TechNayak

Past couple of days, I have been trying to pick out a new theme for my blog and have made a small checklist of things needed to make the decision more simple. I had been running a really pretty theme which somehow seemed to hamper the entire readers experience, So I picked this new one. Its not just me speaking here, it was the stats that showed bounces from the very fist page. Also since the number of pages /visit also had dramatically reduced ever since I shifted to the new theme, I decided it was time for a revamp. These tips that I will list below can be applied to almost all websites with respect to its usability, accessibility , information etc.

– Information : People come to your blog for information. Its very depressing if you cannot find what you came looking for. Its also more likely that if they do find what they were looking for, they will stay a little longer on your blog and may even acknowledge your effort with a nice comment. So what should you do ? make sure your content is well placed and is of good typographical quality. Avoid typewriter like fonts, they are old school. Use more rounded fonts that don’t need any anti aliasing. The position of the content is also extremely important. The content must always occupy the majority of the real estate on your blog.

– Load time : Its easy to get carried away with themes that are very glossy looking and also have dynamic refreshes and complex javascript. People!! readers don’t come to your blog for your template, they come there for the information. If I have to wait for 20 seconds to get 4 lines of information , which comes enveloped in about half an MB of images and javascript, then I will be might pissed. Take a subtle theme that is posh to look at and uses as less images as possible. The other problem is that the image based themes look extremely bad if the images don’t load; most of bloggers themes have this problem that none of the images load and you are left with a very ugly looking page which does zilch to visual appeal. Selecting CSS based layouts ensures that page degrades gracefully even if your images give way.

– Delivery : yes this is extremely crucial,which is why I went for a revamp. All things said, I come to your blog for content, so make sure I see it first, the widgets and other sidebar junk can come later. Its easy to get carried away with all the widget goodies available now for blogs, with those flash based embeds and scripts. But these only add to the overhead of your blogs load time. My previous theme had all the widgets on the left and the content on the right, as a result, only after all my content was loaded, my content would appear. A typical reader would have to wait for over half a minute to get a glimpse of what he actually came to read, that too, considering he had a good broadband connection. There were dependencies too- if one of those widgets were to fail , then your content would never load, which is bad. Always make sure your content is the first to load. A simple way to ensure this would be to keep the widgets and other junk on the right hand side of the content, when pages get rendered left to right, the content will appear first.

– Credentials : People like to know the credentials of a blogger while reading. I definitely would trust techcrunch against TechNayak, so its that essential to establish your blogs credentials. Solutions include a map of all your readers, mybloglog widget, stats from your blog and also brief abstract of your blog and you. Most of the times, a future employer will be reading your blog, make sure you get his/her attention. A simple description about you and your blog should just about do the trick.

– More reading material : If people like your writing and want to read more, give them some more material to read. In addition to your article that is already being read, make sure there are some click able links that point to more of your work. Internal links in your post could be a good starting point. Even better would be a related posts section that many blog providers offer, its more likely that people will be interested in reading more about the current subject.

– Feeds and syndication : feeds are growing in popularity and people are busy bookmarking and burning your feeds into their online world. Exemplify your feed URL, make it easy to access and use. There are some themes that don’t even provide RSS urls in the main page, don’t use them. Always make your feed url stand out in the clutter.

– Customize if you can : No theme is perfect , there is always something or the other that will be missing. It could be something as simple as the way your theme addresses people, instead of saying ” Leave a comment ” you may want to say ” Say a word or two ” . Make these customizations where necessary.

In the midst of all this don’t forget to have fun and blogroll. There is nothing sweeter than sharing link love.