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Your main goal for building your site should be to enhance user experience. This will increase the likelihood of visitors returning and even referring other to your site. The following are some ideas that will help you make your site more reader-friendly.

1. Be easily accessible

Besides wanting to read the content of your site, some web users will be interested in knowing more about you. It is therefore important to have an ‘About’ page on your site. When people read your story and see your face, they will find it easier to trust you. In addition, you should also have a ‘Contact us’ page to make it easy for readers to reach you. This will give them an opportunity to ask questions or offer suggestions regarding your blog.


2. Organize by category

If you organize your archives by date, your readers will find it difficult to locate older posts since they don’t know when you wrote them. It is therefore advisable to organize your posts by category. However, keep your list of categories as short as possible. Having too many might result in people not locating what they are searching for.

3. Increase the loading speed

Web users are usually very impatient. If your site has very slow loading speeds, they are likely to click away and probably never return. There are several ways in which you can enhance the loading speed of your pages. This includes optimizing your CSS, using the right image format, reducing HTTP requests, and using height and width tags.

4. Format your content properly

People usually scan through web pages before reading the entire post. Make sure your content is scannable so that visitors can easily identify your main points. You can do this by dividing your content into paragraphs or lists, using colors or bold text, or using block quotes to emphasize specific points. If your content doesn’t have any highlights or breaks, most readers will just ignore it.

5. Respond promptly to comments

Responding to comments fast will encourage readers to be more active in your site. Visitors will return over and over again to follow up on the conversation. You could also consider offering valuable rewards to the top commentators.

6. Show related/top posts

Many visitors don’t have the time to dig through your archives to find what they are looking for. Showing top posts and related posts will enable them to navigate through your site more easily. You should therefore ensure that the relevant plug ins in your site are activated.

7. Use a unique theme

Don’t go for a theme which is being used by hundreds of other blogs. Getting a unique theme will make your site stand out and enable you to customize it for your specific niche. You could consider buying a premium theme or hiring an expert to design one for you.

8. Validate your site

Before launching your site, you need to test it to ensure it is compatible with all browsers. This will ensure that all visitors can access the site, regardless of which browser they are using.

Author Bio:
Charles Mburugu has a passion for web-based technologies and online business. He is presently writing for ideosity.com.