You have probably read the studies that claim on average, 1% of online users actually contribute and create content on a given website. The rest are perfectly happy reading your posts, forming their own opinions, and moving on to the next blog with out ever actually leaving any sort of feedback. This makes sense of course, we don't always have time to leave our thoughts on blogs, or many times it doesn't even seem worth the effort. After all you have to formalize your thoughts, actually write them out, review, edit, post, and then monitor for responses.
It actually is a lot more involved than we probably realize.
It is also a lot more important to get this type of reader interaction than we probably realize. The amount of interaction generated through a blog is an easy indicator of it's success. Not only for the blog owner, but also to other readers. Consider looking at two blogs with similar content, one with an average of 10 - 20 responses where the other only has 1 - 3.
I hate to say it, but most people would subscribe to the blog that is generating more interest and response, even if the content was of similar quality.
How Design Can Encourage More Blog Commenting
When people blog about "design" in regards to websites many times they are primarily referring to the asthetic quality of a site. While the aesthetic quality of a site can have a large impact on how many people put in the effort to comment on a blog, I want to approach the situation at a higher level.
Consider that the definition of design is "to assign in thought or intention; purpose."
Design is not just making pretty visuals, but to craft your site with specific thought, intention and purpose. So the question then becomes, how can we build the site with the intention of encouraging users to leave comments.
Create an Incentive or Reward
The primary reason anyone is going to leave a comment on a blog is they believe that their will be some pay off that is worth their time to formulate their response, edit it, etc... In most cases it is because they have a feeling about the content to the point where they feel the need to get their thoughts off of their chest, or maybe the author is well known enough where the idea of talking with them would be the reward.
However not all blog posts will have content compelling enough, or an author well known enough to create the incentive and reward with those elements alone.
Highlight Your Commenters
Smart marketers have found that the higher that you can appeal on Maslow's hierarchy of needs, the better success you will have reaching your audience. By highlighting those who really participate you are appealing to the need of "esteem."
You could do this by:
- Making a post about them every once in a while
- Having a top commenters widget
- Use gravitars
Give Your Commenters a Bonus
I have seen great response to giving the top commenters some sort of bonus. Widgets that keep track of who has commented the most make this an easy endeavor to track and monitor.
Some of the more common methods could be:
- Giving the top commenters a dofollow link
- Giving top commenters profile/link on the home page
- Giving top commenters a special design when they do comment, do occasional giveaways, etc...
- Use the dofollow plugin, so high quality commenters can get some SEO value from contributing.
Use Design and Visuals to Engage Users
While I have talked about "design" in terms of designing an experience or functionality, I haven't addressed the actual visuals of a design and how it can improve the amount of user interaction.
If you pay enough attention to the design and visuals of your comments, you can catch the attention of users and encourage them to leave a comment.
Make Your Comment Area Eye Catching and Interesting
As a users gets closer to the bottom of an article or post, you can bet that they have either scrolled past or lost focus of most of the visual elements on the page. This presents an excellent opportunity to draw their eye to the comment area by just adding a little bit of flair, tension, or contrast to develop some visual interest.
Want to really get some attention? Consider using custom designed form fields (not too custom as to hinder user experience).
Be Suggestive
Suggest that a user leave a comment where ever you can! At the start of the comments create a link to add a comment. You could even go so far as adding a "reply" button/link at every comment in the list.
Additionally this will make it easy to comment, as users won't have to hunt for the add comment link.
Highlight the Commenters
People leave comments because they want people to read their opinion (even if it is just the author). Make sure that the users name/link has enough visual emphasis. This will help establish that the commenter will get the recognition that they are seaking.
Again, use Gravitars. Users who have gone so far as creating a gravitar will appreciate being able to show their branding on another blog and are more likely to comment because of it.
Any Experiences or Tips?
These are some of the best methods I have come across, if you have any experiences, tips, or other ideas on how to encourage more users to participate through the design of your blog/website feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts.
Have some feedback? Leave a comment
Hi Dejan,
I totally agree with all of your points but in my opinion your point about “Make Your Comment Area Eye Catching and Interesting” isn’t ideally implemented on this page.
At the end of the post it seems like there will only be the footer and no comment form at all. I find the visual line between the content and the footer + comment form to hard.
No question, it looks awesome but I think there’s still room for improvements and I hope you don’t feel offended by my comment.
Greetings and keep up the good work.
P.S.: It would be very helpful if you provided a way to subscribe to the comments either by e-mail or via the built-in RSS feed, so that your visitors can follow the discussions.
Not at all and I appreciate the feedback Patrick. And great comment about adding RSS feeds, I am going to add that the the post as that is a great way to keep readers interested and engaged.
Thanks Patrick
Just to echo Patricks comment – I got to the bottom of the blue section and couldn’t find any comments so scrolled to the top again to see if they were somewhere else. Your comments are well hidden – unless you scroll past the comment form it looks like a normal site footer so is easily missed.
On the plus side the illustrations do look nice
You failed, to some extent. I read the article and shut the window. I re-opened it to tell you that I didn’t comment… but in commenting, I’m giving in to your post. Argh, the vicious circle.
Anyway, I read the other comments too and agree. One thing I have always felt is pointless though is the ‘Comment RSS’. I really like seeing replies to comment, especially if it was me that made the original comment that the response is addresses toward – but I comment on a lot of blogs and could potentially add an extra 20+ RSS feeds to my aggregator each day at this rate.
This is where I feel there’s something in services like Disquss. The ability to track and manage all your comments around the web, including being alerted of replies, is a good thing – but unfortunately can’t see something like this becoming standardised anytime soon. There’s also something wrong about on company ‘owning’ all comments on the web.
Yikes, you guys are brutal.
This site isn’t my design, so I do acknowledge that it looks like the page ends with out indication of the comments. I have plans on improving this, just no implementation yet.
@coxy – The comments RSS would be more useful on sites that have ongoing and important discussions that you are interested in. Not any site that you subscribe to the RSS feed of.
If you were planning on responding to a post a few times a day due to the discussion it would be easier to RSS it and read rather than check back every so often.
Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind, 3pointross.
In fact, that makes no sense – people should never be cruel – but you do have to practice what you preach. In posting an entry titled ‘Engaging Readers, Design Your Way to More Blog Comments’ on a design like this, you should probably expect some backlash.
I really like the design of the site, by the way. it just so happens that it’s easily under fire if you’re following your own suggestions.
Also, @replies don’t work on blogs and are quite infuriating. Twitter has some explaining to do!
Congratulations for your site! It has a perfect mix of stunning design + high quality content
I went from getting 1-5 comments to a much more active community by using the the Read More insert. Once people had to click into the post to get all pics the comments just started rolling. My current theme is good for click through rates but sucks for Google, so I am in process of a re-design. Number one will be keeping the comment link up front and the comments section clean.
One thing you didn’t mention that I think is really important, replying and being responsive to feedback/questions.
Two the comment number should be visually eye catching. To many themes highlight dates, authors, categories, tags, etc. Most users just don’t care about any of that. The title, post lead image and comment # should be up front in big lights. The rest if included should be subtle.
I would also mention to include at least one or two short blog posts a week, and ask your readers for quick feedback (like a ‘Yes” or ‘No’ answer). This requires little thought to respond to your post and is easy for a reader to feel like they have participated.
Talking about design, you do have a good design yourself
Hiya, i have seen your site when searching a few weeks ago and i really love the design! I just bought a new 3 character domain (cost me a packet) for a niche review blog, and i was wondering if your design is a free or paid one? I’m new to WordPress and about to set it up, and i would really like to get something with a similar look to yours. Any ideas where i could download or buy something similar? Thanks for your help!
These are some good tips. Thanks! (Found you via google reader.) I may subscribe…
hehe , subscribing to this blog . cheers
musical sites thanks.
Really nice work.
Thank you.
Just found your blog today. Really like it – keep up the good work.Domain info more important than you think
Domain information such as DNS, age of domain and even the expiration date are used to distinguish between illegitimate and legitimate domains.Why are google doing this? Simply to get all the factors they can to get an internal “trust score”.This “trust score” is used to eliminate “doorway” pages and spam in the search result.I’M not saying that it’s working perfectly – but they are doing a pretty good job.
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Very easy to read and most enjoyable. Thanks for your hard work.
Wow that’s awesome advice. I will definitely implement your tips on my blog as well.
This is some really good advice. About the part how you say good design can encourage more people to comment, well your site will defiantly do that. I am going to take this advice on board and use it on my blog, thanks for sharing these great tips.
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I get to know lot’s of unknown issue’s by reading this post it’s really helpful to me hope you will post more like this and also you will update things as well.
Thank you so much for this valuable infomation!! I am going to do this right now! Any more suggestions?
Yeah.. Useful informative information and I like your blog design. Thanks dude.
I always say that design / layout is everything. If you hv a blog with a smoth design you will reach other kind of feedback as a agressive one etc. Form and color have a subtil effect.
Useful tips! they are going to help me when i have nothing in mind to blog about, thanks
I agree with all your ideas. Would add one thing, dont be afraid to be a little provocative. At the risk of getting a few readers flustered, you will get people writing.
Good point Svetainiu, the content can have a very dramatic result on the amount of comments.
this is great…
the reason why someone creating post in their blogs is hoping their post could be read by a lot of people and after that the readers will leave comments on it.
But, no many blogger do understand how to attract people to leave their comments.
I usually dont post in Blogs but your blog forced me to, amazing work.. beautiful!
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How Much Value we Put Into our PageRank ?
Maintain a consistent look on all pages. Use the same color, same font, and same navigation bar .
What is industry vision of the environment?
almost more than half of the tips work for me ! yippy, i had an increase of 2000 visitors in two days !
I enjoyed reading your post. It was really intresting and i really loved it. thank you for posting your views. I am looking forward foe more of your posts. Keep up the good work.
Your knowledge on this is subject is vast and I would love it if u could write more articles on this subject. I m looking forward for more of your articles. I m really impressed with your work .
Thanks for the tips! I’ll try them out on my blog.
Blogs make for very good social media strategy. Your tips are very useful.
As a users gets closer to the bottom of an article or post, you can bet that they have either scrolled past or lost focus of most of the visual elements on the page. This presents an excellent opportunity to draw their eye to the comment area by just adding a little bit of flair, tension, or contrast to develop some visual interest.
Great tips, blogs really are a great social media strategy
I just can say thanks to the author of this article.Any blogger I think sometimes looking for the new information about that.Also,I absolutely agree with opinion about design.It’s so important thing.
Hallo,
i hoch Entschuldigungen für nicht auf Englisch schreibt, war ich auf der Suche nach, und ich diese Website gefunden, Ich mag Ihre Post-und Ich mag Ihnen für den Austausch zu danken.
Grüße
I liked it a lot, thank you for sharing.
thank you for this excellent post
Hi, just today discovered your blog but I have to admit that it looks great. I fully agree with your post. Have a great day, keep up the nice work and I’ll definitely keep checking your blog.
Thanks for this post. Really interesting.
This is another great article with very useful tips. You pay enough attention to the design and visuals of your comments, you can catch the attention of users and encourage them to leave a comment. I am hoping to pick up more blogging work, too!
Really great SEO article. Will certainly source your information in my next blog
Thanks again
S