Blogging to Fame!

Apart from focusing on content as we discussed earlier, one of the most important things is User Experience on your blog. As soon as a site is called a blog one usually forgets the user centered design requirements. If you keep track of little things it can enhance your reader experience greatly.

You may question how many readers actually bother about where links are placed and what kind of navigation do you have in your blog. What gets noticed is not the presence but the lack of it.

Reduce Sidebar Clutter- Place the widgets, only which are important to your blog and are serving a purpose. Think innovatively while placing ads, don’t overdo them in your sidebar. Latest blog design trends are putting archives and other navigational links at the bottom of the page to unclutter the sidebar( I personally do not like to scroll down as far to browse categories, and find other posts). So it is important to offer your reader a way to navigate through the blog from a place that is as important as sidebar.

Blog Width- Building your blog to a set width and satisfying all your users isn’t the possibility. A number of other solutions exist, with the most popular being the liquid layout. It expands based on the size of the browser window. Ideally, this means that everyone will view the webpage at the largest possible width.

Though the drawback is with very large or very small resolutions, the design can become very haphazard. The length of line will either become too long or all the content will be squashed into a very small space.

The best way to deal with this will be to set the maximum and minimum length of the content.

Links- First of all, links should always look like links. Don’t make it hard for your readers to find out where to click. This is the least thing they will want to put their brains into.

Now to answer should the links be opening in new windows or not- people have different opinions about it. To do or not to do depends your individual thinking.

The right view-

Users browsing your content will right click and make the link open in a new tab(as I like it) or a new window. Forcing multiple windows won’t make your blog sticky. Rather try to get people back to your blog by making the content more engaging and hard to live without.

The Left View-

Keeping Blog readers on your page and not loosing them to an external link can be one of them. Sometimes its hard for readers to remember how they got to particular webpage, and have to click the BACK button a zillion times to find the navigational source, they would just ignore and move ahead.

It is also distracting for your reader to navigate away in the middle of the article.

The Libran view(My view)-

As a browser I find it too hard to manage a hundred windows all at one time when I am trying to do a five hundred things at one time. So I prefer links opening in tabs.

As a blogger I would suggest to go an extra mile to make it easier for your readers by providing links to PDF files and large images to open in different window. Also if you have some external links in the middle of the article let it open in a new window.

Rest can be left on users choice of opening the links as per their requirement.

I would love to listen to your point here.

Enjoy Blogging,

Divya

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Complying with the trend has been the most efficient way of a business to survive. Since Web2.0 has arrived blogs have been ruling, but as we have discussed it earlier, the ampleness of them have made it even more difficult for bloggers to make a mark on the industry. So here is Blogging to Fame with another series about Blog Design...

Content is supreme but apart from the content and the amount of information you put in, you need to make it more accessible and consumable. Like they say, Food that Looks and Smells better, Tastes better. Anyways the look and the smell also increase the appetite! What Say you Foodies?

Focus on Content-

Lets get the First thing First. Content is Supreme. However creatively you design your blog the main point of blogging and its essence lies in the content it holds. The food Should always taste Good, whatever way it is dressed.

A blog’s design should allow your user to focus on it and make sure not to divert his attention. Huge headers that take the whole space above the fold can be one reason for it. Next can be using lots of graphics and banner ads.

Place links to most popular articles or recent entries where readers would first see when they visit your blog. This makes the rest of your blog more accessible and the older content will eventually get consumed.

Deck them up…

This for all the users who are still using pre-made themes by Blogging Platforms and other designers. If you are a beginner you should concentrate on the content, but the next step is always the presentation. Using pre-defined themes makes you look the same as everybody else’s on Blogger and Wordpress.

Pre-defined themes are free, and easily available on net, but remember the good ones get more frequently used. You can get unique themes at a price as low as $300 and as high as $6000.

If you cannot spend that amount, here is a tip-

To make a non-unique theme to a unique one get your favorite pre-defined theme and modify it to an extent that it does not resemble the original anymore. With a little knowledge of HTML it would be really easy to tweak changes. Change the Color combination, and the picture used in the header. You can also change the placement of elements and graphics. Do it till you are satisfied...

Catch Ya with more Soon...
Divya

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