Hook your readers by displaying a list of your 5 best posts on every page

January 10 2010

Hook your readers by displaying a list of your 5 best posts on every page written by Jack Kinsella

The sixteenth part of a series about 30 daily improvements you can make to your Wordpress blog. The point of the series is both to educate on blog design and to put my money where my big blogger mouth is, having promised in a previous post that one of the best ways to get a project finished is to commit to doing one thing towards that project every day, for 30 days

A reader might land on your site for infinitely many reasons

A friend (online or offline) recommended your website
Your blog turned up in a Google query
They mispelled the URL of the website they actually wanted to go
A social bookmarking website (like Digg, Delicious or Reddit) featured your website
They were Facebook stalking someone and saw that they were a fan of Hermes Technologies

Once a reader has landed inside your website your job is to keep them there as long as possible.

A good analogy is when a customer walks into an electronics store. Once inside the clever store owner will market to this customer using attractive displays and product placements, well trained staff and all sorts of shiny things.

Similarly on a website you must market your best materials to the reader so as encourage him to stay longer. With this in mind you should create a widget in your sidebar displaying what you regard as your best posts/content. This way readers on your website, no matter where they land, will always be exposed to the best parts of your website and so there is an increased chance to get them further hooked and hopefully turning them into loyal readers.

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