Website blogs are one of the most effective digital marketing methods for brands of all sizes to engage with their target audience, create brand loyalty, and build trust. Using this method, also known as blog marketing, brands can introduce themselves better and pass on their expertise by answering the questions of their potential customers through informative articles. Well, is the success of blogs only limited to making Google happy? Is creating SEO-friendly and quality blog content sufficient? Maybe we could have answered “yes” to these questions ten years ago. But now, never, because the user experience, i.e., the UX, is the golden key to surviving in the digital world. Let’s take a closer look at the topic and discover seven steps to improve the user experience in blog content!
Fasten your seat belts; we are winging a flight with user experience!
Unfortunately, keeping your blog page up-to-date alone is no longer enough to sustain your digital presence. Because effective blog marketing calls for your target audience’s satisfaction while visiting your blog page, rather than clicking on it. In other words, while content quality remains critical, well-receiving visitors on your page is the driving force behind turning them into customers. Here are seven steps to achieve this goal:
1. Blog content should be easy to read.
Readers of the digital age want to experience technology’s convenience in every aspect of their lives while acquiring information. This means that the first step of improving the user experience is adopting a reader-friendly format and writing easy-to-understand blog content. Wonder how? When writing blog content: Edit the typography, enlarge the font size if small fonts make reading difficult, leave spaces within the text to not overwhelm the readers, and write in smaller headlines to avoid eye strain. Another critical factor in improving the user experience through blogs is your blog page’s appearance in the mobile version.
The typography and font size you choose should ensure comfortable reading of the blog, even on small screens of mobile devices. While smaller font sizes require users to zoom in to display the content, larger font sizes cause paragraphs to split or not fit on the screen, which all have a negative impact on the user experience.
2. Images should not be the fillers of a blog page.
The images of blog content are of great importance to make the visitor pause while reading. However, the fact that these visuals arouse curiosity in parallel to the blog content, making it reviewable for the readers, is more effective in improving user experience. For this purpose, you can benefit from the graphics, include easy-to-understand tables, or visualize the vital information you want to itemize.
3. A blog page is as valuable as its end can be seen, so keep the scrolling period short!
Another way of improving the user experience through blog content is giving the visitors the message that they will receive the answer to the question they are looking for in a short period instead of overwhelming them. Well, what’s that supposed to mean? Nowadays, people give particular importance to speed in accessing information. For this purpose, they show great interest in quick facts. As its very name signifies, quick facts don’t mean getting information from reams of articles.
To understand whether the relevant brand conveys the topic addressed in the blogs on its website with the most necessary information within the shortest time, the first thing that visitors do is to scroll the page to the end. Being prevalent in both desktops and mobile devices, this trend also provides an essential clue for effective blog marketing. That is to say; the visitors want to scroll as little as possible to reach the bottom of the page, thus making the long content something to be avoided.
4- Include time-saving links with shortcuts.
Being the favorite of digital marketing practices, SEO practices increase the trend of giving links within the scope of blog content each passing day. These links, which have two internal and external types, allow you to redirect to a page within your own website or to a page related to your blog post on another website.
Contributing to your reputation on Google, this method also becomes determinative in terms of user experience. But only if it is appropriately applied. We seem to hear you say, “What do you mean?”. As we mentioned above, keeping Google happy is no longer sufficient.
Besides, you are at risk of making the user unhappy while trying to make Google happy! So much so that if the links on your blog page are useless and time-consuming for the readers, interrupt their reading, and steer their attention to another page, this will negatively affect the user experience.
However, if these links have shortcuts that can redirect the readers to the pdf document of research you mentioned on your blog post or the page they need to visit for the product or service you mentioned in a sentence, both the benefit provided through the blog content and the user experience increase.
5. Cut down the options for a good user experience!
Your blog page consists of options greeting your visitors. These options may include viewing the latest blog posts, subscribing to the blog, or checking over the products. All these options seem to offer the visitor a large elbow room and freedom of choice; however, they may also arise the idea that the brand doesn’t know its visitors well enough. This is because the users want their needs to be known on a blog page they visit and be greeted accordingly. Consequently, creating a single purpose for a visit and adapting it accordingly are necessary to increase the user experience in blog pages that aim to achieve conversion. The goal in question here can be selling the product, making the visitors browse more blog posts, or subscribe to your blog.
6. Monitor the activities of the visitors on your blog pages.
Tools that allow you to analyze your website traffic and examine visitors’ navigation on your pages help you increase the user experience both on your blog pages and on your blog content. Also, it may not always be possible to get a second opinion and be informed of the user experience it offers while designing your blog page and creating your content. Moreover, your search engine rankings may mislead you in this respect. Because ranking high in search engines does not mean you offer a good user experience. You may have problems with conversion rates even though you create high-quality content and receive visits.
However, these tools provide you data based on real experiences instead of assumptions. This data provides much information that includes the page speed, the most interacted regions, which cursor movements visitors make the most on the blog page, which part of the content they are most interested in, and much more. Thus, you can even discover the software problems you have not realized and increase user experience by creating a solid roadmap about improving your page layout and content.
7. Remember the “Mobile-First” effect on user experience!
Studies reveal that 69% of digital media time spent is mobile. This data alone is solid proof of how determinant the “Mobile-First” approach is in increasing the user experience on your website’s blog pages. The Mobile-First approach is a digital marketing strategy that focuses on the mobile user experience in website designs. Let’s make this approach’s role in increasing the user experience on blog pages and blog content more understandable: How your blog is displayed on a smaller screen and how user-friendly it is are the determiners in your potential to gain visitors.
How long it takes to scroll to the bottom of the page, whether there is a fixed navigation bar, and how convenient your typography and font size is for reading on a small screen are the points you need to consider and make the necessary improvements. You can check out our blog post if you want to learn more about the Mobile-First approach.
