Scoobyphotos.com | Blog

Darren over at ProBlogger has been talking about ways to retain visitors to your blog after you get that sudden surge from being linked on one of the high profile blogs. It raises some interesting points, and links back to my post earlier about how your domain name can influence your visitors.

Taking the domain name issue a step further, assuming a visitor has clicked on a link and been presented with your site, you then have to convert the one time visitor into a regular visitor. The first hurdle to cross is to make sure the visitor doesn't leave immediately. The only way to do this is to make sure the site is well designed and pleasing to the eye. A dark background with red or green text is a surefire way to lose visitors, as is having an overly clutttered layout with little structure.

I personally prefer to see a site with a light coloured background with dark text, with clearly readable hyperlinks that standout from the text. Having done some research, I believe that showing the user which links they have followed previously is of benefit, so prefer to avoid using the same colours for active, visited and hover links. Jeniifer Apple over at Photoshop Support has a good article on blog design, aimed at those using standard blogging templates.

You also need to ensure that the site loads quickly, and navigation around the site is clearly labelled or obvious to the first time visitor. I quickly lose interest in a site if it is unclear how to get from one part of the site to another.

Darren goes into much more detail about the content and other forms of hooking your readers, which makes for good reading, so I suggest you take a look if you want some hints on how to retain those all important first timers. converting one off visitors to your blog into regular readers.