Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Gadgets on top

A whimsical steampunk hat with a propeller blade and other devices on top
Image: mariaisabela

Be especially discriminating about what gadgets you put in the horizontal region below your title and tagline and above your blog posts.

After your title, this is the first thing your readers will see.

Every time they visit.

You may believe your blog is best experienced in a certain way, for instance by reading an introduction or explanation first thing.

You may even be right.

Your readers, however, won't always agree, especially after their fourth or fifth visit. They want to see what they want to see, not what you want them to see.

Respect your readers in this or they may not return. Indeed, unless they see exactly what they are looking for as soon as they get to your blog, they may not even stick around.

For most blogs the only thing that should go in this space, if anything, are navigational links to static or other pages in your blog. Such navigational gadgets will reformat themselves if dragged into this region, turning into handy tabs.

(If you'd like to tweak those tabs a bit, you might be interested in this useful hint from an experienced blogger.)

Put whatever message or first impression you'd like to make in a tight and well-written title and and tagline.

« Sidebar Index Gadgets under posts »

2 comments:

  1. Hi Adam - what's the "s useful hint from an experienced blogger?", it looks like your URL has got a bit mangled.

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  2. Thanks, Mary--I wouldn't have noticed that for quite a while! Not sure what happened, but is fixed now.

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