I was reading Emil’s post about not receiving comments and I started to write my comment. Soon enough my comment was so long it warranted it own blog post.

My very good friend Felix is running a blog in Swedish and we have tried for about a year to make the site’s name famous. It has worked, we’re well known and the name, Zmolklife, has almost become a brand. We have an incredible amount of visitors if you see to the fact that it’s a personal blog. What we don’t have is a steady stream of comments although we know our visitors have things to say. Do I need to change something at the site to make it more attractive or what?

There are a number of reasons why. My blog isn’t a very popular blog, and though I get around 500 visits a day, I don’t get that many comments. This is something that doesn’t bother me at all, but it is obvious that other bloggers do want more comments.

Sometimes I get 25+ comments on a post because it is funny or a great story and readers want to tell me their own experience. Sometimes I only get 3 comments on an article that I thought would do better. It all depends what the reader wants to read, and if it targets them.

To encourage more comments you should ask the reader a question. If you leave a question at the end of a blog post asking me what my thoughts are on it, or to share a story of my experience I will more than likely comment. When it is just a straight up and down article, the reader might be very interested and find it helpful but they don’t necessarily want to go comment “hey your article helped me thanks”, they would rather read it, learn and then move on. So by leaving a question at the end or asking for ones experience creates more interactivity, which visitors love.

Another reason (some) visitors comment is because they are greedy, they only comment on the blogs they want to suck up to (i.e. the ones with a high PR, or the ones with 40+ comments already) in the hope they get more referrals to their site. Take Jemjabella.co.uk for example, everyone comments Jems blog post even if it’s a really boring one (not that she has many boring ones, but some don’t really require comment). If you read through some of her more reason posts, she has left questions throughout each post, so someone is going to read one question and think to themselves *no I don’t really know why* but then read the third question in the post and think *hey I know the answer to that, you…* and then they comment. Her posts invoke discussion and encourage people to contribute. That’s one reason I always go back, to view the conversation happening in the comments.

Another reason people may not comment is because they read your blog through a feed reader, and they are too lazy to visit your website itself. You can let visitors comment through a feed reader by using Feedburner, to do this just activate FeedFlare. Under FeedFlare, you’ll see checkboxes and put a check on “Comments Count”. That way, subscribers will see the number of comments below each syndicated post. They can just click that to leave a comment without ever leaving the comfort of their feed reader.

Replying to comments makes a big difference too. I don’t mean going to the commenters’ blog to reply on their blog on a post which is probably unrelated. Reply to them on your blogs post. Most of the time, the visitor will return to see if you replied back. Not a standard reply like “Thanks for commenting” but something that invokes more discussion. For example, let’s say you posted a blog about “What font size is best” and your post discussed what font and size you preferred, and then you asked the visitors what font and size they preferred. The visitor replies with “I love verdana 10px”, why not ask them “why is it that you like verdana and why at 10px. Have you ever tried Arial at 12px”. Then they will probably return, see a response and reply back. That in itself is a higher comment count even though you are the one contributing. Then another visitor comes along and reads your blog, reads the other visitors comment and decides to say “actually I have to disagree with both of you…” and so the discussion continues.

Some things just turn visitors off from commenting at all, let alone even reading the blog post, such as page cuts (the read more link). No one wants to read half of what you are saying and then realise that they have to click further just to read the end of the article. Some may just give up and leave. Most visitors hate clicking, the quicker they can get to and read content, the quicker and easier decision it is on whether they want to comment or not. It just makes sense to not cut blogs down to a “read more” link and leave it all out there as one whole uncut post.

Sometimes you can offer incentives for someone to comment. Giving your visitor a chance to have their website plugged is a great reason for someone to comment. Of course some of these comments will come off as “fake” because they aren’t commenting for any real reason other than to get a quick plug. But not all visitors are like that, and many will appreciate that because they took their time to comment genuinely it is great to give a plug back. They give comments (which you want, right) and you give link backs (which they want), so everyone wins.

And last but definitely not least, make sure your comment form works and that comments actually go through. Don’t hold comments for moderation unless you have a serious spam problem. You can use Akismet for Wordpress which will get rid of spam and the need to moderate comments. Visitors like to see their comment up straight away so they know it went through. If you must hold it for moderation, tell the visitor after they have posted it that it is being held for moderation.

If you haven’t told me my comment is being held for moderation, I don’t know where my comment has disappeared and it has me worried. I would try re-comment and if it doesn’t show or tell me that it is being held, I would leave the site and probably never comment again (though I would keep reading future blog posts).

If your blog receives a high amount of comments, what do you think contributes to getting them (apart from having brilliant posts) and what do you love about receiving comments?

Need directions? Google Maps comes in handy. Want to do a spreadsheet but don’t have excel? Why not try Google spreadsheet. Trying to find the best bargains? Froogle is the answer.
Just about anything and everything you need is provided by google. Here’s a rundown of my 5 favourite google applications.

1. Google maps. Whenever I need to search for something I just type the full address into Google and then I am presented with a detailed accurate map with a balloon pointing to my exact location.
2. Gmail. Everyone should know by now gmail is the best email application. It has a simple, fast loading interface and the ability to add labels and filters to your emails. Plus you can receive and send mail from your web domain email accounts all in the gmail interface.
3. Google Reader or Google Homepage. If you love to read all your favourite blog updates through a reader, Google reader is great. If you’re like me, and like to go to the actual website/blog to read updates, then Google Homepage is perfect. I set each blog to show 1 update, so each time the blog is updated I see the update and just click on it to visit the website. Google Homepage doesn’t just have to have RSS feeds either, you can add a Gmail notifier, games or even a weather tracker.
4. Google Pack. If you love the look of Vista but don’t have it then Google Pack is great. It has Google Desktop which is basically as good looking as Vista (if you like the look of Vista, but that’s an entirely different story) but is free. Included in the download are such options as Firefox, Photos Screensaver, Picasa, Google Earth and more.
5. Google Notebook. My absolute favourite. I have the toolbar installed on my work computer and home computer. So whenever I am at work and I find a great article, I can copy the whole thing (or just a small quote) right-click and choose Note this and it will paste a note into Google Notebook with a link to the site you got the article from. Even if I am on a computer that doesn’t have Google notebook installed I can still access the notebook anywhere. I find this especially great when I am at work and I see an image online that I like and want to see again, so instead of saving it and emailing it to myself, or using my USB flash drive to save it I can just right click the image, click on Note this and the image will be noted. That way I never forget or lose the website the image originally came from.

Fancy Fonts are only for headings. By fancy I mean Georgia, Times New Roman, and every other serif font. You cannot read (online) sentence upon sentence of type with little curls, and hooks on them. It just gets too messy and unreadable. So save those fancy fonts for headings, and headings only.

Controlling links in new windows. Ever been to a website and clicked on a link and it opens in a new window? Annoying right? Well to most users it is, as the user/visitor of your website wants to control where they want the links to open. This applies to internal and external links. Don’t be fooled into thinking that by opening a link in a new window is good because then the visitor doesn’t leave your site. It isn’t good, if the user doesn’t want to leave your site they can click the Big Back Button that is on all browsers. I find it so annoying when I want to open links into (Firefox) tabs, yet an obtrusive new window opens. Plus most users can right-click-open-new-tab or click on the mouse-scroll to open that page in a tab or window by themselves.

Keep my browser size the same. Just the same as how I like to be in control of where links open, I also like to be in full control of my browser size. I have a huge monitor, and most of the time I don’t like to open my browser to full size so that the browser sits neatly in the center of my screen at the right size so when a some website automatically changes my browser to full size I get annoyed, especially if I am reading something in another tab (waiting for your page to load in the other tab). Remember, an annoyed visitor is a visitor lost.

Did I really subscribe? Do not subscribe me to your newsletter because I registered to view posts. Do not subscribe me to your comments RSS because I simply made a comment. Do not annoy me with unsolicited emails. You are making it easier for me to associate your website with negative connotations and most likely I will not return.

Where is that music coming from? Do not play music when your website loads. What if I am listening to my own music then suddenly I hear something else interrupting my track? Do not make it impossible to find the stop button. If I can’t see a stop button within 3 seconds I close the tab. End of story. If you must have music, let me decide if I want to play it by showing me the play and stop button before ramming N*Sync down to my ear drums.

Kill all splash pages! I don’t care if I need to use Internet Explorer 6, use 800X600 resolution, have a tolerance for swearing, and respect for the owner. Instead you are just giving me reasons to click my browsers Back button and get out of there quick. Do you really think I am going to load up Internet Explorer and change my resolution just to view your site?

Complex URL structures? Not only does a simple keyword based URL structure improve your search engine ranking, but it also makes it easier for your visitor to know where they are going before clicking. If a visitor bookmarks your page and sees your link in their bookmarks a few weeks later they are not going to know what http://domain.com/p=?321 means. A structure such as http://domain.com/blog/illustration/design_is_good.html gives them more indication.

Where has the navigation gone? Use text-based navigation links. If you must use images, specify an alt and title attribute. You wouldn’t want someone visiting your website with images disabled and not seeing any navigation at all. For the simple reason of search engine ranking, don’t use JavaScript or Flash navigations. These are also not advised in case the visitor browses with JavaScript disabled, or Flash player not installed.

Tell me it’s a .PDF first. I hate when I search for things on Google and I click on a link quickly before looking at the URL, and suddenly my browser freezes and starts to load something. It is then that I realise I clicked directly on a .PDF file from the search engine results. It has happened on other websites too where the link was not labeled as a .PDF. There’s no need for an external link arrow or image, but a small text warning in brackets next to the link will do.

Is that a link or normal text? Do not underline normal text unless absolutely necessary, especially if your links are underlined. Also don’t have so many styles in one paragraph. I come across these all the time on websites where not only is the colour changed for a bolded link, but it is also a different font and different size than the rest of the text. You may think it looks cool having random colours and emphasis everywhere, but really it just looks tacky.