Why Should You Care if your Blog Is User Friendly?

Do you care if your blog is user friendly?

Maybe you don’t and maybe you shouldn’t.
After all, there are as many reason to blog as there are blogs and if you don’t blog because you want others to read your words, then that’s fine… go on your merry way, there is nothing for you here. :)

But if you blog because you want to share your ideas with others, because you enjoy the conversation, or because you want to share stories about your kids with your Aunt Maude. If you blog because you hope someone out there in the big bad interwebs will read your blog, then you should care about your readers, even if it is just Aunt Maude.

Making sure your blog is easy for your readers to use means they are more likely to actually read your words, click around and find more content, leave a comment, share your information and come back.

We internet users are a lazy bunch. If your blog is hard to read, if finding our way around is next to impossible, if it makes our eyes hurt after a few moments of reading, if it takes more than 30 seconds to figure out how to leave a comment… in short, if we have to work hard to do anything on your blog then we probably won’t.

Make it easy for people to read what you have to say. Let them skim read to decide quickly whether what you are writing is interesting to them or not. Make it easy for them to find the next post to read, make it easy for them to comment, make it easy for them to share on social media…

If you make it easier for the reader then the reader will reward you with staying on your blog longer, leaving comments, sharing on social media and coming back.

If you care about how user friendly your blog is, your readers will thank you. So unless you don’t care about readers… then you should care about how user friendly your blog is.

{Image: by Neal via flickr}