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Written by Danny Wirken
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Sunday, 03 December 2006 |
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Word Count: 1175 10 Suggestions For Blog Usability
Ignoring key usability issues on blogs may make it difficult for readers to
understand a site. Writer confidence can also be hard to attain as well. This
would certainly not work well for the site since all sites strive to reach the
widest audience possible. Here are some suggestions to ensure your blog
usability:
1.Provide the Personality
Blogging has generally been associated with anonymous or geeky-nicknamed
authors. This makes it almost impossible to establish trust with the readers
since there is no specific person that can be identified with the articles.
Whereas business blogs would usually require a full-fledged “about us” section,
individual authors would need a simple and short “about me” page on a weblog.
Information aside from the author’s name is important as it helps to establish
authority, experience and credibility with the chosen subject. The lack of
formal credentials however, should not be a hindrance to writing but the fact
should be stated followed by a short explanation for the author’s enthusiasm
regarding the topic. The blog can also benefit from having a human face to its
voice by providing the author’s photo.
2.Make Use of an Effective Posting Titles
The title is very important in getting the reader’s attention and convincing
them to look at a particular blog. Authors should keep in mind the general
guidelines in writing for the web regarding scannable contents when writing
their headline. Headline writing is in itself a critical project in the same way
that the body is. Search engines, news-feeds and other external environment can
appreciate descriptive headlines. Searchers likewise, use the headline to
determine whether it is worth checking at all or not. Titles should be able to
provide the gist of the article through its few carefully chosen words. It would
also be useful to choose large, clear and legible fonts to get the message
across.
3.Establish Useful Links in Posts
One way to truly serve the readers is to make sure that they know where they’re
going and what to expect at the other end of the link. Relevant information
should be provided either at the anchor text itself or the words immediately
surrounding it. Most readers do not appreciate clicking into the unknown. The
author’s invitation to the reader to visit should be clear as vague links
usually do not attract trust.
4.Link to Previous Work in New Postings
Valuable information should not be buried in the archives. The archives are
where post pieces go to and remain. These articles can only be found if the
author consciously directs them to it. Not all readers have been customers since
the beginning thus this can provide the background and context in case they
would require further reading.
5.Organize Site Search and Archives
A professional blog should consider archiving by title and in date order so that
it makes for easy skim reading for users and encourage site search. Several blog
software plugins or modules are able to produce menus and lines such as the
“most read”, “recent comments/posts” and self-tag great articles. When a blog
had already over 100 entries, an archive list may turn out to be very chaotic
especially if the author is still trying to promote each one. Archiving by week,
month or year can work out fine for personal blogs but will not be user-friendly
for a person looking for a particular product. Categorized posting can provide
users the list of all postings on a certain topic, but tagging of postings
should be selective so that they are placed where they belong.
6.Publish Regularly and Frequently
Web usability is essentially about establishing and meeting user expectations.
Therefore, users should be able to anticipate when and how often updates will
occur in a blog. Most blogs benefit from daily updates but there are topics that
would sufficiently require weekly or monthly updates. Some publish three to four
articles a day which is a pace that may be very hard to sustain. The author can
determine for himself the best publication schedule depending on the topic.
However, once a schedule is established, serious efforts should be directed at
maintaining it with fresh content or there would be a big possibility of losing
loyal and valuable readers.
7.Specialize Blogs
Handling a different topic on one blog is not as effective as specialized sites.
Very few people have the time and patience to look for entries about a topic of
particular interest to them in a site that offers the target topics sporadically
among a wide range of postings on several other topics. A focused content
reaches out to a specific group of readers and makes a site more influential and
authoritative in a particular niche. If an author feels that he/she needs to
speak out on an entirely different topic, then it would be much better to create
a separate blog.
8.Simplify Blogs
Majority of blog readers are still actually mystified by the process and may not
have a clear idea of what a blog is. Recognize the fact that not all are
technically savvy and might be wary of active participation such as clicking on
anything. This is especially true for new readers as clear information is
capable of addressing feelings of discomfort regarding how he/she is expected to
make his/her own posting or how personal information is handled. Some space in
the biography or contact page can be allotted to explaining these issues by
providing a “need more help” link so that regular readers need not see the
explanation every time.
9.Authors Should be Sure of Their Posting
Anything posted on the Internet including blogs are archived, cached and indexed
in many services that most are not aware of. As such, it is important that the
author can stand up to what he/she says in the blog. This is especially true for
hiring matters since more and more companies are taking the time to check out
prospective employees including his on-line transactions. When in doubt, the
author should avoid publishing articles that can be considered offensive by
persons or entities that he/she have future interest in establishing a
relationship with.
10.Make Readable Blogs
There are a lot of things that can make any blog unreadable. Buttons, glory
badges, blogrolls and the like may be valuable tools but too much of anything
can be counter productive. If it is necessary to have lots of buttons, it is
recommended to have a separate page listing of all the desired buttons as well
as explanations so as not to intimidate new readers. Readers may be interested
to know a site’s recommended links but if a list gets longer than ten, a random
list of a few in the sidebar will suffice as long as they link to a separate
page containing the rest. The design trend of more white space and large titles
is like going back to the basics where what is essential is ably provided and
delivered. About the author:
http://www.theinternetone.net
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