Improve Usability of Blogs

Improve Usability of Blogs

One of our primary goals as designers is to constantly improve the usability of our websites and blogs.  Content, while very important, doesn’t help readers if they can’t easily get to it.  Some of the important things which can be adopted to easily increase the usability of a website are described here.

Track Your Blog’s Statistics

You can’t really design for above the fold until you know where the fold is for your viewers.  For this reason (and so many others) it’s very important that you know more about who your viewers are, and how they behave.  Statistics and Analytics programs can get you the data you need, and they’re very easy to come by.  Google Analytics is great solution to start out with, it’s free, and very easy to install.

Analytics programs like these can show you what content your users find most interesting, details about your viewers capabilities (screen resolution, browser, operating system, country, etc), where your viewers are coming from on the web, and much more.

Make Your RSS Feed Very Visible

We’ve talked about making your most important content very visible, and the same should apply to your RSS Feed.  Don’t rely on your viewers to spend their time searching for some fancy-schmancy RSS design you put together, and don’t think that they’ll check below the fold either.  Your RSS links should be prominent, above the fold, and sticking to the standard icon can help.

Make your Search Work Better

WordPress’s search tends to suck by default.  While there aren’t any incredibly easy ways to fix that, we can at least make it suck less.  Denis Bernardy’s Search Reloaded Plugin for WordPress will at least make a few minor fixes that will list more accurate search results in a manner that makes more sense to your viewers.  Also worth noting is that most viewers expect to see a site search at the top right of your site.

Show Related Content on Individual Posts

Sometimes, Usability is a lot like herding sheep.  We want our viewers to act in ways that our desirable to us, so it’s our responsibility to lead them in the right direction.  We’ve given our readers direction from the home page of the blog.

Your Links Should Make Sense

You’re links should be easy to differentiate from the rest of your content, and should be plainly obvious as to what they do.  A link to a post should give a description or title of the post.  A link that says “Comments” should link to the comments of a post.  If your content is typed in black, make your links another color – and consider underlining them, or doing something else to make them stick out.

Test.  Test Again.  Repeat as Needed

Testing your site is probably one of the most important parts of improving usability.  Find a couple of friends that are interested in your niche, and give them the opportunity to see how your blog works.

Article &Photo credit- turtorial9