Let Readers Read In Peace
30
The first step to increasing readership with design is to draw attention to the article. The second, equally important step, is to keep attention on the article.
Continuity is the idea that when the eye is following a line, it will continue to follow that line until something else draws its attention away, or breaks the line.
We can apply this principle to a blog post as well. When a user begins reading, we want them to continue following the article down. There should be nothing to steal their attention from the column of text.
Ensuring that their focus on the article is not interrupted allows them to more fully, and easily, immerse themselves in the words. In return, you may gain a new subscriber or comment.
Achieving Continuity
The thin of it is to weed out distractions. Beyond that, there are 3 good practices which you should adhere to.
- Vertically consistent background. Blog headers and footers are typically very busy, designed, affairs. However, from the top of the actual article to the bottom, the background should be consistent. There is no need for fancy designs under the text, or for your sidebar background to stop half way (Good example: The new ProBlogger design. Have a look at the consistent design behind the articles).
- Short sidebar. A short sidebar in terms of content, has its advantages. The sooner the flow of all of that distracting material ceases, the sooner I can focus solely on the article. If I’ve read a couple of hundred words of your essay, the last thing I want is your MyBlogLog widget grabbing my eye at the conclusion because I recognize my own avatar.
- No animations. Animations, by their very nature, draw attention on a static page. Don’t let them do this when you don’t want them to. Samir Bharadwaj has a very memorable design on his blog, but he has a little image which scrolls down the page with you. When reading a post, that inescapable picture is always an unnecessary distraction.
Have a look at your own blog. What pulls you away from your articles?
One good way of testing this is to write an article full of dummy text. Read the text from start to finish, and take note of everything that causes you to look away during the reading.
Enjoy this post? You should follow me on Twitter!
About the Author
Michael Martin
Michael Martin is the founder of Pro Blog Design. He works as a freelance web designer, loves WordPress, and has an unhealthy addiction to smilies.
Related Posts
-
Why Post Images Should be on the Left
10th October 2007
-
Format Your Posts For Readability
31st August 2007
-
What Length Should A Post Excerpt Be?
6th September 2007
-
How To Make Your Blog Printer Friendly
9th August 2007
As a ‘wannabe’ designer, I constantly find myself looking back at past designs (maybe even a week after creation) and thinking, what was I thinking when I did that?
Interestingly, it’s not only a design packed with every widget under the sun that’s distracting, but a really appealing design can be distracting too. I don’t if it’s just because I look at nice designs and ponder over how it was achieved, but, I visit sites like WebDesignerWall and find it hard to concentrate on the articles…it’s just too beautiful!
Edit – “I don’t know* if it’s just because…”
Totally agree with you on this one Micheal. An even background makes reading a lot easier.
Something that I also recognised is that pure black text is also not very easy to read. A slight grey such as #333 is often easier on the eyes. This is especially true if the text is on a pure white background. (That’s why I choose to go into the beige corner of the spectrum for my redesign.)
I agree that a clean design will get return visitors. But I also like to see when a blog changes their design every so many months. Keep it fresh.
BeachBum
Err… Nothing.. Maybe that’s because I forced myself to keep from being distracted, LOL.
Breaking the post flow with those ugly G ads is another point…
Armen – That’s very true. Some sites are just too artsy to be read from. On various design portfolios, that’s fine, but when you actually want to read an article on the site, I agree with you completely.
Dominik – That’s true. I think that the slight changes from black&white are also popular because they’re slightly different to normal.
Pelf – Haha – Seems like you’re way ahead of the rest of us! :D
Milo – True. I’ll never quite understand why people do that. A few extra clicks just isn’t worth that much… :(
Actually that’s interesting, most people
– mark ad mails as spam
– channel flip when ads are on air
– throw out junk mail
– don’t answer cell/phone marketing calls
– trash ads in news papers
…
but then again ads are polluting most websites.
Is it really worth it like you asked?
Overall, I suppose they are. Although people do their best to fight it, they aren’t immune to advertising.
I mean, if you asked me what the best brands of washing powder, sports trainers, and newspaper are, I would list off 3 brands that I’ve seen ads from. I have no particular interest in any of the topics though, nor have I ever looked much into them, but the advertising has done its trick on me. :(
There is a line though; particularly on the internet. When the adverts are blocking content, distracting readers and annoying them, then they just aren’t worth it, unless you’re making serious cash regardless… :(
As far as ads go, I am certainly NOT against putting up ads on a blog. I mean, if a blogger is giivng you free content and you like ot enough to read it daily, why not ignore the ads and let the poor blogger make some cash off his blog?
One thing is for sure, those who hate ads, never click them (in fact most have ad blockers installed). It’s those who are unaware what they are doing, or those who are interested in where the ads will take them, that click on ads. So why not simply ignore the ads instead of demanding that web pages should be stripped of ads?
Keep in mind that I am not favoring ads-choked pages that are simply too annoying to be ignored, but I don’t mind an ad or two here and there if it helps the blogger pay his hosting bills.
I don’t mind an ad or two around the place either Mohsin (I don’t use Adblock), but it’s a little annoying when they’re breaking up the article on me (Not at the top or bottom, but right in the middle), or when they try to trick me by disguising the ad as navigation. :(
Good points, although I’m not sure about your examples :P
Sure, Problogger has a nice grid-like and even design, but his animated adverts are fairly distracting even if the sidebar does go down to the bottom of the post.
Maybe Samir’s design doesn’t render properly in my browsers – he has some excellent ideas (curly braces as heading icon in text rather than image, footer is somewhat telling of personality and profession, flora fountain), but overall it seems to be poorly executed (marroon and green as a colour scheme?! patterned background, curly braces not centered in it’s coloured background, bouncing fountain icon is a bit annoying)… I wouldn’t have thought it “memorable” in a good way. Then again, they’re bold colours – maybe it’s my personal (non)preference.
Kristarella – You’re right that the examples may not be perfect (Though I do love the ProBlogger design. :) ), but I only meant the one aspect of each.
ie. ProBlogger has a consistent vertical background, and Samir has an animation.
The other aspects of each design are all up to your own opinion. I wasn’t commenting on the design as a whole; just those 2 aspects. :)
Sure thing…
On the topic of clutter, short sidebars and distractions. I liked your amazon widget – it had relevant things to your topics while giving a tiny bit of insight into you, but I appreciate your desire to be ruthless with potentially useless things. Just thought I’d mention it :P
Kristarella – I actually liked it as well, because I could recommend something that I knew would be totally worthwhile to my readers.
The downside to it was that underneath it all, it was still pretty much an advert, and would be viewed as such by readers. I didn’t remove it because of clutter, so much as to go completely ad-free.
On the plus side, I plan on setting up a “Resources” page soon, where I’ll be able to list all sorts of things like that again. :D (Without referral+affiliate codes)
On my own blog I have the background not fully consistent since the header and footer sort of flow into it, but personally I don’t see it as a distraction. Not sure of course on how others would experience it, but since the white text jumps out more I don’t think that little bit should be a point of concern.
The sidebar images to attract my own attention at times, even though I have seen my blog numerous times already.
One thing I hate though is when the background behind the text consists of text, like in example a faded out newspaper. It makes it so hard to read when you’re not able to truly focus on just one of the texts.
Resource page is a great idea Michael – one of the flagged posts in my RSS reader is Skellie’s 28 ebooks post. To build a page with all kinds of resources related to a particular topic could be the kind of thing that people come back to over and over.
Slevi, I don’t think your background is distracting – there’s only a tiny bit of text on the textured bits, the rest is one colour. Unlike some MySpace pages or the blogs where someone has just discovered CSS transparency and they run their text over a repeating image. Now that’s hard to read!
Slevi – I think your background is great as well. :)
Kristarella – I enjoyed that post of Skellie’s as well. Resource lists like that are probably the easiest way to find great new material online.
I hate ads, especially that square Adsense box that appears right smack in the middle of an article.
Major no-no for me. Which is why I allocated a section or few for ads and that’s it and it’s NEVER within the post. :)
Same here Goldfries. They’re just a nuisance when they’re tied right into your content.
It’s a matter of choice – Money vs Design. I choose to go Design path. Sure I could flood my site with Adsense, TLA, Adbrite and the rest.
I’ve tried and they make my site look horrible. I settled for just 1 ad company that brings me best income without jeopardizing my content.
Quite often the sites that make a lot of $$$ are also the ones that look horrible. :( I had having to scroll an additional few hundred pixels just to get over ads.
I’ve tried having ads here as well, but I didn’t like them. On larger sites, like you said, they can afford to have slightly more annoying adverts because they know that many readers will want to read their content any way (As the site has a good reputation).
Yup, but the funny thing is this. I’ve seen MANY sites that aren’t doing as well as we are and YET having tonnes of ads around! :)
IMO it’s not exactly a good move, unless the content is so superior that it really outweighs the annoyance of having ads everywhere.
Agreed. Small blogs just don’t need ads because $20/month or whatever else they’re earning is going to be too small to be justified. They’d be much better off focusing on building a great readership. :)
I’ve just removed one of those flashy ads from my site. Now it looks better :D
From my observation, sites with small traffic would probably earn less than $1 even after months. It’s giving annoyance at little to no benefit.
pablopabla – Your readers will appreciate that no doubt. :D
goldfries – Just not worth it. :)
Yes Michael, it’s not worth it.
And from what I observe, Asian bloggers tend to have a lot of ads on their blog.
I guess at times, links within a post could be a form of distraction too, fortunately though they are of course used to further explain something, reference something or whatever but i agree with what you mentioned and how we should keep down the amount of distraction, let the visitor enjoy a read without being pestered on the page.
Absolutely agree with you!
I hate any animation on the site, because it really distracts from reading.
Also don’t like when sidebar full of ads occupies half of the screen, and you have to read articles only in left corner. And when you’ve to read a white text on the black background — I immediately close such sites.
And people, never put music on the site!
Blog design and usability is very important things. Because of poor design you may lose a lot of visitors.