This is the first time I’m writing a post like this; basically I hate criticizing and telling people their mistakes, but one of my friend asked me to visit his blog and advise him about the things which I want to amend on his blog or which are the things needs improvement. Frankly speaking a good blog design speaks a lot about the blog and the blogger; this is the first impression which some time helps glue your visitor to invert little more articles on your blog.
I take this opportunity to pull this question further and try to explain which are the things irritate me while reading a blog and I hate to see them on any blog.
1. When it’s not easy to NAVIGATE on your blog because you don’t have a navigation bar. I need to hit the back button in order to go back to your homepage.
2. When there is one blog post on display and you don’t even have a RECENT POSTS widget installed.
3. When your ABOUT ME page says “this is sample page, you can edit or delete this page”. ( Don’t hide from me, I won’t bite)
4. When I make a COMMENT on your blog and a message appears “your comment awaits moderation by administrator”. Why awaits for moderation, haven’t you heard about Akismat Plugin, CAPTCHA or for god sake search for any other better option if you wish but don’t chuck me away from communicating with your blog.
5. When I literally struggle to find where is the post content as you filled it with flashy ADS around, there are only four lines of content fitted with 300×250 AdSense Ad below and above.
6. When I just arrived at your blog a few second back and a pop up window appears requesting me to sign up for your BLOG FEED SUBSCRIPTION BOX by e-mail, hey I don’t even haven’t read a single post on your blog yet, and you are begging , Please forgive me I close that window and wish to disappear with that.
7. When a hell lot of things going on your blog SIDEBAR, you don’t want me to concentrate on your main content, aren’t you? Its stuffed fully like a Hamburger
8. When you display your posts based on CATEGORY and I can’t figure out which is the latest one.
9. Are you seriously writing a blog post or you are an essay writer and by accident become a blogger (or trying your hands at blogging?). Means your BLOG POSTS ARE TOO LONG.
10. Your HEADER Tag line (still) says “Just another WordPress blog”.
11. When I can’t see a TOP COMMENTATOR WIDGET installed on your blog (it’s unfair but I’m helpless, I visit only those blogs which have top commentators widget in place. Sorry)
12. When I like post but can’t see any SOCIAL MEDIA Support Button to spread love.
13. When I can’t see a Blog ARCHIVE PAGE to see since when you are in blogsphere.
These are some basic things that a reader/blogger looks in a blog, so if you have any above bugs in your blog then I request you to please make it good.
Image Courtesy : fo.ol
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{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Shanker,
You will hate my website, lol…
1.I write long posts because most of the time you can’t really say anything worthwhile that hasn’t been said on a 100 or so blogs already in a short 500 word post.
2.I don’t use Top commentators plugin because I don’t want to overload my backend with plug-ins….sometimes plug-ins can get in the way of optimizing your site and getting ranked (some plug-ins get in the way of spiderability)
3.I do moderate comments because sometimes SPAM can still get onto the page…plus it allows me to be able to respond quickly and no one falls through the cracks.
4. I don’t post those social media widgets because according to my analytics, the digg/stumbleupon/sphinn readers stay for less time and bounce a lot more than people coming from forums and other referring sites. The conversion rate, whether you are using a metric like RSS subscriptions or an email list or selling products or using contextual ads is abyssmal compared to organic traffic or Non-web2.0 traffic.
It is not to say that I agree or disagree with your assessment. I think that what most webmaster’s don’t understand is that it really depends on what type of reader you want.
My bounce rate for the last month was 65% (this was despite the fact that I have roughly 25 posts right now)…my time spent on page averaged 3 minutes…and my visitors, on average, viewed 2.12 pages per session…
So obviously, I am targeting the market I want to target.
If I was targeting for adsense, I would want a high bounce rate and for the average time on site to be less than 20 seconds…it really depends on what outcome you want and directing your reader to go where you want them to go.
Decide on what type of reader you want….watch your metrics…and cater to your target group…
I am guessing, I won’t gain a reader here, but I still found your post…interesting.
I Just visited your blog, (love it
) . You really writes long posts, You have great writing skill, you are exceptional, may be no body can beat you in writing articles but i want every one to blog his/her thoughts, view and ideas.
Thanks for your detail analysis on post LEO.
Ugh..are you sure about No.4? I always moderate my comments. I mean, I don’t receive anymore spam comments, but when someone throws some F* words or any other sex related, you wouldn’t want that to appear on your post now, would you?
Is that the reason why you stop commenting on my blog?
hehe just kidding
Nice post shankar…
I don’t have “about me” page. otherwise i have all the stuff.
Alot of times humans can spam too, so moderating would be the best way to first time posters, but once you posted you don’t have to moderate it
but sometime Akismat Plugin not worked
Oh, I thought most of the readers hate those flashy ads and so do I!
Great tips…unfinished pages like your “about me” page example are a huge pet peeve of mine.
Hey friend, How about related post? I think that’s the first thing I search for after I like someone post….
Hey nice post and nice image
relevant to the post
I agree with everything except for #3 and #12. I have comment moderation enable because scripts can be games not matter what. I like being able to either deny the spam or allow it.
When it comes to #12, if the visitor was really wanted to add the link to a social media site, they will. I don’t keep brew a pot of coffee and keep it on the burner all day in hopes that maybe someone will want a cup.
But I fully agree and see where you’re coming from on the rest of it.
Hi Shanher,
I haven´t read this post. It seems I almost comply with this list, except for the number 4, I do moderate but only for new commenters, the next time they leave me a comment it will be accepted automatically, and they would be able to see themselves in my Top Commentator widget.
I moderate because I had a bad experience with some few comments that are spam. Even with captcha in place, this only helps to avoid scripts and automation spam, but its not good for real people coming to your site to spam you.
I hope you dont hate my site, lol. Hey, you dont have to wait anymore, since you already had been approve it with your first comments.
You are truly welcome whenever you like to visit and even give me some of your critic point of viw about my site.
Good post, too bad I missed when it went live.
Luis
I would love to disturb you by my captcha and waiting for comment approval !!
Your list covers most of the territory! I would add the missing contact information as my pet peeve. Often with Blogger blogs, the avatar points to the Google profile which usually has no contact info, just the blog url(s). It’s frustrating when I want to send information (sometimes telling them about mistakes or offering suggestions — lol) and there is no way to contact them!
Thanks the post.It is interesting.