Building & developing a blog with lots of readers is a very interesting journey.
At one point your blog will have a lot of traffic and interaction on the blog, this is also the time that you should think about optimizing user experience.
You may be very busy creating new content for yourself and not thinking about the factors that help readers stick longer to the blog.
Within the scope of this article, I will share some experience in optimizing user experience (UX) for your blog, this will help you increase good conversion rates and build expertise. a career in the eyes of readers.
Optimize space on the web to increase the reading experience
Users will feel uncomfortable when they see too many banner ads while they are viewing content on blogs.
Inserting banner ads to increase income is a good thing but you must consider leaving a space to help readers feel more comfortable.
Try looking at the interface of the website below, there are a lot of ads displayed around the content and this is distracting when someone is reading the article.
Below, is a website with very few ads displayed and it has a lot of white space, which will increase the focus when reading the content.
In addition, color is also one of the factors affecting people’s psychology, with white spaces that you create on the website will create a feeling of openness and freshness.
If you pay close attention to famous blogs in foreign countries and in the country, most of them create a lot of white space on the sides of the website to reduce bounce rate, good for SEO, and create professionalism in the eyes of readers.
Increase page loading speed
Over the past few years, Google has encouraged webmasters to focus on page load speed to create the best user experience.
There are many studies showing that users will exit your website if the download time is too long, this is a pretty bad thing.
If you don’t know whether your website’s loading speed is at a good enough level, then try Google’s Page Speed tool to check.
The test results from this tool are not 100% accurate because it is highly dependent on your storage server, testing equipment, and connection speed at the test, but it will tell you what factors. are displayed on the website that you can optimize (images, fonts, plugins, …).
To increase the download speed for the website, I have a few tips for you as follows:
[+] Choose a good data storage service:
If your website has traffic below 100,000 / month, you should use the hosting of Hawkhost, Stable Host. And for larger amounts of traffic, you can use the VPS of Vultr.
[+] Use a copyrighted theme with a good data structure, speeding up the loading of websites:
Mythemeshop, Thrivetheme, etc. are very popular with many bloggers, so you can refer them.
[+] Use the plugin to reduce the image size when uploading to the website:
WP Smush, Short Pixel, … is one of the free plugins that help compress images quite well, if you have the budget, you can use the paid version to be optimized. maximum.
[+] Limit the use of many unnecessary plugins:
Your website will probably be slowed down if you use too many incompatible or unnecessary shortcodes, do not try to create a website with colorful colors but instead do it. It’s minimalistic and easier on the eyes.
[+] Insert Google Analytics, and Facebook Messenger code under the footer instead of the header:
If you put these lines in the header, it will preload the main content and make the loading time slower.
Highlight links in the post
Every time you insert a link in the article and want users to really click through it to read more, highlight it more than the usual content.
Influence your readers’ eyesight by underlining links and creating a striking color so they understand that this is a link pointing to a new article.
You should also pay attention to the title of the link, although it sounds simple, it makes a lot of decisions about whether users want to click through to see more or not.
Most long titles will be more clicked by users, but placing titles like “here”, “click here”, and… will also have a very high click rate if you put it on your own. course and contextual content.
In addition, use the “Open link in a new tab” attribute to open a new tab when someone clicks through the link so that when they return to read the previous article, it will display correctly in the content they are reading.
Use bullet points to express (bullet points)
One of the content display formats that I use most often is bullet points, bullet points suitable for presenting brief listing content.
They will help users quickly get the necessary information without having to go through content that is too long.
In addition, when readers look at the article will feel local and very clear in the content presentation, this is also an element of professionalism for the article that a blogger needs to do.
Each WordPress theme or website creation platform will have a different icon, but I love the simplicity and not too colorful, so I usually use the default circle of the theme.
If you want to change the bullet point colors and icons, you should learn more about HTML / CSS.
Clear font, easy to read
Choosing a clear font and increasing it to a moderate size makes it easy for readers to read the information on your blog.
A few popular fonts that I find most websites are currently using:
- Arial
- Helvetica
- Times New Roman
- Tahoma
- Montserrat
- …
In terms of font size, you should adjust it to be moderate, not too big or too small. Typically webmasters will choose a font size of 16px to 18px to display the content.
Handling 404 Not Found pages
“404 Not Found” is a situation in which your article cannot be found or does not exist on the website.
A 404 error indicates that the content has been removed from the website or doesn’t exist
Most people will be able to find posts from your blog via Google or social networks, which will be annoying if they click on the link and display a 404 Not Found error page.
In terms of SEO, Google extremely dislikes websites with many URLs that have 404 Not found and they often warn you to need to redirect it to another URL with better content.
To know if your website has a 404 Not found error, you should visit the Google Webmaster Tool to view reports from Google.
In addition, you can set all 404 Not Found pages to automatically switch back to the homepage thanks to the support plugins such as Redirection, All 404 Redirect to Homepage, …
Some plugins help you redirect 404 not found pages to your homepage
Place the CTA button clearly
Readers on your blog are familiar with tracking the most intuitive signals in the content to identify the information they are looking for.
The CTA (Call to action) buttons on the article are clearly presented with a strong appeal that will help readers understand the navigation of your website.
2 notes to help you place a high clickthrough CTA button:
- Color: color is one of the factors that influences CTR ratios, experiment with different colors to find the best results.
- Content in the CTA button: try strong appeal content such as “buy now”, “pre-order receive 50% promotion”, and “genuine purchase”, … to promote the click behavior of Readers.
If you do not know how to create CTA buttons, you can refer to some of the following support plugins:
- WordPress Shortcodes Plugin — Shortcodes Ultimate.
- WordPress Button Plugin MaxButtons.
- Forget About Shortcode Buttons.
- WP Shortcode by MyThemeShop.
- …
Clear navigation bar & help readers easily find the item of interest
The navigation menu on the website is a tool to help customers have an overview of the products and services that your blog is selling.
Typically, webmasters often direct customers to the landing page to collect emails or call users to take an action such as: try their products for free, download free content charges, … and then send emails to take care of.
Here is an example of Rankmath.com website, this is a Mythemeshop Onpage SEO optimization plugin that is being highly appreciated by many webmasters.
In the main menu bar, they created a prominent CTA button and focused users on downloading the plugin to use for the website.
Try to build a clear navigation bar on your blog, this is a very effective way to collect data and help readers quickly perform the actions you require. (like Fanpage, join mini-games, download ebooks, subscribe to channels, buy products, …)
Divide content into short paragraphs of 3-4 lines long
Most users today use mobile devices, when you compose content for websites, a line displayed on a computer is 2-3 lines long when displayed on a mobile device, so it needs to be down the line. reasonable and limit the writing to long.
Each paragraph should have a length of 3-4 lines when displayed on mobile devices is reasonable, some special paragraphs can be longer to express the ideas in the most smooth way.
If the content is too long and does not break the line, the reader will have to regulate a lot, leading to eye strain, then it may exit your website.
Use images flexibly
Sometimes readers want to find images related to statistics in the form of infographics or clear images of a product to easily make a buying decision.
Try to use the images placed in the article in a logical way, related to the content to provide more information that the text could not express.
You can take your own photos or design your own photos to make them more unique and new than blogs, or go to sites that offer paid images to get quality images that are relevant. with the content of the article.
Conclusion
Optimizing the blog user experience is good for SEO and increases conversion rates, so pay attention to creating a good experience to keep your readers engaged.
Pay more attention to the experience of reading content on mobile devices, because users use mobile devices more than devices like PC, and MAC.
Above are the basic ways to help you optimize the user experience on the blog, hoping to help you.
