Blog Housekeeping
This week, I did some tinkering with the way my blog is set up. In the past, it’s been hard for people to find additional entries on topics that interested them, so I took a long hard look at how to set up a more straightforward interface with the site.
1. Simplified Categories
When I started this blog, I didn’t quite grasp how categories worked, and treated them more like tags – creating new ones willy-nilly, using highly specific language. Over time, I realized that I was writing primarily about a handful of topics: writing, science and technology, lifestyle (health, New York City stories, etc.) and activism and politics (including rants about feminist issues). So on Wednesday, I found a plugin (sort of a tiny app just for the site) that helped me change the categories of my entries in batches, and moved some of the more esoteric, rarer categories into some of the broader ones. Hopefully that will help newcomers to the blog focus their reading in whatever area it was they came here to read about.
2. Simplified Pages
The second component of the blog’s menu bar are the static “pages” that make up information including my bio, where you can see my work covered in other media, what books I have for sale and signing up for my mailing list. By combining some of these pages and deleting others, I condensed what had been seven or eight pages down to just a handful. Again, hopefully that will help people navigate the site with a little more precision.
Early Results
I made the changes on Thursday morning, and I’m happy to say the analytics from day one appeared positive. Page views per visitor went up, average time on the site went up, and my bounce rate (the number of people who come to visit one page then go) fell. Only time will tell if it keeps up, but this certainly indicates that a little organization goes a long way!
Are there other things about the site that you find difficult to navigate? Are there features you’d like to see, or ideas you have on how I can make it more user-friendly? If so, please don’t hesitate to let me know – either in the comments below or via email.
I’m currently seeking beta readers/advance reviewers for my upcoming collection of sci-fi and speculative fiction stories, SHORT FRICTIONS. If you’re interested, please click here to find out more.
