5 Useless Elements You Need To Remove From Your Blog Right Now!

Posted by adamjayc under Marketing
From http://www.bloggingwizard.com 3585 days ago
Made Hot by: ObjectOriented on July 6, 2014 9:46 am

You want visitors to come back to your site.

And in most cases they don’t.

But, what if I could show you a quick series of tweaks that you can make to your blogs layout which would fix the problem?

Does it sound too good to be true?

I used to think so too until I started making these exact small tweaks.

Sooner after, more visitors were sticking around for longer and they were coming back.

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Comments

Written by ebele
3579 days ago

I've never had any social media widgets, so I'm OK there. I used to have one badge, but removed it months' ago. I don't miss it.

Now the sidebar, I couldn't get rid of that. But the things on it are minimal - so is my main navigation.

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Written by ebele
3575 days ago

Thanks, Adam :)

There is one page I think I might actually remove the sidebar from. If it doesn't feel right afterwards, I could always add it back.

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Written by adamjayc
3578 days ago

Sounds like you're on the right track. The sidebar is one to play by ear. Sometimes it makes sense to remove on certain posts/pages but not all.

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Written by unveiltheweb
3579 days ago

You nailed it!!! I purposely don't have a sidebar for that very reason. I don't want people distracted or going off-site. The only links I have are social media share buttons that are pop-ups to share the articles.

It's all about user experience and if you're allowing your users to get distracted, overwhelmed, and frustrated... what do you expect? They will likely not come back. Keep it simple, clean, and to the point. Don't complicate and let them focus on what you have to say so that they may do what you ask them to do in order to help the achieve the result they are looking for.

Great post Adam!!!

~Don

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Written by adamjayc
3578 days ago

Hey Don,

My pleasure.

Think I've got some to check out too!

You too!

Adam

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Written by unveiltheweb
3579 days ago

Hey Adam,

Thanks for taking a look! I appreciate the comment and yes, I do get very good engagement. Got head over their to catch up on comments from over the weekend, lol...

Hope to engage with you often!

Don

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Written by adamjayc
3579 days ago

Thanks Don - great to hear that you're taking a similar approach on your own site.

That's it exactly - user experience is where is where the focus needs to be if we want to achieve our goals.

I had a quick look at your site and I like how you've got everything laid out. Keeping it clean and concise looks to be working very well for you. It shows with the great engagement you get on your posts.

Thanks!

Adam

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Written by lyceum
3581 days ago

Adam: You are quick with your comments! :) Talk to you soon again!

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Written by adamjayc
3581 days ago

Just good timing :) speak soon.

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Written by lyceum
3581 days ago

Adam: Thanks for your reply! I want to discuss more with you in the near future!

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Written by adamjayc
3581 days ago

Sure thing!

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Written by lyceum
3585 days ago

Adam: Is the whole thing to get subscribers to your newsletter? You talk about getting rid of the sidebar, but I see a second column on your blog! ;) I have three columns on some of my blogs and I have one site (EGO NetCast), with no extra columns and sidebars at all! ;) How do you do with your archives and older posts?

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Written by adamjayc
3584 days ago

Not specifically, Martin. Although a good part of it is.

It's all about adopting a similar approach to building landing pages. Minimizing the number of actions/choices you're giving to visitors with the aim of increasing conversions.

For the social media points, it's more about increasing subscribers, purely because nobody can take your email list away from you.

But, as we've seen from Facebook - they've effectively pulled the rug right from beneath businesses that have invested millions in building an engaged community.

Haha, yes! The sidebar is one of those points where you have to evaluate on a case by case basis.

So, for example, I'm doing a re-design right now where I'll end up removing the sidebar for particular posts.

Certain posts where I offer exclusive content to subscribers will go to single column.

I have an archives page which I'll be moving to my main navigation bar and the blog link has a dropdown to find the different categories.

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