A blog must evolve! 6 ways to improve it

I made some layout changes over the weekend, intended to make this blog more readable for new users. I think the new arrangement is better to navigate, and contents of the website are easier to find. I included some social bookmarking elements (Go, Digg this post! Thanks!). All this sums up to this article on how to improve a blog, step by step.

1. Make social bookmarking easy

I’ve added Digg submit badges just below the headlines, as well as a Delicious Save to link at the bottom of each article. A few people actually click on them, so they will start working, when the site gets some more daily visitors, but they will never click them, if they are not even there — so it’s good to have them, just in case. We all know how the Digg effect works, right? (sometimes it does just the opposite)

2. Highlight important sidebar elements with icons

I’m a visual person, and I think a picture says a thousand words. So, I really don’t like to scroll through long sidebars divided just by text titles — it’s difficult to spot what I am looking for. If the titles were accompanied by a bit bigger icons, on the other hand, this would be easier. It’s the same with links, plus images enlarge clicking area. I’ve added an eye-catching Twitter icon, so now you don’t have to hit the tiny-tiny follow me link.

3. Show counters — it’s old-school, but effective

I’ve included the Views count below every article summary. It is an old method of tracking popularity, and it is very inaccurate. But for the first look at the content, it gives a superfast information on what was more appealing to others, and what was not. Also, even when inaccurate, high numbers are appealing to everybody.

4. Don’t keep the footer at the footer

This may sound strange, but actually it’s better to keep the so called footer right after the first post. Why? Well, I noticed that the most important navigational and promotional elements of my blog are in the footer, way down the bottom: Categories, Subscriptions and Recommended Links. I asked myself, who’d scroll down the bottom to add my RSS feed or save me with Technorati? Virtually no one, because who’d even guess it’s there? Thus, I’ve split the footer into an informative piece at the top (all the mentioned plus the Abouts), and a boring piece at the end of the page (pagination and licensing).

5. Exploit the perfect ad spot

There are different ways, techniques and tricks to place ads, it’s a whole branch of science I suppose. And I am a newbie here — but from the point of user experience (UX) designer, I see the space between the summary and the full article a perfect spot for a standard banner ad. It fits the text, is not too much intrusive to the layout, yet it’s easy to spot, as the reader always skims through this section, while continuing to read the post. I’m not a fan of ads myself (Safari AdBlock recommended), but I’d swallow that without choking.

6. Make sensible comments across the web

This is more of an advice on how to draw traffic, so that the previous improvements would get a chance to work. Show your presence, post relevant comments under articles relevant to your blog, which you find on other sites. There are ways to search for blogs, use Google, use Twitter search etc. But in fact, you shouldn’t force things. Just follow several sites in your interest area, and when you have something interesting to say — just write it. Link to your site, and you’re done. Sometimes you’ll find an article concerning similar matter to your earlier post, be sure to link to that, you’d be done even more.

I recently linked to one of my articles mentioning using CSS instead of images. When I read on WebAppers about a really nice CSS GMail button imitating gradient, I included the link to my text in the comments — and here’s the effect:

WebAppers referrers sky-rocketing within a day. Imagine you’d post such a nice comment on 10 fairly popular websites — you’d get quite a number just from referring.

Conclusions

I am quite happy with the makeover of this site. I know it’s just the beginning, but I want to continue improving it. If you know any more interesting tricks, or have suggestions regarding the changes I’ve made, let me know in the comments! Also, check out the old version, for comparison!