NB: This is the 11th installment in The Inspired Solo’s Build a Better Business Blog in One Month series. Designed to help solo lawyers and other professionals boost their blog’s performance, the series consists of a daily lecture and task (or tasks) that focus on one “blog improvement project” at a time. Each post in the series is tagged with “[BBBB1]“. You can start the program at any time. Catch up with other BBBB1 posts here.
Build a Better Business Blog, One Block At a Time
Day 11: Lecture
Analyze Your Home Page
Today, we’re going to take a look at your home page — the main landing page for your blog site. If your blog is a subdomain of your static website — e.g., http://www.mysite.com/blog, or the like — we’ll also need to take a look at your static site’s landing page.
What are we looking for? Primarily, these three factors:
- Navigation
- Communication
- Readability
Let’s look at each in a bit more detail.
How to Improve Your Main Blog Page’s Navigability
Navigation is all about getting from point A to points B, C, and so on. How easily can a new user find her way around your blog? Are your various pages laid out nice and neat on tabs below your header, or at the top of the sidebar? Are the page names descriptive of the content that can be found on those pages?
Take a look at your main home page with fresh eyes. Does your attention wander in search of a focal point? Do you have at least two ways to get into your blog’s pages? How does a new user find her way around the site? Take a few moments and just click and wander, from page to page. Make note also of return paths — are there some pages that you can’t navigate to from other pages in two or fewer links?
Communication: Your Landing Page’s Prime Responsibility
In many ways, this is the most important aspect of your blog’s main page. This is, for the majority of users, the first impression they’ll get of you, your blog, and your business.
So, take a few moments to really examine the front page as a whole. Does it tell a new user — one who’s completely unfamiliar with you or your site — what your blog is “about”? Does it communicate quickly who it’s for and what can be found there?
Remember that most new users, especially those who find you via an organic search, have lots of other options to wade through. Consequently they’re not going to stick around endlessly, working to find out what your blog can offer them. It’s up to you to make your blog tell that information right away, right up front.
Readability: The Importance of White Space
You’ll hear different theories on this subject, but to me, it basically boils down to this: can a new user actually read your blog posts easily? Is the typeface too small or fuzzy or light in color? Is there insufficient contrast between the text and the background? Are you making good use of white space to provide a place for the eyes to rest and so the user doesn’t feel overwhelmed by text?
Task: Watch a New User Examine Your Blog
For this task, it’s best to enlist the aid of a friend who has never seen your blog before. Watch her surf your site, starting with the landing page and then wandering wherever she feels like going, but ask her specifically to hit your key pages, and at least one individual post page.
Ask her questions as she browses — the same questions posed in the lecture above. “Can you tell what this site is about? How quickly? Are the posts readable?” and so on.
One note: I’ve never had much luck asking the open-ended question “What can I do to make this blog better?” For one thing, “better” is such a subjective term that you’ll never get the same response twice. For another, it’s hard for a user to tell you what to improve on your blog, unless you’re doing something really, really wrong (such as using horrible grammar or no punctuation).
I’ve found I get better responses when I ask direct questions about specific features of the blog, such as the typeface, the font size, the length of paragraphs, the “findability” of the navigational links, and so on.
