I just read Vitaly Friedman's 20 rules of smart and successful web-development. You all know these lists, where they tell you what to do and - way more often - what not to do. But this one is a very good one. Easy to read and not difficult to adapt. I like to point out a few points which I found to be very useful.
Hate Internet Explorer if you like, but don't ignore it's users
True with every word. We all ...let's say dislike Microsoft's Browser when it comes to terms like box-model, validity, css interpretation and so on. Still, 68% of all surfers use it - 68%, just a plain number, but still shocking. I mean, even from the surfers point of view, there are reasons to switch, e.g. all those security risks.
And of course there are better alternatives which are also sometimes aggressively advertised. There are even campaigns against IE, providing website admins with a button called "Too cool for IE".
But what's the point? Surfer will stick to the browser they're using for years, it's hard to convince them for better ones, especially if they don't have the knowledge about all that security flaws. So face it: 68%, or about 7 out 10 visitors to your site will be using Internet Explorer. Optimizing the design for other browsers (Firefox, Safari, Opera...) and ignoring IE (or even better: tell them that IE is bullshit) is not only stupid, but also careless, as you could lose these 7 out of 10 visitors - forever.
Don't be concerned about web-crawlers and SEO optimization
I guess visitors to a blog can be divided into at least 2 groups: Those who came for your blog, and those who came from search engines. About 90% of the latter ones will look for their specific content they searched for, get it, and leave. At least this is my experience from previous postings I've made. If you're just interested in increasing your visitor rates, then - beside the SEO optimization - have a look at Technorati, see what's hot right now and write about it. Here are some hints, which should work pretty well now: Tammy (for international blogs) and Sonnenlischt (for german blogs). The latter term gave Spreeblick (a german blog) an increase of about 30.000 visitors per day!
However, if you write quality content, you can make yourself a name in the great blogosphere. You will get your regular visitors, and even if it's only about 50 to 100 a day, these are the ones you should write for. This doesn't mean you should completely ignore visitors from search engines, but they are only on your site for specific content, not for the whole.
Answer your emails immediately
Well, this also applies to comments in your blog. This way, you stay in contact with your visitors, you create some sort of bond to them, they feel they're not completely on their own and will come back.
As for this blog, have a look at the Lush posting. There are comments asking for specific problems, and I try to help them as good as I can. Hopefully, this will have an effect on them, so that maybe they come back and read this blog as well. Of course, these are questions directed to me, but if you just make comments although there is no real need, the visitors get the thought of being recognized.
Divide longer postings into parts
Okay, this point wasn't in the list but in the comments, mentioned by Ozan Tuzun, and I found it to be very good. If you have longer article, divide it into parts with the option to move up and down to the other parts. This way, visitors don't get lost in a posting which goes for about 3-4 screens, or even longer. Makes sense indeed and will be definetely implemented in my design for the CSS Reboot.
