Make sure your site is easy to navigate

I run a number of blogrolls and as I visit the sites that have requested that they be added to my various blogrolls – the do follow list, Green Thumb Sunday, I am Canadian Blogroll and the Toronto Bloggers blogroll just to name a few – I get a chance to examine the design and structure of a lot of blogs.

I must say, I get most frustrated when I’m looking at some of the sites that want to join the do follow blogroll because of course I have to check to see if their comments follow or not.

Here are a few things that make my job of checking sites a little more difficult:

A lot of links or ads where the comment link is located:

It’s very hard to find the comment link when it’s buried within a number of links requesting that visitors social bookmark the post.

If people can’t find the link to leave you a comment it’s no wonder that you have very few comments. Just think if the comment link was at the top of the post, or on it’s own line below the post how many more comments you’d get?

People that have their comments closed to registered members:

Well for one – if you want to be on the do follow blogroll you need to open your comments up so that your visitors can get a link that follows when they leave a comment.

A lot of people just wont sign up to leave a comment. Believe me, you’ll get a lot more comments if they are open to all.

Sites that have a few or several posts on the main page but no way of traveling through the site to see older posts:

Get some navigation on your site! If I like your site or if I’m searching for elusive comments so that I can clear your site for the do follow blogroll I want to be able to travel through your site easily.

If you have archives set up by date your visitors will have to click on a number of links just to read a few posts if you don’t post multiple times each day.

Give me a way to get to the single post page:

Some sites are set up so that you can click the title of the blog post and that will take you to the single page for that post where you can comment on the post. That’s great. I love sites that are set up that way.

My problem is with sites where you can only get into the post to leave a comment by clicking on the permanent link, if you can find it see my first point, or comment link.

On blogger sites sometimes clicking on the comment link takes you to the blogger comment form. I don’t always want that. It’s much nicer to read comments on your blog than on the blogger comment page. Especially if the comment form is a pop up that’s too small to show the whole comment. I’ve run into several of those lately and you can’t adjust the size so you can’t read the full comment.

My suggestion to all is for you to take a look at a few other blogs and compare the features on other blogs to the features on your own.

Is your site easy to navigate in a number of ways?

Are important things such as the ability to get to the comment area clearly visible so that your visitors can find them quickly and easily in order to tell you how much they love your post?

If your site doesn’t have some of the features that I’ve mentioned and you want them, but don’t know how to add them on your own do a Google search with the name of your blogging platform in the search term as well as what you want to learn how to do.

for example:

add navigation links to blogger blog?

I actually just used that search term and it brought up a lot of helpful results.

I believe that the easier your site is to navigate the longer a visitor might stay and the more likely it will be that they will take the time to leave a comment if your content is good. Test my theory, try it for yourself.

13 Responses to “Make sure your site is easy to navigate”

Matthias Köbrich (2 comments.) Says:
July 12th, 2007 at 4:26 am

what about my blog? i´m always wondering if the background image is large enough and if it builds up fast enough. is it better to leave the background black or does this look unfriendly.
thanks for further comments/emails on that issue.
J (0 comments.) Says:
July 12th, 2007 at 8:06 am

any advice for my new page. Do you think its easy to navigate? workout
Laane (1 comments.) Says:
July 12th, 2007 at 2:52 pm

You’re so right about those blogs that need rehistering first.
Especially those that need you to become a member of something you don’t want to be a member of.

I’m working on accessibility of olders posts.

have a nice day!
Tricia (12 comments.) Says:
July 12th, 2007 at 5:39 pm

Maitthias I found that your site loaded quickly, it’s easy to find the comment link or to click on the post title in order to scroll and then comment, and you have navigation at the end of your page to get to older posts. As you can tell from my post those are all things that I appreciate when it comes to navigating a site easily.

Your background image – the title of your site right? loads quickly. I do find that sites that have a black background and white or almost white text are a little harder to read than some of the other sites but the color choice of your blog is yours to make.

I think your text is not a true white so it’s not that hard to read.

If you wanted to make it even a tiny bit easier to read you could experiment with your text colors trying a very light gray as this some times makes sites with black backgrounds a lot easier to read. As I said though, your site isn’t too hard to read as you might have optimized the text color already.
Tricia (12 comments.) Says:
July 12th, 2007 at 6:09 pm

J your new site has all the features I like – clickable titles, easy to find comment link, open comments (not closed to registered members only)and you can navigate easily though the site using the older post link at the bottom of the page. Your site also loads fairly quickly for me too.

The only major suggestion I would make would be to individualize your site. Your blog theme looks to be the standard plain blogger template. Modify it by putting a unique header on it, or find a template that suites the style of your blog and modify it to make it your own style and or pay someone to make a custom theme.

Having said that – yeah I know I haven’t done much with the theme I’m using on this blog but certainly on my more personal blogs I’ve customized the themes to be more “me”.
Tiffany (1 comments.) Says:
July 13th, 2007 at 11:35 am

Wow! I never thought of all that. I sure hope my blog is ok! Now I am worried. lol.
Tricia (12 comments.) Says:
July 13th, 2007 at 3:50 pm

Tiffany yes your blogs ok. I actually like the colors of your theme too.
Affiliate Marketing (1 comments.) Says:
July 15th, 2007 at 2:23 pm

I couldn’t agree more… Fantastic post Tricia! My TechZi blog complies with most of the rules you’ve thrown in – except perhaps the loading time quandry.
SEO Specialist (1 comments.) Says:
July 15th, 2007 at 8:54 pm

These are great tips. I just found a new blog template that I think is pretty good. The only dislike I have is the header isn’t clickable
Steven (2 comments.) Says:
July 16th, 2007 at 11:00 pm

Good information. A lack of navigation will definitely lead people to leave a site in a hurry.
work from home dad (1 comments.) Says:
July 17th, 2007 at 8:25 pm

I fully agree with your post to an extent. As a rookie blogger I had a a hard time editing the templates that wordpress provides to show..comments, calendar (links to previous posts) and setting the number of posts to display before archiving.

Some templates just aren’t as user friendly as they could be..but they are free and I guess we can’t be choosers!
simonn (1 comments.) Says:
July 25th, 2007 at 9:43 am

this is very key to keeping people on your site and return visitors too
jj-momscashblog (0 comments.) Says:
January 19th, 2010 at 9:38 pm

I 100% agree, in fact I am just getting ready to publish a post that I’ve been working on today. I was undecided as to what my title would be so I tried some keywords came upon your blog with this post. Our ideas are similar and I feel the same as you and have run into a couple of blogs lately that have really tried my patience. After reading their post and liking or wanting to add my 2 cents in a comment then to find that they are requiring me to sign in with passwords or whatever!! I just will leave that blog and move on. Thanks, nice blog and I’ll be back for more. jj