Your blog is not perfect. There are many things you can do to improve your blog, and after reading this post – you will be glad you made some of these changes.
There is just so much you can do to improve your blog. You can make a major change to it by adding a new design, or adding a forum to it or something minor like changing a title of a blog post to something more search engine friendly.
Whatever it is you want to do, you do it because you think it will make your blog better. Of all these little things you can do to make your blog better, I came up with five things I found on Blogussion that I chose to implement with hopes it would make my blog better.
And everything I did doesn’t even take five minutes to implement.
1. Add a “back to top” link to your footer
This is something so simple, but so beneficial. Blogs have a tendency to create huge scroll bars. Whether that scroll bar is long because you don’t use the more tag to cut down your posts, or you get a lot of blog comments – the fact of the matter is if you have a huge scroll bar and no easy way to get back to the top, it will annoy us as your readers.
So when a user gets to the bottom of the page and sees the link, when the click it – they go to the very top of the page. It’s very easy to create. Just use this code and add it to your footer somewhere:
<a href="#header">Back to top</a>
It’s just that easy. When that link gets clicked, it automatically shoots to the top of the page.
More on this method: A Short Story about “Back To Top” Links
2. Little Icons
Every minor detail counts when it comes to designing for a blog. It’s the minor details that make some designs so excellent, and adding icons next to links on your blog can really make some parts of your blog stellar looking.
Here are a few examples:
Copyblogger uses a nice mail icon on a slant to represent where you can sign up for email updates
Nettuts uses a nice RSS icon to represent their forms of subscriptions
ProBlogger uses icons to represent all kinds of ways to sign up to the RSS feed
3. Customized Input Forms
Input forms are used all the time on blogs. To sign up for newsletters, to fill out a comment, and anything else that generally involves getting information from the user.
Input forms without style are often very ugly and boring to use. Luckily, they are extremely easy to customize. You may want to check out a past post on Blogussion with four tricks to making input forms great.
More on improving input forms:
- 16 Stunning Mootools scripts for enhancing your html forms
- Prettier Accessible Forms
- Web Form Design Patterns: Sign-Up Forms
- Web Form Design Patterns: Sign-Up Forms
4. Creating thumbnails for posts
I love thumbnails, they make lists look so much more attractive. Just take a look around on Blogussion, there are thumbnails to display the popular posts on the blog, and there are thumbnails to represent the names of commentators in the top commentators list.
Take for example my other blog, Asnio. You see thumbnails everywhere on the blog, and it really makes the design stand out. If you use the Thesis theme, using thumbnails for posts is as easy as it gets.
5. Numbered page navigation
At the bottom of the homepage on Blogussion, you can see a list of pages you can visit on the blog. All of those numbers link to a page full of articles on them.
Using numbered page navigation gets a lot more posts available to readers, which increases pageviews and can really show off the age of your blog with the more number of pages you have. It is a much more effective method of navigation than the standard “previous” and “next”post links that is standard on many blogs today,
Here is the plugin I use to represent page numbers on my blogs. It is very simple to use and comes with some great pre-styled themes.
A Little Goes A Long Way
If you implement these five minor changes on your blog, you should see some real improvements to your blog usability wise. As I mentioned in this article, every little detail counts and if you can make your blog more convenient in even the smallest ways – you will see small rewards.
The Discussion
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about the Back to top
where do you add it in Thesis?
So I’ve figured it out but how do you make it slide?
Create a new widget!!
I like your “back to top” suggestion. I currently have a second navigation area in my footer, but this takes up valuable real estate. This post is making me re-think my strategy. Thank you.
The “back to top” suggestion is good. I just added this strategy to my navigation and it has gave me a small boost in my lead generation conversion.
Back to top link -now why didn’t I think of that!! Thanks
how the effective way to up our PR,,,, im still need more guide from you sir
Hi Alex,
How do you use the Page Numbers Plugin?
Where do you insert the code?
Specially like the No.2. Nice little thingies and details.
Of course, the backside of that is that you need to make it all compact – takes a lot more than 5 minutes – but it “plays” well and it’s worth it!
Adding a Forum is one of my to-do list on my site, I have already added a social bookmarking buttons and will soon add more helpful plugins. Thanks for this post by the way.
Thank you so much you came up fruitful tips. This is so useful knowing that there is so much I can do to improve blog & to make it even better!
This is a great guideline for me. This give me more reason to improve my sites in an easy way under 5 minutes. Thanks for sharing.
The back to top is a good idea. I also like the number pages it does help list more pages.
I don’t think of using back to top technique for a long time. Now I will try to use it and see what great results to gain.
Boy this post is simply awesome.
You talked about the tips and provided the right solutions as well.
That’s what the difference between a great post and normal one.
I completely agree with working on the visual aspects of your blog. Little bit of customizations are what add the extra zing to a blog.
hey thanks i use some of your tips in my blog
cheers
Dear Alex
I know you are busy so I will keep this brief. Basically, I was recently told about your website and as I was studying it, it suddenly occurred to me that you might just be interested in generating some extra revenue from your customer list.
In short, I wondered if you would like to increase the revenue you get from your customer list by joint marketing a great product of mine. I’ll be honest; I don’t yet have a list to trade with you, so you will get the lion’s share of the proceeds from this.
Let me know if this interests you and I’ll send you all the details and a free copy of the product for you to review, keep and use for your own benefit.
Whatever you decide, I wish you all the very best.
Jo Gibson
“Add a “back to top” link to your footer” – Really? Why? “Blogs have a tendency to create huge scroll bars” – I guess so, but is that really necessary?
I have never thought about that before, but you have got me thinking now!
There is perceptibly a bundle to identify about this. I think you made various nice points in features also.
I try to do this everytime I log into my blog admin panel. Just take the first five minutes to look around the site and see what jumps out at me for improvement. Then I just do one quick thing. Over time it really builds up.
hey thanks i use some of your tips in my blog great quality of your blog, each time i come here, i m amazed.
I’ve followed your advice and added the back to top link. Thanks a lot! Cheers.
Hey Alex,
. Thanks a lot dude!
very nice Blog with good articles. I just blogging for so long, but it is fun to see what happens when i follow your advice
nice tips this was really helpful for promoting my blog and its really works
Very nice! I will use some tips in my blog
Thanks for this, a lot.
I just installed the LiveFyre comment system onto my blog. I’m also really liking the slide pane pluggin for Thesis.
I think this is the best idea to have improvement in
i need to add back to top link in thesis. page navigation is also not working with thesis.
i’m not a designer, so i will try to put an icon on my blog to make my blog more good looking
I simply want to mention I am newbie to blogging and site-building and seriously enjoyed your blog site. Likely I’m likely to bookmark your website . You certainly come with outstanding well written articles. Thanks for sharing your website.
I find this resourceful. You talk about tips and provides we the readers with the right solution too good blogging.Blogussion has been part of my blog. Http://juicygossyp.blogspot.com
The idea of using customized input form is awesom I will test it because I’m not getting too much email subscribers with feedburner form.
These tips have been very helpful. I’m gonna start using them in my blog right away and see how much more traffic and comments i receive! thanks.
Legendary advice Alex. Once again, you’ve helped heaps.
I need to add “back to top” button at my blog’s footer. Thanks for the heads up
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