Tips To Make Blogs & Websites Better

Today I collected lists from three sources, each with tips to make our blogs and websites better. Luke Gedeon’s Four levels of participation in The Way It ought 2B is what he called “The Participation Pyramid”.

• Creators - bloggers, etc.
• Critics - commenting, ratings, reviews
• Collectors - bookmarking, “save to favorites” in youtube
• Couch potatoes - passive

Social media: “It’s not about the media, it’s about getting people to participate.”

In Seth’s Blog, Seth Godin wrote How to write a blog post. Short, sweet and to the point:

An appropriate illustration.

A useful topic, easily broadened to be useful to a large number of readers,

Simple language with no useless jargon,

Not too long,

Focusing on something that people have previously taken for granted,

That initially creates emotional resistance,

Then causes a light bulb to go off and finally

Causes the reader to look at the world differently all day long.

Working Solo’s Leah published Things To Create a Great Website. I’ve edited the list a bit, but the meat is still there.

Make it about the reader and easy on the visitor

Organize your site the way a real person would use it

Be clear to communicate why people would be there.

Each page should have one primary objective. Make a different page for each important thing and make that important thing the most obvious thing on the page.

Don’t make people jump through hoops to get what they are looking for.

Have logical steps that keep the visitor with you until they reach their objective for being there or your objective for the site/page.

Have a customized page for error messages or failed searches that is more than the usual “can’t find the page” information. Provide some information that might keep the visitor with you, like top 10 things people download, articles or products. Use a “tell me you saw this error link” on your customized error page.

Don’t ever have an under construction page. Use the space an have a static “flyer” with your contact information or don’t have anything.

You may not be able to test everything but you MUST test the money path.

Say thank you.

Have a send this page to a friend link.

Do something to start a conversation.

DON’T use pop-ups.

Find sites that work well and learn from their organization.

Don’t just create it and leave it – make sure there is regular updates to the pages.