User experience or UX is becoming increasingly important. Even personal sites and blogs now need to pay close attention to their users' experience in order to stay ahead of the competition. Search engines take UX-related parameters to rank sites and users will no longer put up with confusing layouts and a bad user experience.
Paying attention to your site's user experience will be even more important in 2018. There are more sites competing for the attention of visitors, which means your site needs to be at its best to stand out. Some UX tweaks will help prepare your blog for 2018.
Fast Loading Time
Forget about having a complicated splash screen or elaborate animations. These visual elements may be appealing at first, but they get old very quickly and are very bad from the UX standpoint. You want a site that loads quickly and delivers content to users in a smooth and streamlined way.
HTML5 and CSS3 are definitely the standard programming languages to use. There are a lot of HTML5 site building tools that produce optimized web pages. There are also ways to optimize your existing blog layout or theme to further improve its loading time; We Bloggerz has some great tips you should check out.
Content-Focused Interface
Your content is the star of the show. Users visit your blog to consume content. Most of them will not wait for more than seven seconds for the content you provide; users will simply move on to another site if you can't deliver your content in that time.
A content-focused interface is the way forward. You can start by opting for a readable font and setting the line height and kerning correctly. There is no point in sharing valuable articles if they are uncomfortable to read on the screen.
Whitespace will also be a popular element in 2018. Adding whitespace to certain parts of the site makes the entire site appears cleaner and comfortable to use. You're giving the content enough room to breathe and allowing users to enjoy spending more time browsing your blog.
Short Is Good
Forget about multiple sub-categories and complicated menu trees; 2018 is about simplicity. The sooner users can find the page they're looking for, the better. There are several ways you can optimize your site for a simpler and more pleasant UX.
You can start by improving the search function of your site. Make sure users can find the information they're looking for without having to enter exact keywords. Next, make the navigation menu clear and concise. Lastly, think about the user's journey; always provide users with more things to do.
The latter is actually very important. Simple elements such as recommended articles at the end of a page make it easy for users to consume the content on your blog. The result is a higher time-on-site rating, which is a clear sign of good user experience.
Now that you have these tips and tricks in hand, you can get your blog ready for 2018. The market will be even more competitive next year, but delivering a good user experience is the key to staying ahead of that market.
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