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Recently, we talked about improving website usability by giving visitors what they want. Today, we’re going to take that one step further by discussing how to improve blog usability. Most bloggers don’t give usability a second thought. They crank out their posts and assume all is well with their blog.

The truth is a successful blog is much more than just great content. The best blogs deliver exactly what readers want and make it easy for them to find the information they need. Here are 5 simple tips for improving blog usability.

1. Add Related Posts Plugin—Ideally, you want readers to stay on your blog as long as possible. You want them to continue exploring your content so they become loyal readers. One way to do this is by using a related posts plugin. At the end of each post, this plugin will display a short list of other posts on your blog that cover related topics. It decides which posts are related based on the post titles, tags, categories, and other contextual clues.

2. Link Out to Other Useful Posts—Too many bloggers are afraid to link out to other blogs. They think they’ll either lose link juice or that there readers will never come back. I call BS on both claims. Linking out turns your blog into a resource. It shows readers that you give them access to all the information they need on a given subject.

3. Don’t Use Too Many Widgets—Widgets are designed to improve the usability of your blog, but when you have too many of them stuffed onto your blog, they become distracting and overwhelming. Take a step back and see if any of the widgets on your blog can be sacrificed.

4. Have Clear Headlines—Your readers are pressed for time. Before they’ll commit to reading a post, they want to know what it’s about. That’s where the headline comes in. The headline needs to be catchy enough to grab their attention but clear enough to let them easily understand what the post is about.

5. Use Good URL Structure—Rather than having a messy URL structure like this: www.yourblog.com/post-123?%$765!, you should use a clearer structure like this: www.yourblog.com/descriptive-post-title. Good URL structure is ideal for Search Engine Optimization(SEO) purposes, sharing, bookmarking, and overall blog usability.

What are some of your best tips for improving blog usability? Add your own by leaving a comment.

Was your website truly designed to achieve the best possible user experience? Or did the designer focus more on creating a “cool looking” design? Most times, the latter happens, and without even realizing it, a company has a website that hampers usability, costing them conversions and creating a bad impression with potential customers.

Thankfully, making your website more usable is actually easier than you might think. Here are 8 simple ways to improve your site’s usability.

1. Target the right keywords — Too many companies either don’t optimize their websites for the search engines or they target the wrong keywords. As a result, their website attracts low-quality traffic from people who are really looking for someone else. The key is to figure out which phrases your buyers are searching for so when someone finds your website, you have the things they’re looking for.

2. Clear navigation along the top or down the left side — Web users have come to expect to use the internet in a certain manner. One of their habits is to look at the top of the page or along the left side for site navigation. If the navigation isn’t in one of these spots, you can confuse the visitor, making it difficult for them to find what they need. Your navigation should also be clear, no cutesy or clever names.

3. Strong internal linking structure — Placing links throughout your website copy is a good way to keep visitors moving forward in a logical path. Just make sure these links serve a purpose and make sense in the context of the copy. This will help visitors quickly access the pages they’re most interested in.

4. Easy to scan copy — Online users tend to scan copy rather than actually read it one word at a time. In fact, they scan web content in an F-shaped pattern. To meet their scanning propensities, you need to make your copy easy to scan quickly by using lists, bolded phrases, subheads, and short paragraphs.

5. No distractions — You don’t have to cover every single available space on your website with copy or images. Repeat after me: White space is your friend. And less is usually more. So, take a look at your website. Are there any unnecessary elements that distract visitors and pull their focus away from your main message? If so, get rid of them.

6. Add a status bar to checkout process — Some studies have shown that up to 75% of all shopping carts will be abandoned. A common reason for shopping cart abandonment is that shoppers don’t know where they are in the checkout process or how much more they need to do. By placing a status bar on each stage of checking out, you let visitors know exactly what they have left before completing their purchase.

7. Separate pages based on subject — Having too much content on a single page can overwhelm visitors and make it difficult to find the information they need. By breaking up your content based on subject, you improve your website’s usability and give the search engines more pages to crawl and rank.

8. Easy to find contact info — Putting your contact info on each page builds trust and gives visitors a way to get in touch immediately without clicking to another page.

Does your website succeed in all 8 of these factors? What are some other usability tips you’d add to this list?

Usability and Legacy Systems … Yuck!

Just the thought of the words “legacy system” conjures images of big companies using old, antiquated hardware running DOS-like interfaces to perform simple tasks inefficiently.  The problem for these companies is the technology changes so fast, by the time the systems they have planned, designed, and developed for launch, they become old, slow and outdated within 6 months.  It was a large investment to implement and time consuming to integrate into business wide  systems and procedures.  Outdated can often mean poor usability, which allows room for the competition to beat you out.   How on earth will they ever catch up without blowing their bottom line? Enter innovation.

So, we found a company who takes an innovative approach to theses big companies; many of which, if not all, are stuck on legacy systems.  Companies like  Circle K, UPS and Costco.  At the center of it all…customer experience.

Jeremy: Can you tell me a little about what Fuel Quest does?

Todd: Sure, we offer downstream fuel supply chain management software. (laughs) I can tell from the look on your face that didn’t help much.  Okay, our software manages fuel supply from the supply terminal to the gas station and from the gas station to the car.

Jeremy: So what is it you do exactly at Fuel Quest?

Todd: I handle business partner integration into our solutions, which might mean creating user interfaces or reports that help bridge our systems together in a way that is usable and optimized.

Jeremy: So how important is usability in what you do or for your industry, for that matter?

Todd: We are continuously dealing with older legacy systems designed at a time when usability wasn’t what it is today.  The companies we deal with have used these systems for so long that they are ingrained into the heads of the employees that use them.  I’ve noticed resistance or hesitation to integrate with Fuel Quest from some of these employees; not because it isn’t useful or a better approach, but because they are afraid of having to learn a new system all over again.

Jeremy: How do you overcome that?

Todd: You have to be a problem solver for these people.  These ARE the users.  It is their experience that I am trying to improve.  Usually, all I need to do is find out what their problems are and show them how our solution will make their lives easier.  Although, sometimes the feedback I get from them isn’t solvable by our current solution and a new custom one is necessary.

Jeremy: At the end of the day, that kind of feedback is extremely valuable in crafting better and better solutions.

Todd: Right. It’s complexity versus simplicity.  That’s at the heart of the designs I come up with.

Jeremy: Could you give some examples?

Todd: Sure.  I try to make the system work flows reflect the day-to-day operations of the users.  I identify what elements are most commonly used in their day-to-day operations and I design the solutions to make those elements accessible with the fewest number of clicks.  Using AJAX to give visual cues help decrease confusion, error messaging on validation and permissions based UI’s help me make sure that, what each user sees, is highly relevant to them and their work flow.

Jeremy: What kind of response or feedback have you been receiving with these designs?

Todd: We recently had our Fuel Quest Users Convention, which we call Grail.  We invited out a bunch of our clients and others in the industry to see what we were working on.  I had the pleasure of presenting at our technology showcase and seeing first hand the response.  People were getting gitty over some of this stuff. It was amazing to work so hard on something that seemed like such a no-brainer and get that kind of validation.

Jeremy: So what’s in your toolbox when you are banging out designs and user experience concepts?

Todd: I have found some really great open source tools that get the job done. I use Gliffy to quickly mock up layout.  Faststonecapture.org is a great tool for screen captures that you can quickly edit and make notes on.  Notepad Plus is my go to editor.  HTML Kit is a nice editor I use from time to time.  Obviously, Excel for data and report management.  Altova XML Spy is a must for me, we use XML heavily.  The only other thing I use is Gimp which is an image editor.

Jeremy: Lastly, what do you think the future holds for usability and UX?

Todd: I think there will be much less physical interaction with these systems to do day-to-day processes.

Jeremy: In what ways?

Todd: I think that the speech to text solutions our there are reaching a level of sophistication that make them viable for manipulating UI’s.  Permissions could be set based off of recognizing the voice of the user.  I read somewhere of a company that is going to start selling a device that allows you to manipulate systems with thought alone.  Emotiv was the name.  Supposed to sell for $300 dollar range.  That puts it in the ballpark for small businesses to afford and innovate with.

Jeremy: Maybe Fuel Quest will be one of those innovators.

Todd: No one would be more excited about it than me!

Todd Holt on LinkedIn