Reader-friendly Blog Design – Checklist.

Plain designs are suitable for powerful content based sites. Look at wikipedia.com, google.com and so on. It’s simple, clean and neat. On the other hand there are a lot of sites with heavy design, flashy colors and luring images and they are successful. Check those cnn.com, cnet.com, t3.com and so on. They used multiple columns, animated headers, multi-tabbed pages, marquee text, lavish and luxurious imagery. So, what should be the ideal design for your blog? Its up to you. Try different designs and get viewer’s responses. Look how Ms. Ileane gets the respons for her recent theme with a post WordPress Monochrome Theme for Ms. Ileane Speaks.

Thus, it is not necessary to throw all the colors and lines off from your site. Some color and designing is certainly pleasant to eye and make catchy at first sight. Nor is it good to put everything and make your blog look cluttered.

Well, Today my topic is not about ‘what is the ideal design and theme for your site?’. I intended to discuss about making a blog reader-friendly. A reader friendly blog is the one that keeps its readers in primary focus. Tries to facilitate and provide all the comforts and luxury to them. In fact the effort and intention of every blogger and site designer is to make her readers happy. A happy reader will return to the blog frequently and contribute to the goal of that blog.

You might say – who won’t wish to make reader-friendly blog? Are there any sites and blogs which are not reader-friendly?

That’s why I said every blogger tries and intends to. But, how many times you have compromised for the sake of search engines? For the sake of Advertisements? Because the technology did not allowed? It might not be possible – an optimum reader-friendliness, but here are some tips you should always care.

There are many but I will talk only a few which are prominent and practicable. Try to recap your experience when you are browsing other’s blogs and websites and try to identify what you disliked.

Did you prefer to read a post with links at every third word? Yes I know, we must manage some revenue to survive and these links are the source. But you can lower the number of links. Believe me it will not reduce your earning. It is more harmful when your readers are distracted than to present reduced number of links on your post. I guess, they can accept 3 to 5 links in a post. One more thing, if you are using infolinks or similar sort of text advertising, turn it off for comments section. Comments are the propriety of the readers, not yours. Read Holly’s post on Ethics In Blogging. If you don’t know how to turn them off please refer to  “How to stop infolinks from appearing in your comments” in Sire’s WassupBlog.

The same problem here. I hate those blogs that displays a full-page ads covering everything and you need to click on CLOSE button to see the real content. What might be more ‘shit’ than that? You loved those ads more than your readers. Have patience. You won’t be millionaire in one night. Love your readers and build your base first. Everybody loves money – no doubt. Read I Write for Those Ugly Ads.

Have you ever experienced that a good content you read a few days ago and need to refer, but the post is nowhere? Don’t make your readers face the same problem. Give them every possible way to reach to the content they look for. Integrate search facility on your site, make RSS feeds, use email notification and SMS alerts. Design a clear and easy navigation structure. If they find it easy, you will be benefited!

Everybody are not equally privileged. Don’t forget that still a lot of readers use slow internet connection. Reduce you site loading time as low as possible. Consider using only most essential gadgets, plugins and lower the number of posts on your home page. I love ekantipur.com and cybersansar.com but I rarely dare to open those sites because they take not less than 1 and half minutes in my PC. Think, if your readers too are feeling same?

In Sire’s WassupBlog! I made a good exercise to find his name! Anyway I won. Let your readers access you as easily as possible. Provide a chat box or guest box or a comment box from where the readers could immediately leave a message to you.

Readers are the assets of any blog and you need to realize it very well. Yesterday I read a post in a blog where the author was quarreling with Rose (see her blog). I did not cared what was going there but I found it really funny. I respect both of them. They are great bloggers in fact – I just wished to bring the incident as an example.

Reply every comments if possible. If not don’t let them feel that they are not cared at all. I feel reluctant to leave comments where author does not response well. Its a definite joy to comment on EvolutionaryDesigns Blog, Ben Lang's Blog and so on due to their great response – they are professional!

Everybody is not as good at English and you should not leave them behind. You might feel why would anyone translate and read your page? I have my own experiences. After I find something what I was searching in Google, happens to be written in German. I don’t just leave the page but use Google’s Translate to read it. I know, the machine translation is not grammatically correct and somewhere it comes completely senseless, but it is sufficient to get the gist and utilize the information. I always wonder if they provided a tool on the site itself to translate, I should not have to go to Google Translate. Why don’t you take the advantage? Every visitor counts and is precious.