Let your blog have one purpose
Just got off the phone (SKYPE) with a client. During the call, we had a look at her blog together.
When I see too many actions the visitor can take, I know right away it’s time to ask the BIG question…
If you could have your visitors take only one action when they land on your blog, what would it be and how would they benifit from taking that action? OK, I lied. That’s two questions.
Here is an example of a blog belonging to Andy Beard that has only one thing you can do… Read his content. http://andybeard.eu. I recommend you add his blog to your reading list because his content is that good.
There are no flashy banner ads, no adsense, no “Follow me on twitter, etc… (But I did notice he’s added a Google Friend Connect thingy at the bottom, however it does not take a genius to figure out what Andy wants you to do on his blog.
I sincerely believe we are now living in an over complicated World. As a result People are craving simplicity.For the people that can provide that simplicity, they’ll be the winners.
Test it… Load your blog with tons of banners, text ads, optin boxes and super unfocused content and run it for a week. Pay real close attention to your stats (Use http://www.google.com/analytics/ for tracking) more specifically, keep your eye on your bonus rate (See video below).
Now strip your blog down (remove distractions) and focus up the content, let it run for a week and check your stats. I bet it will be like night and day.
Hell, you don’t even have to do all that tracking stuff. Just see if you get comments with the blog loaded with ads and unfocused content. You shouldn’t besides spam ones 
Now if your blog is just on the net to get clicks on money links and it’s the reason why your font size is set at 2 points, this post is not for you. We’ll chat about that another time.
I’m sure Andy Beard’s blog ( http://andybeard.eu/ ) is not winning any designer awards this year but visiting his blog, there is no question what he wants you to do.
How about your blog? Could it be more focused? Are your visitors taking the actions you want them to take?
August 9th, 2009
I am just experimenting, but things will become even more focused soon as I have most of the components I want to include lined up.
Google Friend Connect is interesting because it is not just a “widget” but also a RSS subscription and what certainly seems to be a backlink from anyone with a Blogger account.
The same could be said of Facebook fans in many ways.