How To Make Damn Sure Your Blog Repels People
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G’day people! Since most of you are bloggers, I’d like to ask you which of those things you did with your blog (or still do)? We all want people to visit, read, click, visit again, comment, bookmark, and so on. But it seems some people will never get it and are still stuck in 1997. Back then, web standards were quite different. But things have changed. Please, make sure you have a glass of cold milk, and read on. And don’t forget to leave a comment, we actually really like comments!
The Ugly Color Scheme
Red header image, green background, yellow sidebar. How does that sound? Not too good if you ask me. But it seems some people will never get it. It was real fine years ago, but things have changed, and people expect websites and blogs to have at least some kind of a coherent color scheme.
Make it easy for your readers, flashy colors will take the focus away from your content. And we all know you spend a considerable amount of time on your writing. Keep it clean and simple. You probably don’t want your blog to look like a Christmas tree. (or maybe you do?) 
Flashy Graphics – Slow-Loading
So you made a really cool animated gif in Fireworks?
What? you want to use this image in your sidebar?
Why? Stop right there! Please take some time to think about it. You might want to reconsider putting that image on your blog, even if it looks pretty.
Will it be helpful to your readers and visitors? What purpose does it serves? Will you use that image to link to something relevant? If not, drop it. And even if you do think your readers will find it pretty, why not put a static image instead? One that doesn’t scream: CLICK HERE!!!!!!
Hey! I Can’t Read Your Blog!
It looks clean, neat, stylish? Sure, but I can’t read it.
If the font size on your blog is around 8-10px and you wonder why the average time per visit on your blog is less than 1 minute, maybe it’s about time you increase your font size to something readable, maybe 12-14px (depending on the font).
Not all fonts will look the same in every browser. You can try BrowserShots (free) if you don’t have access to all the most common browsers. Make sure you test your blog in IE6, IE7, Firefox, Opera and Safari, since those are the most common. (yes, some people still use IE6.)
Talking about IE6, if you haven’t tested your blog using that browser, maybe it’s about time. Chances are your layout will look broken or you’ll see some weird stuff in IE6. You can easily fix this by creating a separate CSS stylesheet. You can name it “ie6” or something like that, and put this code in your template:
<link rel=”stylesheet” href=”<?php bloginfo(’stylesheet_url’); ?>” type=”text/css” media=”screen” />
<!–[if lte IE 6]>
<link rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css” href=”<?php bloginfo(‘template_url’); ?>/ie6.css” media=”screen” />
<![endif]–>
Chances are your wordpress theme already comes with an ie6.css file, if not you’ll need to create one, fix the bugs, and put the code above in your template.
Don’t We Love Pop-Ups And Pop-Unders?
Is there a better way to make people want to leave your blog? If you welcome your visitors with a pop-up or a pop-under, chances are they won’t bookmark and probably won’t subscribe to your RSS feed. Of course you want them to stay on there, read, bookmark, comment. Please do not annoy your visitors with pop-ups. We have enough windows opened already. It’s fine if you wanna put advertisement on your blog, in fact I encourage that, but pop-ups are annoying. You can get away with an ugly color scheme, but you can’t get away with pop-ups.
So, does your blog makes the milkman wanna turn around and leave? 
This post was brought to you by Jonathan from SmartWealthyRich. He doesn’t really drink milk, but can understand why people do. 
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I’ll add lots of buttons that say “Vote for me at…” as a real turn off in my opinion. If you ask for votes, you probably don’t deserve them.
but at the same time, if you don’t let people know about it, they wont be aware! catch 22
This is not true. There are other ways of publicizing your blog without having to use these buttons or requests. You can check for ways on this blog, and also search on the internet to see how other users reached out to others to make them aware of their existence.
When you have good content, people will come back, or will be reminded of you on other sites.I haven’t used any of these buttons but yet enjoy a healthy rate of traffic, and I continue to promote without seemingly annoying requests. I agree with Cash Quests, and she should know: people still come back to her site even after comments were disabled. That’s someone with experience that I can respect.
Cool post, we used a standard WP template with our blog to start off with which we changed a bit, and I am not happy with it, I think it looks too fussy.
We are in the process of doing our own template from scratch and hopefully people will like it.
Thanks for those tips on the whole IE browser issue. I fixed one of my font sizes because of this article, hopefully it helps. Also I will try to integrate the recommendations for IE, because I believe I’m losing a lot of visitors that way. I wish Microsoft new how to build a browser that was as compatible and friendly as all the third party ones.
i am having same issues, let me know how you solved some of them!
Check this site for help with issues making your website cross-compatible across different browsers:
http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/crossbrowser.html
This is the plugin I am going to start testing on my site. It gently encourages the use of Firefox versus IE:
http://explorerdestroyer.com/
You have those guest post going good Mr. Cow. In this one, here-here to annoying pop ups.
Hmmmm…
My biggest offense would probably be the color. There’s very little of it on my site. White/grey/blue are he colors I use.
The sidebar is a mess. I’ve been trying to clean it up. Signing up for things lately hasn’t helped. A lot of ‘em want a link somewhere, so I stick it in the sidebar.
Ugh, my site probably needs a complete overhaul. Thanks for pointing that out.
Anyone want to do it in exchange for a review/plug?
LOL a complete site overhaul in exchange for one review? Someone who loves graphic designing would probably be your best bet. Do you want a new source for themes? Do you use Wordpress? I know a couple of places to check if that’s the case, just let me know.
Wait — I thought you did graphic designing? You did the stupid cow awards! Or is it the case of, you want someone else’s touch? Because I feel that way at times also.
Yeah, I was just kiddin’ abut that. There are times when I get fed up with it though and I’d like to just hand it over to someone else.
I’m actually happy with it for the most part.
I do need to clean out the sidebar thogh.
This template doesn’t like IE a lot.
You’ve probably noticed that a lot of websites aren’t optimize for IE, or should I say IE isn’t optimized for most websites. Isn’t it sad that a major company with a seemingly unlimited R&D budget is bested by startups and small enterprises?
If enough people switch to Firefox or any of the other browsers, maybe that will be enough to force Microsoft to put out quality products that also are updated to the times in which we live.
You know, there are actually some bloggers using music on their site
Great post Jonathan!
John,
That sounds just like my blog. A nice orange border… really hard to look at, but it stands out in a crowd.
-4MySales
http://realtorleads.blogspot.com
That blog won’t die in a hunting accident.
Need my shades to read it.
thats how adding color can go wrong LOL!
You blog has more than just the border going for it in terms of standing out. The articles are fresh and jump out at you. Edgy. It compels me to look at it again and again.
Only thing I would say is to get your own domain name NOW so you won’t have to build up your blog stats all over again.
I’ve always hated that the IE crap screws things up. I’m not smart enough to fix that stuff so I always left it. Ugh, hate trying to please EVERYONE
That’s a nice piece of eye-opener for those who don’t want see their blogs turn peopel away. Good write-up, Jonathan. People should go over to Jonathan’s blog and see how things are done.
Regarding the colour scheme…
I once had this problem because I’d flipped the back and foreground colour: white letters on black background.
While I find it very calming to read like that, other people went a bit gaga. So I changed it back.
Strange how opinions differ even with the slightest changes.
well, its mostly, rapid eye focus, we did a study in class, the eye like to use usual ways to differ background and foreground switching them makes the brain interpret it different, little no how for ya!
Haha, thank you for that, you learn something new everyday. Strange though that I’ve never learnt this in my classes. I study communication and multimedia design, which deals with webdesign, for instance, and we had the whole colour psychology blahblah very nice stuff, but yea, either I was sleeping or it has not been said…
[...] people who don’t know what we’re talking about, check out these comments over at [...]
Here are a few others:
Hide the date/time of the post.
Make crazy statements then turn off comments.
Hide important nav items from view on inner pages.
User Blogger
Never moderate your comments.
I could go on…
i love you site, but the best way to get your content is through rss feed spare me the pain of actually having to go through the interface!
Ouch.
What would you change about it? I’d like to make it less painful for people to use. *L*
well, i would change having everything with text links and stuff like that, and brighten it up a little make it pleasant to visit, seems like a cold site! no offense though i love your content!! maybe i can help you, message me at my blog!
Yeah, I need to add a bit more oomph(moo spelled backwards, subliminal cow joke) to it. I’m not sure what I can do about the text links though. Did you mean the ones in the posts, or the sidebar?
i actually meant the side bar and places where you can integrate logos and buttons but don’t over the top, just the right amount!
@ 2x: One thing I noticed about your site (besides the new look), was the navigation. When I clicked on the ‘home’ button, I expected to go back to the blog home, but it was the ‘main’ home. So I just had to get used to that. Also, I noticed that when you go into a post, some of the info in the sidebar changes, meaning some things aren’t there anymore, like the top commentator list. It’s there in the blog home page but not in the post itself, it becomes ‘recent comments.’ Don’t know if this is intentional or not.
With your theme, you’re forced to scroll basically if you want to get anywhere. It doesn’t seem like the layout follows the natural eye movement of humans, you have to move up and down versus side-to-side. I kinda agree with mahdi about the colors, they are a lil dungeon-ish. I think YOU really like it, but you also have to think about what other people like too. I had to do that with my theme as well.
Well, there’s a lil mini review for ya. You just saved $200 bucks and still got it on John Cow dot com!
@ 2x: I really hate to post this in a separate comment, but I just noticed that some of your newer posts (like the PayPerPost and Harry Potter) have nofollow turned on, but it seems like the older ones do not, so you might want to look into that. I used SearchStatus for Firefox to highlight the nofollow links.
If they’re less than 2 days old they all have nofollow. That’s the plugin I use. Nofollow is removed after 2 days.
I’ll check to make sure the plugin is still working.
Thanks for the input. I’ll check the sidebar changing issues. I’ll also look into adding some color and adjusting the navigation.
The navigation is like it is because the blog was an after thought, it was originally just supposed to be for site news and announcements. I had no intention of becomming a blogger. If I were to set up a site today I’d put Wordpress in the main directory.
Seriously, I appreciate all the feedback, I can’t afford a review.
are you saying you don’t respect me?