Expectations of Blog Readers Reveal 8 Common Traits

Knowing that visitors spend most of their time on sites besides BWI, I decided to do a little research on those sites, and see what my visitors would expect to find. Using Technorati, and a few other sources, I took a look at over a dozen top blogs. What I was looking for was common traits that I believe are expected to be found on a website regardless of their function or fashion.

Expected and Found

The first four items I found, I expected to find. Yes, they may seem a little obvious, but that is why we expect to find them. There were actually several more items found, but I thought I would skip the super obvious stuff like having a link to the home page.

• Title of site was in graphic format either as stylized text or logo form – Obviously naming your site is not enough. You need to brand it with style.
• Having a search function – Almost every blogging platform out there now comes with a search widget. If yours isn’t active, it’s a easy fix. Turn it on.
• The header contained a horizontal type menu, and it was the primary navigation
• Ads – Yes, all the top dogs have ads. Big surprise? Many had more than ten ad spots.

The Good Stuff, The Stuff I Was Looking For

The next four was the good stuff. It was the stuff I didn’t expect, a.k.a. the stuff I was looking for to add to my site.

• All posts have at least one image - 80% of the top blogs I looked at had at least one picture for every post. The average was just over one.
• Ten or more posts on the home page – This one really surprised me. Every top blog I looked at had at least ten recent posts on their home page, and almost all of them were broken up with the “Read More” link.
• Recent Posts – About 50% of the blogs had a listing on the home page of their recent posts. It was designed in their sidebar menu so when visitors land on a single post there was opportunity to keep them on the site with more content.
• Recent Comments – Again, about 50% of the blogs had a listing of the most recent comments made on their posts. I used to have this feature. I went from comments to less comments when I removed it. It’s back now, and it’s staying put! This makes a good reminder that blogging is not a one way read or write.

A Few Items You Could Skip

Doing the research there were a few things that I had put on my list that I expected to find. Apparently they were not as expected as you or I might think.

• Tag Clouds – This is what inspired me to do this research. I was not sold on the value of Tag Clouds, so I decided to see what big blogs use them. The answer? Most don’t. Neither do I now.
• Blog Roll – Here is another items that you could probably just hit the delete button to. In my eyes, they serve little purpose. Less than 10% of the sites I looked at had them.
• Follow me here, there, here, and there – You know you have seen these blogs, and you could probably list a couple of very popular blogs that have them. A whole section of their site dedicated to where you can follow the authors on other sites like Friendfeed, Twitter, and stuff like that. If you really look around though, most popular blogs don’t have them, and if they do it’s very limited. It’s better to stick with something that goes beyond your industry niche like RSS feeds or email.

Every blog is differnet though so these are not rules to live by. They do represent what the most popular blogs are doing though, and that can be a great path to follow.