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License

These icons are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works.  They are free for the taking as long as you provide a link back to this page (via blog post featuring this icon pack, attribution link in the footer/sidebar, etc. (get creative)).

Download

omnicon_v1.zip

Like the icon pack?

I’ve put quite a bit of work into this icon pack. If it has helped you in anyway, I would really appreciate it if you thank me by buying me a cup of coffee or two.  If not, I would equally love it if you can spread the word about this icon pack by writing about it on your blog.

1. Make it easy (and obvious) to interact.
2. Ask them to interact.
3. Do not nag.

So without further ado, here are some strategies on increasing visitor activity on your blog.

Advertisement Placement

Make sure you place these advertisements in “hot” areas of your page before the fold (area that the visitor first sees without scrolling).  I am sure you have seen this ad placement heat map from Google before.  Follow it!

Donations

Ask for it when it makes sense.  For example, you should ask for donations after each one of your blog posts.  The reader will not even think about donating before they know what they are donating for.  Another good place to put donation links are next to your freeware download links.

Give the visitor a concrete example of what their donation goes to so they are more likely to donate.  For example, my donate link says, “If you like this post, please consider buying me a cup of coffee.”

Also to not keep nagging your readers,  I recommend using Ozh’s Who Sees Ads plugin to only display this section to semi-new visitors only.

Subscriptions

Getting subscribers is one of the most important things to a blogger.  Make sure you place an eye-catching “Subscribe to this blog” section before the fold.  I have implemented this strategy on my sidebar above the fold.

Also you should have a little section visible above the fold that explains what your blog is all about.  Since you do not want to display this to people who come to your site regularly, I also recommend using Ozh’s Who Sees Ads plugin here again to only display this section to new visitors only.

Last but definitely not least.  I recommend using my own WP Greet Box plugin to greet visitors (and ask them to subscribe, share, or vote) based on the referring URL.

Sharing and Voting

At the end of your post, you should give the reader the option to rate, comment, and share your post.  This is a no brainer way of getting free marketing that takes zero effort on your behalf.  Use it!

For sharing/voting on posts on different social network sites, I recommend using the ShareThis widget because it takes up very little room for what it does.  It’s also good to supply a way to share to Twitter (or another major microblog network) since microblogging is the new hot thing nowadays.  As you can see, I use TwitThis for this purpose.

Comments

You want the comments section to be a fun and beneficial place to hang out.  Here are some ways to do that.

1. Enable Gravatars so people can easily identify commenters by their avatar.
2. Support a universal comment profile service such as SezWho or DISQUS.
3. Dofollow your comments
4. Install CommentLuv plugin
5. Install KeywordLuv plugin
6. Install Subscribe to Comments plugin to get visitors to return whenever there is a new comment on the thread.

Deeper Navigation

When readers finish reading your post, nudge them to explore and read more of your other posts by supplying a “related posts” section after your post.  I use Yet Another Related Posts Plugin to do this.

It is also useful to add a “popular posts” section in your sidebar where readers can easily find more interesting posts to read.  I use Popularity Contest to do this.

In Conclusion

These tips might seem like they are obvious, but you would be surprised how many people are not implementing even one of these tips.  Please feel free to share any other tips you have in the comments section.  Happy tweaking!

In this post I will discuss some of the web design mistakes that I have done on this blog, and what I did to fix them.

A few months ago, I was fortunate enough to get free advice from a friend of mine, Emily Luong, who happens to be a professional graphics designer.  Aside from being a graphics design geek, she’s put in good work on nice sites like Edelbio Skin Care Blog so I do not take her advice lightly.  I asked her to review my blog and what do you know?  It needs improving!

What did the blog look like before?

If you haven’t noticed the changes, here are some snapshots of what my blog looked like before (plus some comments in RED).  Please compare the snapshots to what my design is now.

Web Design Mistakes 1

Web Design Mistakes 2

3 major design mistakes

1. 

   Mistake: Clutter everywhere
   Solution: Unclutter things by adding padding.

   In the first image, you will notice that there are way too many things going on at the top of my sidebar.  When a reader glances over to the sidebar, all they see is a blur of colors.  Adding padding between things helps readers identify different objects whether it be sections, advertisements, images, or text.  Adding proper padding could result in readers diving deeper into your blog and higher advertisement click-through rates.

2. 

   Mistake: Complicated design
   Solution: If padding fails then simplify.

   You can only use padding so much until it hinders your design.  If your site is still visually confusing after adding a good amount of padding, you should look into simplifying your design.
   
   

   In the first image, you will see that I have all of my social network homes listed on the sidebar.  Do I really need to show this to everybody on every page?  Of course not.  Things of this nature should be move to the about page where your readers can find more information about you (the blogger).
   
   

   Also in the first image, you will see that I had a date badge.  Why do I need this date badge if I already display the full date in the post footer?  I know date badges have become popular lately (I’ve seen it on many blogs), but if it doesn’t serve a purpose then out the window it goes.
   
   

   Lastly, in the second image you will see that I had a few widgets from social networks and other internet tools.  I do not believe that anybody would need 10+ social network widgets in the sidebar.  I find that it’s best to only display 1 or 2 widgets that help get the most (and most relevant) traffic.  I can then focus on building my blog exposure on those social networks (that work) instead of spreading myself thin across too many social networks.  Aside from the obvious quality traffic & time saving benefits, I now have a less complicated sidebar.

3. 

   Mistake: Unorganized information
   Solution: Guide your reader by establishing an information hierarchy.

   If readers come to your blog for the content, your better make sure that they can easily find yours posts at a glance.  You can control the way a reader reads your site by organizing your information in a hierarchy using font size and font color.
   
   

   If you haven’t noticed, the hierarchy I chose for my blog is the following (more important > … > … > less important): post title > sidebar section title > post text > comment text > nagivation links > everything else.  I also made my RSS subscription images extra big to draw readers to subscribe.
   
   

   More important things should have larger fonts with higher color contrast.  Less important things should have smaller fonts with lower color contrast.

In Conclusion

Comparing my current blog design to the snapshots taken a few months ago, you can see how such simple changes has tremendously improved my blog design.  These tips are quite basic, but definitely powerful.  They are easy enough to implement without having to majorly redesign your blog.  I would like to encourage every body to take a quick 5 minutes to evaluate your blog to see if these tips can help you out.

On another note, do you see other things wrong with my site design that I did not address in this post?  Are my suggestions just bogus?  Please feel free to share in comments!  I promise that there won’t be any harsh feelings.

Aside from not knowing how to repay her for her kindness, I love the food so much that I have been developing a website for her restaurant, ciciscafe.com.

Believe it or not, the site’s backbone is WordPress! I can’t believe how easy it is to turn a WordPress blog into a simple restaurant site. This just goes to show how flexible Content Management Systems (CMS) are now.

I am nearly finished with the site. All I need to do now is update the menu and add some yummy food pictures.