How you helped improve my blog
You should always be wondering how your blog can function better and be more user-friendly. Sometimes it’s easy to overlook important aspects simply because you’ve been looking at it for too long, or because it’s fine for you.
What’s the best way to understand how your blog is used? Ask your readers. I did, and here’s what I found out.
My blog header should be clickable, returning you to the blog homepage. This is a standard function of blogs that people are familiar with. Even though there’s a ‘home’ text link just above the logo, it’s still important to have the logo linking. Thanks Chris.
Hanging punctuation needs fixing in the blog header quote by Mao Tse-Tung. You might wonder why this is due a mention, but as a graphic designer, proper use of the English language and text layout is a huge part of my job. Nice pick-up Richard.
The coding can be tweaked slightly to improve web validation. Lorissa knows what she’s talking about and gave me some useful tips. Regarding validation, some people think, “My site looks right and works fine. Isn’t that enough?” The answer is a simple no. Here’s some further info on why your website should validate (something I’ve been guilty of not knowing enough about).
People should be able to search the blog quickly and easily. At present the search box is in the blog footer. Moving the function ‘above the fold’ and to the top of the page was mentioned a few times in your comments. Thanks to Tolumi for mentioning it first, and for your other suggestions (some of which are also listed).
Add a contact form or contact details to the blog site rather than directing people to my portfolio contact form. I had thought about this before so thanks for bringing it up again. Letting your readers contact you as simply as possible is up there with the most important points of any website. I shouldn’t be making you click one more time than is necessary.
Integrate my collection of resources with the blog template. When you access my resources it opens in a new window / tab, and there’s no link back to the blog. I can see how this could be needlessly confusing. First off, it helps your search rankings if as many pages as possible are accessible from eachother. It’s also inconsistent with the branding of either my portfolio section of the site or my blog.
No logo / mark should be more obvious than my personal logo. This is something I didn’t take into consideration when making use of a ‘big and beautiful’ RSS icon. What draws your eye immediately when you first see my blog? It’s clearly the orange RSS icon (not including each post image), when my logo should really be the most apparent. What RSS are you? Thanks for bringing this one up Marc. You gave a great critique. Marc thought I should make the ‘subsribe’ text link at the top of the page orange, rather than displaying the standard RSS icon. Something I’ll check out.
Add more colour (or color if you prefer). At present what I like to do is begin each blog post with a large, usually colourful image, so it contrasts nicely with the greyscale look of the blog template. I might test out some form of colour variation in the header and footer to give the blog a little more life.
Make use of a related posts plugin to increase blog-wide visiting. Thanks for the tip Jen. Can anyone recommend a good plugin for this task? I often find that when I search for a plugin there are quite a few variations and it’s hard to tell which is best without testing them all (which I don’t have a lot of time for).
More posts about my design process and personal thoughts / questions about design. I’m guilty of regurgitating information found on other blogs or sites. Sometimes this can work to good effect. Take my Flags of contemplation post for instance. Over the past three weeks this single post has consistently brought in a flood of new visitors, thanks to it being repeatedly ‘stumbled’ (see www.stumbleupon.com for more info on ‘stumbling’ through the web – I love it!). Successful bloggers write unique content, so I’ll aim to spend more time researching posts.
Once again, thank you to everyone who took time to respond to ‘Do you ask for criticism?‘. It’s going to be a while before I can implement all these changes so bear with me. I mentioned in the criticism post that the most useful comments would win a personal review of the author’s blog or website (a small token of appreciation). And the winner is…
Marc Rapp with his Uniquely the Epitome blog.
Over the next couple of weeks I’ll spend some time writing my own thoughts about Marc’s blog and making what I hope are some useful suggestions for improvement.
By way of thanks to all the others who left comments, and to my regular readers, I’ll happily offer up a future review of your site / blog. Just let me know by leaving a comment or sending a message. I appreciated each and every suggestion.
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17 appreciated comments on “How you helped improve my blog”
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Dammit! no–wait, thanks!
I’ll need help with the technical stuff. ;)
The technical side is where I’m in need to help too Marc, don’t worry. I changed some of the coding that Lorissa spoke of, but there seems to be a problem in my blog with embedding YouTube videos – they don’t validate.
Anyway, I’ll look at yours from a design standpoint and how easy it is to view your content. There’ll be positives in there mate, no doubt.
Wow!!! Great checklist for blog. I check follow your list and found a big mistake at my logo. The link is wrong!!!! OHhh O_o
Thanks for sharing this.
Good luck with validation. My experience has been as soon as you do something like insert a photo (or video), or even something like a Technorati badge, it breaks.
I found that most 3rd party supplied code doesn’t validate, so therefore neither does my blog-statcounter code being one example.
I therefore did the sensible thing and gave up.
Nice list! If I could help in any way, drop me a line at my email address.
Rich
Eeek, I think that doing these kinds of changes on my own blog would be way over my head:-(
Great feedback. I’m considering doing this myself. I concur with most of the advice you got. Great to see your readers this interested in your blog.
Thanks for reading the post Jennessa, you’re very welcome.
Chris, it’s interesting to read your take on validation. When I checked for errors I found that almost all of them were due to 3rd party embeds or coding. I suppose that as long as I do all I can with what I upload personally then that’ll do, unless someone else has found a way around 3rd party errors?
Richard, that’s a kind offer. One I might take you up on sometime soon. Many thanks.
If there’s ever anything you think I can help with, Maryam, just let me know and I’ll see what I can do.
Dawud, I was surprised at the time my kind readers offered in thinking up their critiques. I’d recommend this exercise as a way of involved those who read your posts. Linking back to their own sites or blogs was the least I could do to thank them. Of course if you do the same on your own blog I’ll gladly offer up some suggestions.
Depending on how stringent a follower of standards and validation you are… ahem, like me, I will either leave off third-party stuff that makes my site not validate (I’m crazy, I know) or try to fix the code they give.
One of the big offenders is javascript and not having a language or type tag. I’m guessing the YouTube problem is caused by using the “embed” tag but I’m just guessing since I’ve never posted anything from YouTube before. :)
I’ve asked my readers for feedback on a few occasions, and have yet to receive a response. I even offered a free, just-published, hardcover book to the person who gave the most useful suggestion, and still no response. I guess I can only assume my blog is perfect (yeah, right) or that no one reads it!
Yeah, 3rd party bits and bobs can wreak havoc. Glad I was of some sort of help.
Once I actually setup my site properly (time is no friend right now) I will have to try this as well and ask for a critique.
Jen, I’m pretty sure the embed feature of YouTube has something to do with it.
Rachel, I must have missed the critique request you posted. If you’d ever like my own comments on your blog I’d be more than happy to oblige. The same goes for you too Lorissa, and everyone else who reads my blog.
How did your blog change? I don’t see a big difference..
ilker, the differences so far are as follows:
The main header links to the homepage rather than just the ‘home’ button.
I added contact details to the ‘contact’ page rather than asking readers to click-through to my portfolio site where there’s a contact form (I’m going to include a contact form on my blog once I have time).
The quote by Mao was displayed incorrectly. It’s important to get the little details right in my profession.
There’s now a ‘search’ feature ‘above the fold’. This is one of the bigger changes.
Some of the coding was changed to improve validation, although with so much third party code I’m not spending too long on this.
The RSS icon was decreased in size so as not to compete with my personal logo. Gone is my big and beautiful RSS icon.
I still have to work on my resources section, and a few other things in my list, but it’s a good start.
Well.. I think you should consider bringing the big RSS button back, even if you put it at the bottom right most of the blog.
I had to look for it (on a specific post) and couldn’t find.. had to go back to the frontpage to get it!!
Just don’t expect this much effort from all your readers ;)
That’s a good point ilker. :)
I’ve added another icon to my footer. The reason for dropping the big and beautiful icon was so it didn’t compete with my personal logo in the header.
I’ve also added a little colour to tie in with my portfolio site.
I think you have yourself a beautiful blog