will visit.
Interesting post all these tips are really helps a lot for every blog owner. I like Readability and Clarity more. Thanks for sharing.
Nice read to be followed for bloggers.Reader should have a clear cut message regarding the topic of the post.
Yeah ! you are correct Nanny. But usually i leave my blog post to third person to check for readability and spell check. They used to find more things than me.
Really very true… all the five are essential in a blog…
If your blog contains fresh and updated information then most of readers spend their more time on your blog and use very formal language and grammatically correct language.
If your blog have fresh content and updated content then readers must spend their much time on your blog and you can also add an image related to your blog.
You offered us so many interesting ideas and thoughts, that I have to think a little bit about this stuff.
Flow is something very important that not a lot of people think about. You can have a great design and great content, but how does it flow? If it’s not immediately apparent where your eyes are supposed to go, something needs fixed.
Hi Nanny ,
Thanks for the nice post ..We should keep looking into our blog and make it better day by day
I like reading and I like going to blogs to read, get inspired and learn. So for me readability of the text is very important. I stay longer if I can read better.
You have a good point here. I have totally redesigned my website and I see an increase in both traffic and average time on site. It’s too bad that many people don’t realize the fact that we have our sites for our readers, and not for an ideal person who comes on our site just to click an ad.
Yes, this is a sound advice which many visitors can follow and use in their own on the internet sites. we all know that once we have designed our own site we must go through it first or many periods before giving it on the internet. Thanks for great information..
Thank you for your article. Indeed it’s good to take a look at your blog from time to time. But there is also another thing I’d like to add on top of what you already said. It would be great if you could try reading your blog like a person that doesn’t know you wrote it. This will make you realize if the content you write is helpful or not. Or if it has any kind of problems.
Cheers!
Glad you included clarity on the list; I’m not sure what a lot of blogs are trying to get at, and the titles only confuse the situation more. Good Post!
Yeah I agree with you! think as we are typing we think some things make more sense then it actually does.Anyway, thanks for this great information. 🙂
You nailed it, Nancy. Content is the core of a blog but the layout is the “physical body” that carries the core/heart; and the layout has to be strong enough to present the content of a blog.
Blogs are built for delivering content written by expert so readability and accessibility are main concern of web designer. Readability ensures that font type, color,size and way text displayed provide simplicity to read the content where accessibility make sure that all the written content is accessible from different part of blog with creative linking.
I’m doing excellent backlinking according to recent Google Penguin Update for organic Google Search Ranking.
Nanny, What can i say that already has not been said. I would shot over the moon If I could spice up my blog
Fantastic post Nanny, i really acquired lot of useful and beneficial points through that post and looking for more valuable posts like this one in future also. your every point delivers something new to stress customers to come to your blog again and again. great post.
We made the buttons on the screen look so good you’ll want to lick them.
~ Steve Jobs
You’re creating great content to attract an audience. A loyal audience that comes to know, like and trust you.
But what if you never get the attention of that audience in the first place?
What if your blog visitors take one look at your well-written words and move right along because your page looks bland, boring, and amateurish?
You lose them at hello. Your words never had a chance to take root.
Focus on your blogs all the time and see what needs to be change for visitors to come. If you’ve carefully researched your target market as outlined in step one, you may already have an idea of what colors will work for them.
To start, I recommend you choose two main colors to represent your brand.
For you, two colors are simplest to work with — you’ll have a short list to choose from every time you need to make a color choice.
For your audience, two predominant colors will make it easier to recognize and remember your brand.
How can you pick just two colors from the millions available?
Start by looking at the consumer goods your target market already buys. What colors already appeal to them?
You don’t need to walk around your local shopping mall with a swatch book, but keep your eyes open to color combinations that sell to your particular market. Take inspiration from what’s already working.
As wonderful as your carefully-crafted words may be, they’ll sit there limp and lonely on the page if you don’t pair them up with a compelling image.
A great image is like the cover of a dinner party invitation.
It gives people an easy “in” to start engaging with your writing. Images are processed quickly, and if you’ve picked one that’s attractive and creates just a little bit of curiosity, it will draw readers into your headline and the first paragraph of your post.
That is way so true! Yes, I have seen blogs that have great content but they fail to make the layout of the blog appealing, hence, visitors don’t exactly stay on and read what other great stuff the blog offers.
All bloggers must read this!
I think that a simple and attractive design works best on a blog. I don’t want to distract my readers too much with tons of ads and graphics. I want them to read my content. I also try to make sure my font is a good size and easy to read.
Yes, that’s true! You need to have your article nicely written so that more readers will read it. Have interesting stories as well.
These are great pointers.
It doesn’t matter how great the content is if nobody is going to stay around to read it.
All 5 of these are important when writing a blog!
Nice post Nanny, along with the above points, I also prefer to read some witty phrases..that just make the blog post all the more loving and enjoying too.. 🙂
Thanks for sharing 🙂
Very good points… You have a great blog, and have provided much valuable information for free. Thank you. I need to follow your points and go fix my blog now!
It is very important that you take a second look at your blog to make sure that you efficiently sent the message that you want to tell your visitors or readers.
Hey Nanny,
This of the best posts, I have ever seen on blogging. I really like your point 4 “Flow”. I see in the most of blogs, readers do n’t feel like going from one blog to other. The blog with good flow in the content will always have good engagement from readers.
This is the most informative post that I have read so far. Its true that content is the king of a blog but until the layout of the blog is not good, it won’t be able to catch the attention of any people. But I find your blog to be very visitor friendly 😀 That’s why I have bookmarked it 🙂
i always focused on content and design of blog.never focused on things you mentioned
When I started blogging I never gave enough importance of the look but gradually with experience I came to know how important role it plays for the users.
The more you do to improve your page rank, the higher your page rank and the more visitors you will attract.
I agree with you Nanny, on adding some pictures to the text, for spice….of course there is the question of how many to put? For me, small pictures are sufficient and not too much…too much photos can distract the reader from reading. BTW, I like your name…we were just watching “The Nanny” awhile ago. We watched all the seasons already like a year ago but we found it so funny that we are starting with Season 1 again.
Thats awesome, totally awesome I really need to look at my site again and think right, then this needs changing, this needs changing, this needs changing, i need to run though it and tick off the boxes, the best thing to do is make a list of things that need to be done and then run though the list 1 by 1 and then tick them off, once you have ticked the boxes off of the list of things that need to be done on your blog then that means you will have a better blog.
The reason bloggers blog is to give or share information and the best way for this information to be used by the readers is to make sure that it is written simply and easy to understand. it’s true what you mentioned, the reading level of the readers must be taken into consideration.
It’s best to go with the belief that there’s always room for improvement. After all, the internet is constantly changing from each trend and event. Somewhere along the line you have to make sure that your blog is sailing in the right direction.
I have posted many blogs but never had a second go through because I had no idea about these tips but my future blogs will be double checked before they are posted.
I think appearance of your blog is also an important factor.Maybe it is the six reason.
I am in this field but i never use these methods which you mention on your post. It is really very helpful to us. But i have a question that are you sure this five things are enough to make a perfect of our blog?
If you want that people will give second look to your blog then your blog must be written in such a way the people would comfortably read it. The color of the background must be wisely selected. Do not design the site as such it reflects it is set by first grader.
Thank you for the wonderful list – I would add creative design to it – because sites designed unique or at least with customized design look more appealing. Plus, if its a blog you should think about interaction with your readers – comment, sign up/forum, etc.
I agree. Write what you know and don’t be afraid to be an expert on something you’re not.