Blog Reading Pet Peeves
I’ve done more than my fair share of blogs browsing over the last 5 months to qualify as “seen them all” and come up with my own list of blog browsing pet peeves. All those little annoying things that turn me off and make me scurrying to the nearest “EXIT”, never to return again. These are good lessons learnt for myself as well as sharing with you, as a precaution not to create such irritations on our blogs.
Here are my list in no particular order of annoyance:
1. No Contact Information
How many blogs have you come across where you cannot find an email address or contact form that allow you to contact the blog author? For me, it’s plenty, and I can’t stand it!
2. Registration and Login Required to leave comment
A few times I wanted to join in the discussion and leave my thoughts on the interesting topic posted but was “turned away” because I didn’t login. And to login, I must first register with the blog! Oh, that was a big turn off for me! We bloggers are an impatient lot and we got thousands and one other stuffs waiting for us to do rather than to register and login to leave comment on your post.
3. Poor spelling and/or grammar usage
Slight mis-spelling of words here and there is acceptable for me but wait till you read a post full of spelling mistakes and bad grammatical usage. If the author couldn’t be bothered to proof-read his/her articles before hitting publish button, it really shows a lack of respect for the blog’s readers.
4. Multimedia “circuses” - one man’s meat is another man’s poison.
Niffty Flash intro or your favorite 50 Cent rap music on auto play may look and sounds cool to you, but may not always appeal to your readers. Even worst if there is no option for users to tuen it off. Having these multimedia “circuses” will also lead to the next point.
5. Sloooow loading time
Some blogs are loaded with Flash, MIDI, audio, video, widgets, obnoxious banners or other files that load with the page, thus slowing loading time tremendously. Too many fancy features slow down the loading speed and casues readers’ mind to wander off. As stated in point 2, bloggers are an impatient speices, most will be gone before the page finish loading! My suggestion - dump them. Put up text links instead. Let the visitor choose if they want to watch the video or listen to your favorite playlist.
6. Font sizes and background contrast with font colors
I’ve came across blogs that uses such small fonts that I have to practically squirm my eyes to read the post. What’s worst when the small fonts are bright yellow written on dark blue background! And how about this? Light pink colored fonts written on pink background! No matter how “killer” the content is, these color-challenged blogs will be killed off by the author’s own color blindness.
I believe most of us blogs to share our ideas, opinions and knowledge with the online community. Besides focusing on your writings, put yourself in the shoe of the readers and try to offer them a pleasurable experience overall. Avoid any of the above that wastes the reader’s time or causes confusion, and you’ve won half the battle.
I’ve only listed 6 of them and believe there are more irritants. What are your poisons of blog reading? Care to share your blog reading pet peeves?
I agree with all of these. I really need to work on my font. I’ve had people say the white is hard to read on the denim:/
And I don’t know whay my loading time is…no one has ever complained but I am guilty of having a couple of widgets here and there.
Your blog is doing great!
I couldn’t agree more!
Fantastic post… needed to be said.
with regards to spelling and grammar… well, my blog is really bad on these. I want to correct all the errors but i am just idiot to do that….
i am thankful for few visitors of my blog are revisiting it to check for some updates even if they find the posts full of errors…
SELBOY
Glad you guys enjoy the post. I’m learning all the time to improve my blog and give readers an enjoyable experience.
That’s a good list. I’ve had to reconsider my blog and tweak the font and contact details. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.
Ok, I’m guilty of #1. I don’t want spam and haven’t found the time to create an image that proclaims my email loudly.
I have listed such peeves in one of my older posts. One of it was I hated music being played automatically. It takes ages to load. So, I want to read finish and leave to read other stuff.
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I agree with all of the above pet peeves.
The worst one for me is the music.
I can’t stand it when a blogger has music on. I find it very disturbing and hurry on to turn my volume off.
Marie
Marie
“3. Poor spelling and/or grammar usage”
Are you kidding? Your spelling and grammar are awful. Not that I hold it against you.
I agree. Especially with #2 and #4.
Did I mention that I don’t like myspace?
Yeah Tobsy, expecting readers to login in order to leave comment is a sure fire way to driver traffic away from one’s blog.
The music are better left to one’s private enjoyment.
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Long videos as the post with no text summary about what it is about.
I do not always have time to watch a 10 minute video when two paragraphs of text could explain it.
Video is cool, but use it wisely.
“Even worst if there is no option for users to tuen it off. Having these multimedia “circuses” will also lead to the next point.”
You have violated rule 3 of your own law. Let the counsel judge the…
Well, what can I say? You are observant!
I really enjoyed reading your pet peeves post today.You also caught me without a contact form on my blog.I had not really thought of the importance before.I have one now thanks to your pet peeves post.
take care
Steven
Thanks Steven, glad you enjoyed and learn something out of it.
Auto-play multimedia is the number one issue for me. If I go to a site and it starts singing (or worse … those darn talking ads!), I’ll hit the back button so fast your stats package might not even register my visit.
There are lots of great site designs out there, but it’d be nice if people had their friends vett the layout before trying to promote their content
LOL Jason, I like your take on exiting so fast the tracking stat might not even register, you are that fast huh?
Having friends vett the layout, and overall user experience of the site is a good way to iron out the chinks.
Sound that starts automatically is mine too. Unless I’m stumbling I’ll open up a lot of tabs in Firefox or IE7 and when one starts yacking I have to go through every tab to find the offending site.
I can imagine you sieving through all the tabs just to find the nuisense site!