Every blog should provide their visitors with the most pleasant experience. Content is the most important part of a blog, as this is where visitors are coming for. Without this content a blog will never become a success. How this content is displayed and how easy it is to navigate that blog plays a serious part at keeping visitors. A user-friendly theme in combination with great content will give your readers trust and interest, which will most likely bring them back for more.

As mentioned, a blog design should be designed for its users. You could ask for the user’s needs before starting the developing process, to find out what they are looking for in your blog. You’ll come out better: User-friendly and at the same time, it is a pleasure for the eye.

This article describes what users are looking for and how you can improve your design and more important your blog (and your visitor base).

1. Accessibility

Important part. Not all visitors use the same device, computer, browser, and/or settings. Maybe, your weblog is not visualized the way you or your designer wanted to. Some users might have disabled images or JavaScript, some might have a 800×600 resolution. You should prepare for this, make sure they can read the content and view the site as good as possible. Remember, you are publishing for all users and it should be your goal to let everyone read your content. Read more accessibility tips.

2. Organize your page

When a user lets his eyes go over a page, he should see the important things first. Users are looking for content. Make sure they see content. The most blog readers start looking for the navigation, the RSS feed link or button, your categories or a search form. To make your weblog as organized and user-friendly as possible, make sure those items are in sight.

3. Information

Your visitors do visit your weblog for a reason. This reason can vary: one weblog has some great articles on webdesign, others on music and another on Prison Break. Your task is to place all the content you feel your visitors need right in front of their eyes. They’ll find the content they need fast and they are satisfied. Again, content is the most important part of a blog, so make sure you have it.

4. Advertisements

Watch out for advertisements. It is nice to make some money of your blog, but make sure you don’t cram your content full of advertisements. Users aren’t coming for the ads, they are coming for your content. If you want people to advertise, organize the ads and spread them over your whole page. In my opinion, you should leave the content as readable as possible. A weblog (ea. my weblog) lives from its visitors and if you press to many advertisements to their chest they might leave and never come back.

5. Cluttering

Users scan a page, but they also scan an article for useful information. A proper use of bold texts, images and headings will separate the article in information blocks and makes sure the readers pay attention to the most important information and/or keywords of the article.

Some smaller points

6. Navigation – Users want to move around a weblog the way they like. They need info, so make sure you ordered your content under the right navigation items to let your users find information fast.
7. Loading time – Not everyone is on a very fast cable connection. Optimize your design to load fast with every connection. Users navigate away when it takes to long.
8. Sitemap – A sitemap is especially with larger blogs, a must-have. With one click, your visitor can view all information on your blog. This is seach engine friendly.
9. Page title – Use a page title which describes the content the page is loaded with. An example: “How can you make your blog user-friendly – Divitodesign.com”. There’s a smart plugin available to do this for you.

Interested in more?

I hope you enjoyed this post and learned something. You could subscribe to my RSS reader and read articles as soon as I post them!