30 Blog Design Tips Part 4

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24. Plugins
Only use plugins or widgets that enhance or support your content or that help build your community and deepen your relationship with your subscribers. Avoid using those that distract from your content. Here’s a list of widgets currently installed on this blog:

• Akismet - Checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not.
• Breadcrumb Navigation XT - Adds a breadcrumb navigation showing the visitor’s path to their current location.
• Get Recent Comments - Display the most recent comments or trackbacks with your own formatting in the sidebar.
• FeedBurner FeedSmith - This plugin detects all ways to access your original WordPress feeds and redirects them to your FeedBurner feed so you can track every possible subscriber.
• JAW Popular Posts Widget - Adds a sidebar widget that shows the most popular posts. Requires the Popularity Contest plugin.
• Limit Posts - Limits the displayed text length on the index page entries and generates a link to a page to read the full content if its bigger than the selected maximum length.
• MyBlogLog Widget - Adds MyBlogLog widget to your blog.
• Popularity Contest - This will enable ranking of your posts by popularity; using the behavior of your visitors to determine each post’s popularity.
• ShareThis - Let your visitors share a post/page with others. Supports e-mail and posting to social bookmarking sites.
• Top Commentators Widget - Adds a sidebar widget to show the top commentators in your WP site.
• What Would Seth Godin Do - Displays a custom welcome message to new visitors.

25. External links
Links to other sites should be kept to a minimum. I recommend none above the fold unless they are to your own products. You will notice that there are no external links immediately above the fold other than those which might appear in my post area.

Links to pages on your blog or site should open in the same browser window. External links and even links to your own products should open in another browser window. You want your blog to remain open in your reader’s browser.

26. Comments
You want to encourage participation so leave the “follow attribute” but just limit the number of comments displayed. I recommend a top comments widget over simply listing the last comment posted. This rewards the more active readers by having their link displayed on your page.

27. Ads
Don’t use them. I hate visiting blogs full of ads. When I see a site full of ads I navigate away. Unless they are for your own products I would not recommend and even then they should be subtle.

Obviously this depends on the type of blog your creating. If you are reviewing other peoples products, you are an affiliate marketer or you make a living from adsense then this is different. If it is for your personal blog limit them and place them below the fold. This is just my personal view.

28. New Visitors
Don’t welcome everyone at the top of your page or in your header. My tip is to use the What Would Seth Godin Do? plugin. I have mine set to welcome new visitors on their first 3 visits though some might say 7 times might be best. Test and find out what works best for you. If you use this plugin, encourage new visitors to sign up to your list or feed.

29. Exit Popup
I don’t have one of these at present but this is something perhaps you should consider. I know many marketers who say that this substantially increases their opt-in rate. Offer something of value in return for your reader’s email address. Usually a product that you could get away charging money for. Offer it for free. Be careful though as a lot of people do not like popups of any kind.

30. Stats
You are proud of your blog right? Display an Alexa Traffic Rank Button on your blog, don’t be afraid to show your stats even if they aren’t that great at present. I’ve heard the act of putting this button on your page alone actually helps increase your ranking! Let your readers know how popular your blog is. Since you are always going to be working on improving those stats then let everyone see just how well you are doing. This is also a great personal motivator to drive traffic to your pages.

I hope you have enjoyed this series of posts as much as I enjoyed writing them and find these tips to be of use when thinking about starting your own blog.

Is my blog perfect? No way! But it does adhere to most of the above criteria and will adhere to all over the coming weeks and this will give my blog the best chance of success.

Some of you may disagree with some of the points above. The point is you have to do what’s right for your business and niche. There are no hard and fast rules but use these ideas as a guideline and you won’t go far wrong.

I’d love to hear your thoughts below. Don’t forget if you enjoyed this post then please feel free to share.

30 Blog Design Tips Part 3

Welcome to part 3!

15. Logo
A large logo or image placed in your header takes up valuable space on your page and increases it’s load time. Keep it small and simple or discard it altogether and rely on the power of your title alone. Your site is all about providing visitors with good content not showing how shiny your header graphic is.

16. Photo
You might be drop dead gorgeous but people don’t really care too much about that! They care more about what you can do for them. You might think they want to see your pretty face every time they load your page but I assure you that most people are looking for content. If you do add a photo, keep it small. My advice is add an about me page instead for the more curious types.

17. Links
Make your links look like links! Blue underlined is my preference. If you asked someone to describe what a hyperlink looks like (in fact I checked this by asking my girlfriend!) most would say blue, underlined text. Underlined isn’t absolutely necessary nor is the colour blue but anything that increases the chance of your links being clicked can only be a good thing.

Also make them interesting to hover over and click. You’ll notice mine change to red. Red is known to encourage people to take action. Do not overdo the colours though. Remember support not distract.

18. Fonts
Fonts should be easy to read. I recommend black on white, I don’t recommend justifying your text as this makes it harder to read. For your body text I recommend Arial or Verdana. For titles I recommend Tahoma or Arial. As far as font size I recommend 12pt Arial for body text. The font you are reading is set at 12pt Arial.

19. Content area
I recommend your content section (your post area) is not too wide. You don’t want people to have to move their head from side to side to try and read your text. Mine is set to 550px which I think is optimal - you might disagree, see what works for you.

20. White space
White space around your text is very important and makes it much easier to read. Pay particular attention to line spacing. This is something that is often overlooked. If your lines are too close together your text will be harder to read. Too far apart and this gives the perception that your work is a little light on content. My body font is 12pt Arial and my lines are usually spaced between 17px and 20px.

21. Background Colour
Have a high contrast background colour so that your eye is drawn into the page and towards your content. I opted for dark gray but dark blues and blacks work well. The rule of thumb is, as long as there is good contrast between your posts and your background this will make your blog easier to read.

22. Colours
Keep these to a minimum. Nice blues, fresh greens, anything that looks clean and supports your content without distracting from it. In other words, nothing too bright or gaudy.

23. Theme
I’m not going to recommend specific themes here but choose one that has a layout that you like. Something clean and simple. Don’t worry too much about dimensions and colours, you can always tweak the code if you are comfortable doing this. Find one that adheres to most of the principals in these posts. You can always edit it to your liking afterwards.

The 4th and final part of this series will be posted on Friday. See you then!

30 Blog Design Tips Part 2

Welcome to part 2 of my blog design series.

7. Content
Don’t just regurgitate what you’ve already seen, try to be different and add value to your site. The better the quality of your content the deeper the relationship with your readers. Make your blog a place that you would want to visit. Not one that talks about how great you are! People visit your blog ultimately because they want to learn from you - not about you.

Let the power of your content do the talking for you. Content over design not design over content. They don’t exist in isolation but design must support content not distract from it.

8. Personality
You want to inject your own personality into your work and this is really important with regard to building a relationship with your subscribers. You can do this through your writing style and by letting readers get to know more of the real you by sharing some things from your personal life. I’m not talking about disclosing everything but let people get to know more about the real you.

You can express yourself creatively on your personal pages but for your business pages keep it simple. You can do this without the use of lots of fancy graphics which only detract from your overall message. You might also think you have a great sense of humour but what one person finds amusing another might not. I’m not talking about being bland but I know I’ve been turned off from sites where you have to wade through an author’s “amusing” anecdotes to find useful information.

9. Categories
I would consider using nested categories like you will see in my nav bar. This allows you to organize your content into much more specific categories and enable people to find relevant content much more quickly. Name your categories appropriately. Keep them succinct yet descriptive. 1-2 words ideally.

10. Permalinks
I use the format http://johnszram.com/post_title. I like to keep my titles really descriptive. You can tell what this post is about from it’s web address. I don’t worry about writing for the search engines. My aim is to provide you with quality information. I might lose out on some traffic short term but I’m in this for the long haul and my relationship with my readers is more important.

11. Search
As your blog grows it is going to become increasingly important for people to be able to find content quickly and easily. Provide a search box and also provide an archive section and links to your archived pages. I don’t recommend a calendar it takes up too much space and why would you click on it if you don’t know what content you are going to find on that page. A search box is better and much more targeted.

12. Returning Visitors
Don’t forget your returning visitors. You know that you need to build relationships online so don’t forget your current readership. You want to make sure that returning visitors have a great experience too and aren’t pestered by your ads or welcome messages. Return visitors should easily find your new posts as they should be displayed above the fold.

13. RSS Feed
Provide a button for your RSS feed. I’d recommend signing up with FeedBurner and running your feed through their service since you get access to countless extra features that will improve the user experience. This is something I will be blogging about at a later date.

14. Social Bookmarking
Make it easy for people to share your content. Provide links so your readers can Digg, Stumble and bookmark your posts. My advice is add the ShareThis widget. There are countless others that do a similar job but this is the one I find works best. I’ll be talking about the specific plugins I use on Friday.

If you find this post to be useful please hit the ShareThis button below now and spread the word! Parts 3 and 4 to follow.

30 Blog Design Tips Part 1

I recently made some changes to my blog and I thought I’d share with you some things I think you should consider when creating a blog of your own. All this week I will be sharing my blog design tips. I hope you find them to be useful. First a couple of prerequisites:

i. Know the purpose of your site
Many beginners know they need a blog but many are unsure why. Your Internet Business blog is not simply to attract traffic from the search engines but to build a thriving community. It’s function is to provide great content, convert readers into subscribers and to promote your own products. If you follow this guiding principle you can’t go far wrong.

ii. Keep your target audience in mind
It is important to think about who your site is aimed at. Who is your target audience? Which type of reader are you trying to reach? Keep these things in mind when designing your blog.

OK, let’s get started with your 30 Blog Design Tips:

1. Opt-in
I am starting with this as it is extremely important to convert readers into subscribers. Your conversion rate won’t be as high as it would be for a squeeze page since a lot of your traffic will be less targeted, but an opt-in box on your blog is important all the same. It needs to positioned in a prominent position and you need to give people a compelling reason to opt-in to your list. Ideally offer something in return for doing so - a free report, or perhaps a free video.

2. Header
You don’t want your header to be too big. I’ve seen pages where it takes up over half of the page above the fold! This means that visitors immediately have to scroll to find the information they are looking for. You want it to catch the eye of first time visitors but not distract too much from your content or annoy returning visitors.

3. Title
First time visitors need to know what your blog is about quickly or they will navigate away. Tell them in your header with a descriptive title. No need to welcome visitors here, simply let them know in a short sentence what they can expect from your blog. e.g. Internet Business Blog by John Szram. Don’t forget you can use a popular keyword here too. e.g. “Internet Business Blog” “Make Money Online” “Hype Free Marketing” etc

4. Navigation
Your site should be easy to navigate. This is really important. Visitors should not have to spend long searching around for information. I prefer to have my navigation bar at the top of the page as I think this looks better. I have not tested with a side navbar however, and this might depend on the rest of your layout.

5. Sidebar
I like a 3 column layout as I like the option of using different sized widgets. Some things look better narrow and some in a wider context. However, above the fold I like to keep things simple and only provide links to my content and opt-in Remember your blog is all about providing great content and turning visitors into subscribers.

6. Footer
Here you can place your copyright information. Keep this simple. Place a link back to the homepage of your blog so that once a reader has read your posts they can quickly navigate back.

These are just some basic tips. Look out for Part 2 tomorrow. Parts 3 and 4 will be posted on Wednesday and Friday this week. If you wish to be notified subscribe to my blog announcement list and make sure you don’t miss out.

Take care, John Szram.

Clean Up Your Inbox With Google Reader

There are many ways you can collect, organize and read your RSS Feeds. My personal favorite is the google RSS reader or Google Reader for short.

If you haven’t already done so you’ll need to sign up for a Google Account. I can’t stress how important it is to have a Google account since they offer so many different services that you will make use of in your Internet Business. e.g. Google Adwords, Google Analytics and Gmail. Today we’re going to look at Google Reader.

Once you have a Google Account you need to register for Google Reader here http://reader.google.com/

Once you sign in you’ll be presented with this screen:

Watch the welcome video, take the tour and take time to familiarize yourself with Google Reader’s features.

Google Reader constantly checks your favorite blogs and news sites for new content.

One particularly nice feature is the shared items page where if you see a post that you think others can benefit from you can click share and it will be featured on your own shared items page. There is even a feed for this page so you can share all your favorite marketers blog posts in one place.

See my example page John Szram’s Shared Items

Google reader is totally free and works in most modern browsers. You can even check your RSS Feeds on your mobile. Beats sifting through your inbox or visiting all those blogs everyday to see if anything new has been posted.

I love things that save me time, money or both and this is a great time saver which also happens to be free.

Once you’ve signed up don’t forget to add my blog to your reader!

8 Tips To Increase Productivity

Does your head spin when you are told to Take Action? Here are 8 quick tips to help you increase productivity instead.

1. Less Consuming, More Producing
Are you devouring all the latest info products one after another and not producing any products of your own? Ask yourself if you are more of a consumer of information products or more of a producer?

Stop concentrating on what everyone else is producing and focus on what you want to achieve. You are going to find it much easier to make money online if you start to develop your own product line. Only use other products to support where you already plan to take your Internet business.

2. Only Buy Relevant Products
Do you buy everything your favorite guru produces just because it’s their latest product? Or do you stop to consider if you really need it? Does it fit in to your current business plans? Will it help you achieve your goals or distract you from them?

Only buy products that are relevant to the goals you have for your Internet business. A product that helps you achieve something faster, better and more easily is good. A product that teaches you a brand new strategy that is separate from your current business, whilst not necessarily bad, might only distract you from acheiving greater success in your existing business. Put simply, know how you will use the product before you buy.

3. Take Immediate Action
When you buy your products do you skim through them or do you read slowly so you fully absorb and understand the concepts? Whichever method you use isn’t really important. What you need to ask yourself is, did you take any action on what you just learned?

If you don’t apply your new found knowledge, the chances are you might never apply it. You might find yourself back on the Internet marketing carousel spinning from sales page to sales page looking for the magic product that is going to work for you. The truth is, if you don’t take action, the best product in the world won’t work for you.

4. Perfection = Inaction
Now that you’ve decided to create your own products you’re not trying to create the perfect product are you? One that is grammatically correct in every way, formatted perfectly and a cover that Leonardo DaVinci would be proud of?

Yes we want our products to be of a great standard but we aren’t concerned with perfection. I could show you a whole host of top selling Info products full of spelling mistakes, grammatical errors and badly designed covers. The point is they are selling and that’s what we want. Your product doesn’t have to be perfect it simply needs to solve a problem and has a hungry crowd of buyers ready to pay for your answer.

5. Keep it Simple Stupid!
Are you trying to come up with a one size fits all 300 page report that covers every topic you can think of concerning Internet Marketing or every aspect of your niche? Are you trying to create a product that appeals to everyone?

Ask yourself what would be easier to read, one huge 300 page manual or Ten 30 page reports each covering a single topic. Which do you think would be easier to sell?

6. Make a Plan
Do you know what you’d like to accomplish today? What about tomorrow, this week or by the end of the month? Have you got any idea at all or are you just winging it?

You need to be disciplined and make a plan of action. If you don’t like the word action… just make a plan! You might want to think about keeping a notepad on your desk somewhere where you can refer to it easily and update quickly if need be. At the end of the day you can write what you want to accomplish the following day. At the end of the week plan out what you want to achieve the following week. You’ll find you accomplish much more if you schedule your tasks.

7. Stop Checking Your Email!
You switch on your computer and what’s the first thing you do? Rush off to your inbox to see if you have any messages! You read a message from your friend who asks you to check out a great new site! You run along to the site and your friend is right there’s some really great stuff there!

What have you done? Immediately you’ve wasted 30 mins or maybe an hour or more of your time. If you are going to check your mail in the morning make sure you set aside a specific time to do this. This time must not eat into the hours you put in to working on your business. Alternatively check your email at the end of your working day. At least that way you can be confident you’ll get the work done without distraction.

8. Overcome Fear of Failure
You’ve taken the first step and you’re creating your first product but in the back of your mind you keep wondering if it’s really good enough? You tell yourself that you hope it doesn’t fail. You’ve poured your heart and soul into this project and you can not let it fail!

First of all you shouldn’t be betting your success on only one product you need to create multiple products. Secondly failure is nothing to be feared. If you haven’t failed I’m willing to bet you haven’t made much progress either. If a product fails the only thing to fear is not learning from your mistakes. Failure can provide you with some great data for improving your next product. Don’t be afraid to fail - be afraid of having no failures.

I’ll leave you with this quote from Thomas Watson Sr. (founder of IBM):

“The fastest way to succeed is to double your failure rate”

Post YouTube Videos Into Your Wordpress Blog

If you have a Wordpress blog, like this one, you may encounter a slight problem when adding YouTube videos to your posts.

You might already know that you should paste the embed code from your YouTube video into the code section when creating a post. However, if you then return to the visual editor the code becomes garbled and the video doesn’t display.

How do you do this without installing yet another plugin? Here’s what you need to do:

Step 1 - Write and format your post as usual bearing in mind where you want to place the video. Hit Save.

Step 2 - Turn off the visual editor: In your blog’s admin area, click on “Users” followed by “Your Profile”. You should see the following:

You need to uncheck the box next to “use the visual editor when writing” as shown above, then click “Update Profile”.

Step 3 - Paste the YouTube embed code into your post. When you return to edit your post, instead of the option of either visual or code views you will see a window like this:

Simply paste the YouTube embed code into the appropriate position of your post as shown above and hit publish for your post to go live.

Step 4 - Switch the visual editor back on

Please be aware that if you return to edit this post at any stage, you will need to turn off the visual editor before doing so or the code will become garbled once again and you will need to re-enter your YouTube embed code.

An alternative method is to write and format your post as normal then at the very end, switch to code view, paste your embed code in and hit publish without returning to the visual editor. Again bearing in mind if you wish to return to edit this post at a later date you will need to turn off the visual editor before doing so.

Let me know if you think your method is easier or maybe convince me of the merits of installing yet another plugin!

No Hay While The Sun Shines

I got up this morning and was pleasantly surprised when I looked out my window. Bright blue skies, not a cloud to be seen. I was nearly blinded by the sunlight actually! Living in the UK it’s a genuine surprise when the weather is on your side.

So… today I’m going to push my laptop to one side & head out. Probably hook up with my sister, go for a drive then settle down at one of our favourite haunts and catch up with the latest gossip over an oversized cappucino.

There was a time when my reclusive self would plough on through with the task at hand, yet feel little pangs of guilt for not heading outside. Now I believe you’ve really got to make the most of days like these. Especially since we only catch a handful here in England. It’s still cold mind. Fresh actually… just the way I like it. Perfect!

I hope the weather’s good where you are. I hope you’re not stuck in an office somewhere daydreaming about making millions online! “Not at all John, just enough to take me out of the office!” Well, keep working hard at this Internet Marketing thing, taking massive action and there’s no reason why you can’t achieve your dreams. You will do it.

One step at a time though right? Right now, my “sun-swathed” caffeine hit is beckoning…

I hope you have a great day!

JohnSzram.com Facelift

I’ve been meaning to redesign my blog for a while now and finally I got round to it! I have been tinkering in the background for a couple of days and I must say I’m really happy with the way it looks now.

I was finding it increasingly difficult to find room to include all the things that I wanted to using the two column layout, it was more difficult to navigate than I liked and there was virtually no space to include stuff “above the fold”.

However, I liked my original blog design so I’ve tried to keep it in line with that so hopefully it still retains it’s famililiar feel!

You can now see my recent posts without having to scroll, I have the ability to add more useful widgets and I’ve also got a new navbar across the top which will display links to my pages for easier access.

I’m undecided whether to keep the grey subnavbar which displays my post catagories, I’d like to hear your thoughts on that please.

I feel that the blog is more fit for purpose now but more importantly I hope you like the improvements, I’d really love to hear what you think!

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