The Blog Post Footer Design Manifesto
It’s a proven fact that a blog post’s footer is a “pause zone”. That’s why, people encourage you to place ads there, because you have more chances of catching the eye of your readers.
But, if it is a good place to place ads, why not take it one step further. Sure, some bloggers placed links to social media websites or to related blog posts in that are, but not giving it its deserved design attention minimizes its impact on readers.
Why not treat that area as a separate element of your blog’s structure? Why not take advantage of any of its effects:
- Encourage further reading;
- Promote featured content;
- Traffic growth;
- Bounce rate reduction;
- Social media exposure;
- Encourage subscription and many more.
As a reader of Blogsessive you must have noticed each post’s footer, and from my experience as Blogsessive’s webmaster, I can confirm that the results are amazing.
After tweaking the design and encouraging users to subscribe, my subscribers’ count almost doubled in a matter of weeks.
It’s a shame that mostly design blogs have adopted this technique, while other bloggers think that a “ShareThis” widget and a “Related posts” plugin does the job. It does part of the job, when you could get more!
They did, and now pride themselves with a big readership and followship:
GoMediaZine.com
Devlounge.net
Tutorial9.net
NetTuts.net
The next time you reconsider your blog’s design, keep an eye on this area too. Make sure you use its full power.
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Area after post is extremely important. My theme was missing RSS link under post. After I realized that (took me some time) and fixed that – my subscriber count increased by five in next few days.
Plenty of people say that I have impressive subscriber count for blog that young. I think that making nice and useful area after post is one of the most important things I did to get that result.
Intersting article. I didnt know that footer can be so powerful. I will look at it more differnetly
Good call. I always struggle with good footer content, so will give this a whirl.
Speaking of footers, I looked everywhere on your blog (including the footer, where you usually find it) and I could not find anywhere a way to subscribe to the post’s comments. I would like a way to get notifications when a new comment appears for a certain post.
Either something like “Subscribe to comments” Wordpress plugin (email notification) or the RSS feed of the post’s comments (i.e. not ALL comments on your blog).
How am I supposed to do this, just bookmark the post and then visit it every now and then just to see if there is a new comment ? Not exactly ideal, isn’t it ?
Any reason you don’t have a notification method ?
Thanks everyone for your comments!
Stefan, I guess the theme was designed partially according to my habits, and I usually revisit/bookmark posts or subscribe via email to comments where this is an option.
Believe it or not, you’re the first one to ask about it on Blogsessive, but you’re right, and probably others would have used it too, but they did not say anything. Will be added and thank for your observation.
Thanks, that’ll make things much easier, hopefully for other people too
There you go Stefan, link added. Enjoy the feed!
Excellent, cheers!
I’ve been trying to increase my blog footer effectiveness as well. Thanks for teaching about how to use it for more than just “add this” and ad space. It should really come in handy.
Thanks for post this blog . u do my work more easy.