Optimizing Your Blog Design Layout (Part-1)
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What does Jam have to do with Blog Designing? Read the post to find out…
Sheena Iyengar is a professor at University of Columbia and teaches a course on Organizational behavior. She once conducted a scientific research to gauge the effect choices have on people.
Iyengar set up a tasting booth with a variety of gourmet jams in the grocery store named Draeger’s in Menlo Park, California.
- One day, she displayed 6 varieties of jam in the booth.
- The next day she displayed 24 varieties of jam.
And then she counted the number of sales generated each day.
The Paradoxical Results
Most people would think that the more choices there are, the more people would buy. But Iyengar’s research proved otherwise.
- 30% of people, who stopped by the 6-jam booth, ended up buying one of the jams.
- While only 3% of people, who stopped by the 24-jam booth, ended up buying the jam.
Action Summary:
Don’t overwhelm your readers with a lot of options on your blog.
Don’t show them 23 different buttons of social bookmarking sites under your posts.
Don’t provide them with 299 links on the sidebar.
Reduce the options to improve the impact.
Saying No To Three Column Themes
Bloggers love three column themes. Because it provides them with space to put up all the goodies and widgets and plugins and sections. And show ads on top of that. But three-column themes usually kill your click-through rate. They overwhelm readers with a lot of choices. The result being: readers ignore the sidebar columns totally.
If you still want to go with the three-column theme, please make sure that your two narrow sidebars are not together. Make your wide content column separate both the sidebars.
But the best layout is a two column layout. Because it’ll force you to offer fewer choices and links to your readers. And hence, improve your click through rate.
Update: “Optimizing Your Blog Design” part-2 has been published…
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Hi Ankesh, Good article there.
I’ve written about the site layout thing too. May be it will help you.
http://www.dailydoseofinternet.com/2006/11/seo-friendly-layout.html
Cheers!
Mani
Posted 22 Jun 2007 #
Great timing! I’ve just started working on my new blog design.
Posted 22 Jun 2007 #
Thanks Mani. Good article. Although I would now recommend people use layers instead of tables.
Posted 22 Jun 2007 #
Good call with the 2 column approach, i never like blogs with 3 columns.
Posted 22 Jun 2007 #
Thanks Ankesh for yet another gem of a post. Keep this in mind for my blog to be launched soon.
Posted 23 Jun 2007 #
Great post, I totally agree with the using the 2 column layouts over the 3, there is just way to much hitting the user at one time with a 3 column layout.
Posted 23 Jun 2007 #
Is clutter not the bigger problem for CTR, rather than the number of columns?
I could just as easily make a horrible 2col layout as 3col.
Posted 22 Aug 2007 #
Michael: Excellent question. And you’re right of course. Clutter is the BIG problem for blog optimization.
But its easier to reduce the perception of clutter with 2 columns than with 3. The reason being, people’s eye moment with 2 columns will be a bit more linear than with 3 columns. With 3 columns, people’s eyes will wander zig-zag - which adds to confusion. With 2 columns, their eyes will scroll straight down.
Saying that, if bloggers have a lot of options and clutter in 2 columns too - readers will just ignore the entire column.
The best results come when you give just 1 or 2 specific action steps to readers to do per page - whether you have 2 columns or 3.
Posted 23 Aug 2007 #
I see what you’re saying, and you could well be right. The resolution comes into play as well I think. For instance, your blog is made for 800×600, so I agree entirely that 2 cols is the right choice. Mine is made for 1024×768 though, so if I went with just 2 columns, I might end up with a very large content area, or too much empty space. I suppose, as with all design tips, “it depends” on the blog.
I also think that for most people, having 2 column can really force them to cut things out of their blog, reducing clutter. Having 3 columns gives them the illusion that they more room to work with, which leads to more widgets, and a messy blog…
And thanks for the reply. What you said about eye movement definitely makes a lot of sense.
Posted 27 Aug 2007 #
If you still want to go with the three-column theme, please make sure that your two narrow sidebars are not together. Make your wide content column separate both the sidebars.
But I read somewhere that if one has the 2 narrow sidebars separated, visitors will have to spend extra time scrolling down both sidebars. But if placed together, visitors will only need to scan the sidebars once.
Further, I personally think that sidebars are only for new visitors because loyal readers or feed readers won’t be bothered with the sidebars. Or they may have remembered by heart what are the elements on your sidebars =)
Posted 19 Sep 2007 #
[…] Column Layout (suggested per BlogCloutA and reader […]
Posted 15 Nov 2007 #