Blog User Experience: Optimizing UX Checklist

In the world of blogging, people tend to focus a lot on the artistic side of their writing. That’s, of course, not a bad thing. You need to create engaging posts for your readers, work on your writing, come up with catchy headlines, and find a niche you’re good at.

However, it’s not the only thing you need to consider when it comes to creating a blog that your visitors and readers will enjoy. You need to consider the whole user experience on your blog to find out what you are lacking, and that goes beyond good grammar and tight sentences.

What is User Experience?

User experience is the whole process of someone visiting your blog and interacting with your posts. At the same time, it involves a variety of other things like function, usability, design, and branding.

Your single blog post isn’t isolated from your whole blog and your brand – it comes with a set of integrated and related experiences. These components all need to work seamlessly to grab people’s attention, spark their curiosity and keep them on your blog.

Yes, your posts need to be written with clarity and insightfulness, but how someone reaches and accesses your blog is also a vital part of the whole experience. In a lot of cases, blogs fail because they focus only on the writing and reading part of the experience while the other aspects are missing.

Here are some of the things you need to consider.

What is Your Font Size?

Yes, it might sound like an obvious question, but this small detail is crucial for a blog. People need to be comfortable while reading your blogs. If your fonts are too small, readers won’t be able to enjoy your content. Some will even give up on reading if the typography is too hard to read.

There’s no definitive rule on font size, but in general, your fonts should be from 12 to 16. Consult your developers as well to ensure that your blog adjusts properly to mobile users or people using smaller screens.

Navigation is Important

Many bloggers expect to drive traffic from social media or ads, hoping that people will click directly on posts and read them on the spot. However, these visitors will likely want to check out other content on your blog as well. For instance, they may go back to your homepage to see what else you have to offer.

Organic traffic lands on your homepage anyway, and that’s where navigation is crucial. You need a navigation bar that will let people get what they need and navigate your whole blog.

In most cases, a navigation bar works best on top, where you can add different post categories and other sections of your blog. Also, consider adding a site search functionality because most people are looking for specific things, and this feature can help them do this quickly.

Too Many Options Can Backfire

When it comes to user experience, less means more. Bloggers get stuck on conversion rate optimization practices and add dozens of links, banners, and buttons on their pages. This cluttered design will only make people want to get out of there as soon as possible.

In general, you should stick to giving readers two options at most. For example, you can call them to sign up for future updates or provide a button that redirects them to the latest post. Too many things on-screen clutter space and make your blog look cheap.

Signage is Very Important

When people are browsing through your blog, they need to understand everything that’s going on. Apart from intuitive navigation, layout, and responsive web design, you should also add a couple of other things. First of all, add a featured image displayed under each blog post.

It will make the posts look more appealing and offer a visual aid to help readers digest the content. Consider adding counters for likes, comments, and views – it’s a great social proofing method that validates your posts.

In the end, remember to include catchy excerpt summaries. Their role is to cause interest and make people understand better what a post is about.

Bottom Line

These are some of the essentials of user experience on blogs. What’s even better is that you can adjust them on your own without anyone’s help. The user experience is highly valuable for a blog and can be the difference between someone converting or clicking away. Don’t sleep on UX.