In the first part of the series (Choose right tools for your blogging needs), we discussed a few factors that can help you decide which blogging tool is right for you. In this post I am going to share my experiences and views on building a good user interface.

All of us of heard that “Content is the king”. It sure is, but the user interface plays a big role in creating a good first impression and in ensuring the the visitors have a pleasant experience while they stay on your site. In fact, if the UI is annoying then visitors may not come back to your site, no matter how great the content is. So here are some best practices and guidelines that you should consider while designing your web pages.

1. Keep the web page easy to read. Don’t use flashy colors, too much flash content or unreadable fonts. The importance of readability can’t be overstated!
2. Don’t hard code font size so that user can increase/decrease them based on their personal preference (Firefox really makes it easy using Ctrl+/-). Use percentage or “em” to specify font size.
3. See how your page looks like on lower resolution machines (go down to at least 1024×768). Keep the main content area not too wide, or else it will force users to use horizontal scroll bar to read the content.
4. Show as much content as possible with least amount of clicks/screens to go through. Use simple links instead of drop down menus which aren’t visible until someone clicks the link.
5. Don’t get too “smart” with javascript. Don’t open any new window or popups. Don’t do anything that let’s user think he is not in control while visiting your website.
6. Don’t use any fancy browser/CSS features that may not be cross browser compatible - you never know which browser your visitors are using. Looking at the traffic report of my websites I am often surprised to see people using browser version which are more than 3 years old.
7. Don’t put Ads at the cost of readability if you’re in it for long term and if you expect some sort of user loyalty!
8. Have the entire site mobile friendly, or if that’s difficult at least have a mobile friendly landing page for your website. Given the trends, there will be significant percentage of page views originating from mobiles in not so distant future.
9. Separate content from Presentation; get a good grip on CSS. In my experience you’d end up changing the layout, colors etc quite often (at least initially). The more you rely on CSS to control the look and feel, the easier will it be to make these changes without affecting your UI templates and themes.
10. Another good one to keep your user interface flexible: use Widgets where ever possible - most of the blogging tools support this. Both the sidebars on the right on this web page are completely created using widgets so I can, for example, move the Ads in the left sidebar to right by just dragging it to the right sidebar on the widgets control panel of Wordpress. Same is true for “Like this Blog”, Category and anything else that appears on the sidebars (Let me know if you want source code for the widget showing Ads - I wrote this one to randomly show either Google or Chitika ads and wrapped it inside a widget so that it’s easy to move around).

There are many more than come to mind, but I thought these are quite important to consider. I would like to hear what your views are on user interface design and if you like add items to this list.

In the next post in this series, I will cover my experience with promoting your content and website in general. Until then, Happy Blogging!