The last few of blogs I visited in Blog Explosion have all had “make a donation” buttons; do these things make any sense?

One of the pages was so poorly designed that I can’t imagine that the content was any good. I couldn’t check because after scrolling 9-10 screens I hadn’t hit the content yet — the sidebar links had pushed the content all the way to the bottom of the page. Other sites are just the person going on and on about their kids, day, or Terry Shiavo, and while I respect your right to blog about whatever you want (I know I do), I wouldn’t expect donations based on the quality of content alone.

I know some bloggers (kotte) are doing well with donations, but at least they put serious effort into blogging as a vocation. If it’s just your hobby, I wouldn’t expect much. Maybe I’m wrong, if you’ve got a donation link on your site, and it’s making you money, leave me a comment and let me know. Who knows, if your content is good, I might just pony up a couple of bucks.

Note: I do use Amazon Associates for all of the stuff I talk about here, but at least people clicking on the links get something for their money.

I’ve been having a great time surfing Blog Explosion; there are some truly interesting and wise people blogging out there. It goes without saying that there are also some crackpot and opportunist blogs out there. But one of the really frustrating things are blogs that don’t give their audience a chance to discover their worth. Most of the advice in this post is specifically target to Blog Explosion users, but the principles apply to most websites. So without further ado, my list for improving your blog’s effectiveness:

1. Put actual content “above the fold”. In the newspaper business, “above the fold” is the part of the front page people see first and putting interesting headlines there sells newspapers. In blogging terms, this means putting interesting content on the first screenful of your blog. Have a look at how many headlines the New York Times and the Washington Post cram onto the first screen of their websites.

   While surfing Blog Explosion, I’ve run across several sites that don’t have any meaningful content above the fold. Between normal user interface junk (menubar, browser title and tab bars), the Blog Explosion banner, their own blog title, and a banner ad or two; some sites have absolutely nothing interesting to see without scrolling down the page. Sometimes I do scroll down, but if I’m surfing Blog Explosion, I’m more likely to let the 30 second timer expire and move on without bothering to check out the rest of the blog.

   Sometimes, the blog owner has a cool graphic or picture to attract my attention, but again they allow these elements to push the actual content off the first page of their site. I hate to say it, but there are a lot of blogs out there with great designs and pretty pictures; filling 50% of my screen with yours won’t necessarily keep me at your site. Of course, photoblogs are an exception to the large image rule; if the image is content then by all means – go large.

2. Make sure your page loads quickly; I’ve actually been to pages on Blog Explosion that don’t even load in 30 seconds! You can blame it on a slow connection, but I’m surfing on a broadband connection at home (1.5 Mbps), and a seriously fast (OC-12 – 622 Mbps) connection at work. If your blog takes more than 30 seconds to load, it’s pretty much not my fault. If your page doesn’t load before the 30-second timer expires, what are the chances that people will stick around?

   In most cases, the problem seems to be all of the cool toys people put on their front pages: virtual pets, wall clocks, weather widgets, etc. Last week’s blogroll outage was a good example of how external dependencies made lots of people’s blogs extremely slow. One external widget (from a dependable source) included in your blog won’t hurt your speed much, but let it get out of control, and it will start to impact your blog traffic.

   The same is true for music, images, and flash animation. Load too many large items into your first page and it might not even render in the first 30 seconds. You can help yourself here, by including the width and height properties for image tags and embedded movies; also using progressive jpeg gets something on screen faster, but it somewhat slows page loading.

3. Check your blog in at least two browsers (and preferably more). I’ve been to a few blogs that load poorly, or not at all, in some browsers. In a couple of cases, the whole design loaded, but there was no text on the blog at all, just the images and backgrounds. One or two sites brought up a blank page. Most of these websites are simply suffering from a slight HTML or CSS error, and are easy to fix, but the owner doesn’t even know there’s a problem. Viewing your blog in Firefox and Internet Explorer will at least ensure most web surfers can see your design, and that it looks the way you want. If you want to be really popular, make sure to check your site in Opera and on several Macintosh browsers as well.
4. Finally, if you’re going to include music on your page, provide a way to turn it off or mute it. I often browse while listening to music; if your blog starts playing music as well, the result is just noise. Give me an obvious way to turn off your music; I’ve often surfed off a site immediately to shut-off their music rather than even wait for the 30 seconds to expire.