Blog Usability Ain’t Great
Posted in UsabilityBig Jake (aka Jakob Nielsen, usability guru), wrote an article in 2005 about 10 common blog design mistakes. Sadly, 5 years down the track a lot of them are still common. I’m guilty of a few of them, and although it’s only basic stuff it’s extremely common for blogs to look past these simple things.
The biggest takeaway for me: Don’t hide your “classic hits”
Do you have some blog posts you’re really proud of? How easy can someone find these from your homepage? Perhaps try adding a sidebar widget to promote your best work, or even a feature above your blog posts on your homepage (easy if you have Wordpress). Luckily for me, everything I blog is rubbish so it’s not an issue.
Remember when someone comes to your blog homepage – they most likely want to know about you. It’s not always the most relevant for the first thing they see to be your latest blog post. What if your last post was a YouTube video of talking animals? What does that say about you?
What should you do now?
I’m not the expert on it – so you should probably just read his article. But my favourite quote (and I admit to being one of this people)
Many weblog authors seem to think it’s cool to write link anchors like: “some people think” or “there’s more here and here.”